What's your high cost day?
Do you have a day of the week that is traditionally your bad day? For me it tends to be Friday. I’m very lucky that I have a lot of freedom in my life and one of the keys to having this freedom is that I have to be good at managing my time. When you don’t have anyone telling you what to do or setting deadlines for you, the danger is that you end up wasting time. Over the years I have learnt how to be productive but Friday is the one day of the week where I have traditionally struggled partly because I often have less scheduled time which inevitably means I have a bit more spare time. I find that I check Facebook too much, watch pointless YouTube clips, have too many snacks on unhealthy food and then I stay up too late because it is the eve of the weekend! I often find myself getting to the end of Friday wondering what I have done with my time and feeling slightly dissatisfied with my day.
I read some research a few weeks ago which identified that most people put on weight over the weekend and while I had never really thought about this, it is kind of obvious why this is the case. I started thinking about my bad day of my week and came up with the concept of your ‘high cost day’.
Your high cost day is the one where the costs from your actions or behaviours are a too high; you may have too many snacks, you may stay up too late which means you are tired for the following days, you skip that walk or run you had planned on doing earlier in the week and emotionally you may be dissatisfied or disappointed in yourself. It’s the day where there is nothing to show for it, it may even be the day where you regret your behaviours on a larger scale.
A lot of damage can be done in a high cost day but at the same time life could be dull if we never let our hair down and moved towards temptation a bit. To go out for dinner and then have a boogie with friends may mean we eat and drink a bit too much but it can also be a valued experience with friends. The way we want to look at a high cost day is to identify and understand what our limits are and stay within them by creating some habits around them.
Going back to my high cost day, I identified this was the day I needed to be aware of a few years ago. I got sick of being dissatisfied with it so I developed some plans around how to get to the end of my day feeling that there had been value in it. Although if I am honest Friday is still the weakest day of my week but I’m now ok with the level I have.
When you think of your week can you identify a ‘high cost day’? If you do what are the costs that come with it? Are these costs acceptable to you or ideally would you like to reduce them? By thinking about these questions you may determine that you are happy with the level of cost on this day and so you can maintain your current behaviours, but if you aren’t happy it’s time to do some work.
If you are in the latter group, the first step is to determine what the healthier level is and then develop ways to stay within this level. It may take a bit of trial and error to get it right but if you work on it you can get to a place that you are happy with.
By identifying the time of the week where you are vulnerable to a day where the costs are high, you can then start to develop healthier behaviours and you will be doing less damage to yourself and perhaps those around you. This is definitely worth thinking about and working on, ultimately it leads to a healthier you.
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