Organization
With the fatigue, brain fog and unpredictability of ME/CFS and Long-COVID, it can be a challenge to stay organized and prioritized. This can be especially true when you have to eliminate, delegate and split up tasks to stay within your energy envelope for the day. Following are a few tools and ideas that may help.
Caution: For ME/CFS patients with concentration problems, some doctors prescribe stimulants, like those used for ADHD. These might help for some patients, but they can lead to a ‘push-and-crash’ cycle and worsen symptoms.
Reminders and Organizers
Organizers and Calendars
Whether you like paper-based or online calendars, keeping track of the most critical appointments, deadlines and priorities will be critical to staying organized and keeping stress in check. If you love technology, other task management apps like Asana (that has a pretty good free version) may work for you as well.
Digital Reminders
Smartphone apps can send reminders for medications, meetings, and daily routines. For many people, your phone is always near, so this is often the best way to keep yourself on track. For some people, the simple built-in alarm (clock app), that offers one-time or recurring alarms, works well enough.
Voice Recorders
Use verbal note-taking apps to capture thoughts immediately when writing or finding a paper-based date-book isn’t feasible.
“I [can] just press a button on my phone and speak into it. It just stores all my voice notes and changes them to text. The I can organize them later. But I don’t just forget them.”
-Long-COVID patient in BC
General Tips
Don’t forget the general strategies of pacing, doing the hardest tasks at the times of day when you have the most energy, splitting tasks into multiple steps with rest in between, and minimizing stress through delegation and prioritization (sometimes meditation and other techniques help as well).
_edited.jpg)