How to Take Care of Your Mental Health When You’re Busy

Just a disclaimer: I am not a professional or expert in mental health. These are just my tips based on what had worked for me from my experience. These tips had been passed onto me and I had applied the ones that had benefited me the most.

Perhaps you’ve heard about how it’s important to take care of your mental health just like how you would take care of your physical health.

I’ll admit, sometimes it’s hard to take care of your mental health… or even just your health in general when you have a chaotic schedule.

But honestly, not prioritizing your mental health regardless on how busy your schedule is, does more harm than good… and I only know this because I experienced this myself.

I’ve experienced countless of times when I burned out because all I did was just keep working without taking a break.

I did not like the feeling of stopping everything in my life and just study and work. I never wanted to be in a place where I would neglect everything else in my life, including my mental health.

So what I am going to share are little things that had helped me with my mental health.

I promise you that these tips, it is 100% achievable to find a time of the day to do them, regardless of how busy your schedule is.

It doesn’t matter if you are busy, I promise you that you can find a way to implement them into your life. Most of these tips only take two minutes, and the ones that don’t, they are already most likely a part of your routine… all you need to do is adjust it.

1) Plan Out Your Week

I am a huge “advocate” for planning your day beforehand. This is because, the moment you start your day, you don’t want to spend the precious minutes of it planning what you’re going to do. That’s time that could’ve been used to already get started into doing work!

That’s what I used to do! Every morning, I would decide what I am going to do that day. On days when I knew that I had plenty of extra time during the day, planning my day was a breeze. However, on days when I knew that there was so much going on, and so much to do, planning my day got a bit chaotic. Ultimately, I ended up wasting valuable time that I could’ve used to get started on whatever it is I needed to get done.

So it’s better to plan ahead of time instead, so that you can begin your day just starting whatever is of most importance. And how ahead of time? At the start of the week.

First things first, when I planned my week beforehand, not only did it save me so much time in the morning, it also saved me so much time in the evenings. I went to sleep knowing what I was going to do for the next day, and that gave me relief.

Depending on what you prefer, you can use a paperback calendar, or you can go electronically. You may want to use a paperback calendar or planner if you prefer to not use technology. However, going electronically is easier for making changes when something unexpected happens or delays occur.

Start with putting your non-negotiable priorities. These may include work, exercise, or family time (don’t forget your mental health!).

Then proceed to placing out your other priorities, figure out what time would work best to do them, ensuring that it doesn’t conflict with your non-negotiable priorities.

Just remember that unexpected events do happen that may cause you to make adjustments to your schedule, but nevertheless, it’s always a good idea to know ahead of time what your day is going to look like. It will also help reassure you that what you need to get done will get completed on time.

You want to make sure that you feel prepared and set up for the start of every week, and doing that gives you reassurance that you do “have your life together”, and that you’ve got everything put into place.

2) Gratitude

This is something that is really quick and easy to do. You can easily implement this to any part of the day.

The best part of the day is in the morning. In the morning, on days when you know it’s going to be chaotic, it’s easy to immediately think about all the things that you have to do. Just thinking of three things you’re grateful for first thing in the morning may not seem like much, but it could end up changing your outlook of the day.

Another good part of the day to do this is in the evening. Before you go to sleep is the best time for reflection on what happened on the day, regardless on whether it was a good or bad day. Just thinking of three things you’re grateful for in that day can help you remember what actually counts.

Honestly, any part of the day is a great time to practice gratitude. While there’s plenty of things that we don’t have, there’s so much more that we do have, that others may not have. It’s quick and easy to do, and it doesn’t even take a minute to be grateful for at least one thing.

Every time something happens, even the small things, you can easily be grateful for it. Whether that’d be a meal you’re eating, a car you’re driving, or you’re just taking a walk in general. There’s plenty of more people in the world who don’t get to do that.

But, regardless on what time of the day you implement this, make it a rule to always be grateful for at least three things every day. Just like this:

3) Hourly Reminders

This is something simple that you can do to build small habits. The possibilities are endless for this one.

Let me tell you how that works with this example.

Continuing on from the previous point, for me, I needed to make gratitude a regular part of my life.

So what I did was set a reminder on my phone to go off every hour (from 9am to 6pm), with this reminder:

(What are 3 things you’re grateful for?)

