FinnTheInfinncible (Finlay Games)
Time Management for Better Mental Health
In this video, I share my T.I.M.E management acronym, that I originally shared in my TEDx talk. I discuss 4 ways to bring flexibility into your work and study, to help look after your mental health and wellbeing. Flexible working can help people with mental health or other fluctuating conditions, to be able to access and stay in employment. The time management flexibility tool I have created can be helpful for anyone to use their time more effectively, in a way that better supports mental health and wellbeing.
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Hello, I'm Finn, welcome to my channel! I share first-hand experiences and practical advice on topics of mental health, recovery, gender transition and LGBT+ lifestyle, as well as my hobbies and general day to day life as an Open University Student and Freelance Content Creator. New video every Tuesday!
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Outro Music – 10,000 Reasons (For Finn)
By Kind Permission of Sonni Regan
Flexibility in our home, work,
personal and study lives can be really important
to help us look after our mental well-being. Hey
folks, it's Finn. Welcome back folks lovely to see you.
Today's video is a mental health topic and in
today's video I want to talk about the power of flexibility
in looking after our mental well-being. Now our mental health
is as important as our physical health, and in today's video, I want to share a
flexibility tool that I created, that can help us to use our
time in ways that supports good mental well-being.
But before we get stuck in, for anyone who is new, a very very big
welcome, my name is Finn and I share my life
in recovery as a transgender gay man, so here on this channel, you will find
loads of really honest first-hand accounts and practical advice
on gender transition, mental health, and personal development.
So if you've been watching for a while and you haven't yet,
please do subscribe because it really helps my channel
and if you tick the notification bell you'll also be notified whenever i
upload anything new. So flexibility is something
that I am really really passionate about because I
only really recently discovered the power of
flexibility in my own life, and I discovered it purely by accident.
Now I have had poor mental health for a number of years,
I have fluctuating mental health, I have high anxiety periods and low mood
periods and historically that's always got in
the way of all of my successes in life. It got in
the way in school, it got in the way in college, it got in
the way in university, and it's got in the way in all of my
jobs because my mental health wouldn't allow me to stick to a nine-to-five
routine in work or in study, and for a number of
years I thought that I was just doomed to fail
because of my inability to fit to a nine to five.
But all that changed in 2010 when i enrolled
with the Open University and began an Open University degree,
and for the first time in my life, I was succeeding, I was completing my modules
and doing really well, and the reason for that was because of
the flexibility, because I could work from home because I could choose where I worked, because I could choose my hours, and in
that moment I became aware of how
powerful flexibility could be to make me completely change my life, my
career, the way I work, the way I study,
everything. And in the years since then I've been refining the flexibility
method I use that I'm going to share with you today.
Now I spoke in length about this flexibility tool when I did my Ted talk
last year and I shall put a link up here so you can watch that full talk. Now I
did pitch this idea for people like me who have fluctuating
mental health conditions, but actually, this method works with any
fluctuating condition, with any condition you have, whether
that's a mental health condition or a physical health condition.
If you have a condition that means that the normal nine-to-five routine doesn't
work for you then this flexibility tool can be really
helpful for you to find ways to manage your condition
around work. But actually since doing my talk
and chatting with other people, I've had so much positive feedback
that actually this method i'm about to share with you
can be used by anyone for any reason, work life,
home life, personal life, study life, and it's
really flexible for you to use in all sorts of ways.
Because if you're gonna have a flexibility tool it's gonna have to be
flexible! Now when we think about flexibility,
people tend to think about flexi time. So people think about
coming into work late, working different days, but actually
flexibility is a lot more diverse than that.
So with my flexibility method, I've developed the T.I.M.E
acronym and this T.I.M.E acronym looks at four key
areas of flexibility that we can use to manage our mental well-being around
our work and study. These four areas are, the time frame, so
that's choosing the hours we work. The intensity,
so choosing the tasks we're doing the difficulty level of those tasks.
Method, in choosing how we work with others.
And environment, choosing where we work. So to give you an example of how that
works in practice, if for example i've woken up and my
mental health is not great at all I can stop for a minute, look at these
four key areas in my life – time, intensity, method, and environment,
and look if any of those can be brought into my day
to give me some flexibility around how I'm feeling.
For example, when it comes to time frame I might think, you know what
I was gonna work nine till five today but actually, I'm not feeling great, I'm
gonna take a couple of hours off and work to a little bit later in the
evening, swapping things round a bit so I can
take some time now for some self-care and then work later on.
