Pacing

Pacing breaks down activities into more manageable components, balancing periods of activity and rest, so you are better able to manage your symptoms more effectively. Over time, you may find you are able to increase your overall daily activity level.

Living with persistent pain and/or fatigue can lead to changes in:
• Lifestyle: reduced socialisation, reduced communication, giving up work, doing less around the home
• Behaviour: you may find you try and get everything completed on “good days” – then need a prolonged rest period to recover (boom and bust), or you avoid certain activities all together; these can lead to a general decline in endurance and stamina (deconditioning).

• To help you have more control over your symptoms
• To avoid periods of over/underactivity
• To help you participate in activities without a significant increase in symptoms
• To avoid the cycle of deconditioning

If you are reading this, it is likely you are experiencing pain or fatigue during most day to day tasks. It may useful for you to consider a “traffic light” strategy to pace your day.

Baselines: First establish a baseline for your activities.

• Red activities are the most demanding of you (either physically or emotionally), and can increase your symptoms

• Amber activities are moderately demanding, where your symptoms remain at their usual or baseline level

• Green tasks reduce your symptoms

By varying regularly between red, amber and green tasks, you will have more energy to spend on the tasks your need to do and want to do during your day. A traffic light pacing template is shown overleaf.

Without Pacing: large areas of red (boom) followed by large areas of green (bust)

With Pacing: variation of red, amber, and green tasks throughout the day

Questions to ask yourself when introducing pacing:
• Can I break this task down?
• Do I have everything I need for this activity (e.g. clothes for work, food for lunch etc)
• Do I need to do this today?
• Do I have to do it all in one go?
• Can someone help with part/all of the task?

• Once you have established a manageable and consistent routine, look to gradually increase activity levels or add in a new activity.

• Use a stepped approach – try to increase activity by a small amount - let that stabilise before adding in additional increases in activity.

Remember: just like any new skill, pacing takes time and practice to master. It may always be something to be mindful of, but with time it might start to feel more natural and become part of your daily routine.