No matter where I was at, the notification to list three things I was grateful for went off, and by default, I felt the need to do so.

Eventually, it got to the point where I got so used to being grateful for literally anything that happens, I took the reminder off.

That’s what you can do as well, for pretty much any habit. The possibilities are endless. The best part is that you get the reminders so often, it gets instilled into your daily routine, you do it without even thinking about it.

For example, if you need to drink more water, you can set hourly reminders to your phone to drink at least one sip of water.

If you need to say nicer things about yourself, you can set hourly reminders to say one great thing about you.

If you need to build the habit of deep breathing so you can always stay relaxed, you can set hourly reminders to just do 2 minutes of deep breathing.

There’s so much that you can do. Just pick one area of your life that you want to work on the most, and then set hourly reminders for it.

4) Have Affirmations

Also continuing on with gratitude, something small that can also be implemented is saying affirmations (positive ones!).

I know for me, it’s easy to say nice things about myself, if I’m having a good day. But on days when I’m breaking out, burning out, or just not feeling it in general, it’s really easy to fall into a trap where I just beat myself up for it.

But where to be careful is how often you say those negative statements to yourself. Just like how saying a lie over and over again would eventually make you believe it, saying those negative statements consistently would eventually make you believe it as well.

So if saying a lie over and over again would eventually make you believe it, you can use that to your advantage and say positive statements about yourself, to yourself. If it feels like a lie, just read the first line of the previous sentence.

Here’s some small examples if you’re stuck:

So how often in a day should you say affirmations? All times of the day. If you’re just starting out with this habit, you can just implement the previous two tips on gratitude and hourly reminders:

Just start with saying minimum three affirmations about yourself a day. Then, to really build the habit, set hourly reminders to say three affirmations about yourself.

5) 1% Better Every Day

This is my personal favourite tip, because I’m all for the idea on how small actions and changes can lead to a much bigger impact over a longer period of time.

This exercise is simple, at the start of the day, just list one thing that you can do that day, that will make it better than yesterday. Just one thing.

For example, if you did 5000 steps the previous day, then today you can choose to do 6000 steps.

If you were feeling easily impatient when you were interacting with people the previous day, you can make today all about staying calm and relaxed, and more patient around people.

If you were watching too much TV that previous day, today you can lessen the watch time.

Pretty much, you can just list one thing that you will do better than yesterday. It may seem small and insignificant, but you’ll be surprised on how much of a difference it will make when you consistently make those 1% changes overtime.

If you really want to level up on this, at the end of the day, just like how you would list three things you’re grateful for, you can list three things that you would do differently for the next day. Just like this:

So no matter how the day went, you can always remember and keep in mind, that you can be better tomorrow.

6) Establish a Self-Care Routine (even if it’s just 20 minutes a day)

You may have heard about doing “Self-Care Sunday”, but really, it’s important to implement self-care every day.

I’m guilty for not implementing regular self-care as part of my daily routine, because I’ve always felt guilty for doing so.

But honestly, self-care, even just for a small amount in the day, was going to help me learn and know how to relax, and take care of myself in general. As a productive potato, I always want to be productive all the time, but I always have to remind myself that self-care is also being productive as well.

The reason for this is that resetting and recharging my batteries was going to help me feel fresh for when I do my work, and the quality of my work wouldn’t be compromised as a result. Because if I don’t get the chance to reset and recharge, my work quality would also be affected by that.

I’m sure you have heard of plenty of self-care ideas… everywhere. There’s so many of them that require no money and you can do for just 20 minutes in your day.

My personal favourite is just reading my book and having my tea. It only takes 20 minutes in the day, but it helps me reset and recharge so I can have better work efficiency and quality.

Yours may be as simple as turning your notifications off while you just sit somewhere, or just taking a nature walk. It can even be just listening to music while you’re driving in the car… it can be anything as long as you feel like you have felt recharged.

Ultimately, don’t just save the self-care for Sunday… do it every day.

100% Doable and Achievable to Do on a Daily Basis

Ultimately, those are the six ways that you can implement to take care of yourself on a daily basis. Take your time in trying to implement what works best for you. It’ll be easier than you’d initially think because the more times you do it, it becomes a habit, something that you do without even thinking about it.

It may be simple and small, but don’t underestimate the capacity of those small changes. When you do those small changes consistently overtime, you’ll eventually see the noticeable difference.

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