As a lifelong planner, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder threw me a serious curveball. But as it turned out, my commitment to sticking with routines has been key to not only living with bipolar, but thriving.

I never planned on a Bipolar diagnosis any more than I planned on migraines or panic attacks. Even so, they all crashed into my life — and my body — uninvited. If they were human, they could have been prosecuted for assault and battery, and I’d have readily pursued civil litigation for good measure.

But there’s no justice or recourse when it comes to medical conditions. They just plow into you like drunk diplomats — immune to consequences and accountability — throwing off all of your plans. Given I’m a devout planner, this hit me hard.

Using Routines to Manage Bipolar

My love for planning began as a teenager, with a Ziggy Student Day Planner and an obsessive personality in search of a healthy alternative to literally pulling out my eyelashes. Since then, the form and content of my time-management efforts have evolved. Still, I’ve never relinquished the act of planning — which, not so incidentally, helped alleviate my mild case of trichotillomania, not to mention the mountain of anxiety fueling it.

Today, I use a simple note-taking app to craft schedules and hone habits that keep me sane. Waking up at the same time every morning, for example, helps ward off my depression, while taking regular breaks to recharge helps keep my mania at bay. My routines and time-management strategies have become vital for my sanity, wellness, and productivity.

Ranking my priorities and scheduling my time accordingly — daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly — was a revelation for me. Aside from salvaging my eyelashes, it gave me a sense of order inside of a body and a world brimming with disorder, allowing me to cope with the many surprises life has thrown at me.

Revising Plans When Life Throws Us Curveballs

My plans (and my willingness to adjust them) came in especially handy during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, after five years of toiling over my latest book, The Rumi Prescription, it was finally published and ready to promote. But my book tour was upended along with all of my plans and routines. As safe travel and live events were halted, I was forced to adjust — and quickly. As both a writer and a professor, I felt cheated and defeated. But by revising my plans, I was able to create a virtual book tour and teach my classes online.

Dealing with my bipolar diagnosis years earlier gave me the courage and confidence to swiftly pivot amid this global crisis. For that diagnosis didn’t just incite me to reshuffle venues or procedures relating to an existing career. It incited me to ditch a lifelong plan and draft a new one, quitting my job as an attorney and starting a new one as a writer.

Learning to Embrace the Uncertainty

My new blueprint worked, proving that the best plans aren’t the simplest or most straightforward ones, but the ones that lead us to new and surprising places — compelling us to adjust our plans again and again. As an inadvertent expert in uncertainty, I’ve learned that this is an endless cycle. But it’s also a powerful one when it comes to coping with the volatility of life.

While effective plans can diverge dramatically, they tend to have two things in common: First, they are not to-do lists, itemizing tasks we wish to complete someday. Rather, they are schedules that include those tasks within them.

Second, successful plans are flexible, allowing for the unexpected. This requires allotting more time to complete any given task than you expect it will take. It also requires being willing
to renovate your plan — and in some cases, to raze it and rebuild from the ground up, like I did more than a decade ago when I retired from legal practice.

For the record, my bipolar mind has forced me to modify far more than my career path. It has also forced me to alter my eating, sleeping, working, playing, moving, and breathing patterns. In return, my bipolar mind has given me back my life. Not the same life, but a better one. Just as improving your eating, sleeping, working, playing, moving, and breathing can improve your overall health, so too can improving your time management. I’m Living proof.

Admittedly, little in my life has actually gone according to plan. Even so, it’s my plans — and more precisely, my ability to evolve and adjust them — that has led me not only to where I am today, but to where I want to be.

Printed as “Flight of Ideas – The Power of a Plan,” Spring 2021

The post Beyond To-Do Lists: How Living With Bipolar Taught Me the Art of Time Management appeared first on bpHope.com.