Thread by @bennessb

my biggest pacing strategy* is to devote yourself to finding the absolute lowest energy way to do any task you’d like to do regularly, and then to do the task that way every single time instead of wasting precious energy trying to decide how much to accommodate yourself each day.

*with full recognition that:
- sometimes fatigue is so intense that no tasks are possible to do safely, and
- a lot of survival needs can interfere with the basic principles of pacing.

pacing is aspirational & frustrating but also helpful for a lot of people w/o other options.

(also this isn’t like, a proprietary strategy? I’m sure many other people have talked about it? I’ve just been trying to explain pacing a lot lately and that’s how I’ve ended up explaining it?)

and also honestly write out the steps for yourself if that helps!

it’s easy to forget how you solved a problem last time and get into the weeds about that. (also yes I know fatigue can also make it impossible to create or document a decision tree.)

for ex!

we use a decision tree to run the void RT account. majority of posts fall into a few identifiable categories (ie. venting, requesting advice/support, jokes/memes about sick life) so there’s a document full of “if x, do y” to reduce cognitive load of cumulative decisions.

this process has taken me a long time, I think mostly because so much content related to task optimization is still written with the basic assumption that you’re optimizing in order to *do more tasks* which is the opposite of my motivation.

and also a lot of task optimization culture is also extraction capitalism culture, and the “optimization” occurs via extractive labor practices. so, that’s something to pay very close attention to.

anyway it’s not a failure of character to want to do things The Easy Way. decision fatigue can be a high leverage intervention point.

anyway, pacing: 👍🏻

but yes upon further reflection, this advice is basically: examine the ways that you can develop user manuals for your own life, to optimize things you like enough that there is surplus energy available that you can keep for yourself to spend on rest or A Fun Thing or whatever.

I do think it’s depressing how much of an analog this is to telling people experiencing poverty to budget better, but that’s on the hands of the medical establishment and not people sharing hyper-specific tips about how to keep our bodies on a little more of an even keel.