Or looking at the intensity of tasks, I might think,
I'm not in a great space today to write a blog or make a video,
so instead what I'm going to do is some of the lighter tasks, I might do a bit of
admin, a bit of file sorting, tasks that I find
easier or i enjoy just to take that pressure off myself
there. I can also look at the method, perhaps I need to contact people today
and the method would normally be that I'd give them a phone call,
perhaps my mental health is meaning that I'm just not up for talking on the phone,
so perhaps I can choose a different method, I can choose to email somebody
instead. And I can look at my environment, often
if i'm not feeling great a simple act such as taking my laptop to
the lounge, putting my feet up, and having my laptop
on my lap and working like that can make me feel better, or sometimes i
can get halfway through a day and I'm really struggling,
so I just change my environment. I might go and work in the garden,
I might go and work in a cafe, and this then helps me
to just change how i'm feeling by changing the environment.
So it's possible to see how flexibility is a
large variety of things. Flexibility is about
what we're doing, who we're doing it with, where we're doing, it the intensity of
where we're doing it, and any of these can be changed, and in
most situations they can be changed. Now I know I work from home,
and I've engineered that on purpose because for me
that is the only way to ensure full flexibility
for my fluctuating mental health, but these can be put into place
in most jobs now, and I think having gone through
this COVID pandemic, and seeing that businesses actually can implement a
lot more flexibility, I would argue that if you're not feeling
great you push this with your employer, and you
talk to them, because at the end of the day
flexibility is accessibility in the same way that a
ramp is for a wheelchair user. So asking your employer perhaps you can
just work from home, you can have more
flexible hours so you can come in a bit later or go home a bit earlier and make
your hours up, perhaps you can have more options around
choosing your tasks, perhaps you can choose different
environments at work, taking your work to a quieter area
if possible. Did that make sense? One of the common questions I get when I tell
people about the flexibility method I use, this is how I run my life, this –
without this method, I wouldn't be where I am now.
I use these four things every single day depending on how my mental health is
every single day, but people say to me, well, what about deadlines Finn?
You can't just – if you've got a talk for example,
I couldn't just say, actually can I do the talk from home?
But actually, that is possible from home thanks to Zoom.
But you'd be right, there are situations where an appointment
is in place that I can't change, but that's the beauty of this flexibility
method because ordinarily if I was having a very poor mental
health day, if my mood was very low or my anxiety was high,
if I push through that anxiety, if I push through that low mood and force myself
to do something, I can end up being very poorly i can end
up relapsing in all sorts of areas. However, if I know that I can push
through that high anxiety event and then I can put flexibility in the
days following, it's then safer to push through if that
makes sense. So i might go to an appointment that's
hugely anxiety provoking, knowing that the day leading up to that
appointment I can put flexibility in place to be a
bit more gentle on myself before the event,
and I can put flexibility in place after the event,
so it still allows us, when we use the flexibility method, to stick to
set routines when we need to, but what it does is around these strict routines,
gives us some breathing space before and afterwards where we can implement
flexibility to keep our mental health safe. This is something I've been doing
over the last few years as I've begun working from home, and it's something
that once I did the Ted talk and I actually
created the T.I.M.E acronym, that i'm really thinking consciously about every single
day now, and I've actually added another letter
in, it so I've made it T.I.M.E.S and the S stands for self-care, because
that should be part of our everyday life regardless. And for
me working from home through the COVID
pandemic, with my partner shielding at home, there
was lots of times where I've been very aware
that my usual method of self-care wasn't available
so I added the S to remind myself that as well as looking at my time frame,
my intensity, my method, and my environment, I also needed
to look at what self-care I was putting in every single day,
even if it's a brief five minutes on the sofa
with a couple of paragraphs of a book and a cup of tea, some method of
self-care helps then to manage our mental health
and manage the rest of our day. I really hope that this is helpful, not
just for people with mental health or physical health that fluctuates, but for
everyone to think differently about how we work, the little things we
might be able to change in our work environments
to help give us some breathing space and look after our mental health,
to use in our home life around tasks we need to do at home, and around
our study life, because we all need to look after our
mental health, it's a vital part, especially right now
with what's going on. So if you do manage to implement this in
your life I would love to hear so please do leave me a message in the
section below and leave me any comments or questions there
as well. Thank you so much for watching, if you'd like to see more of my videos
about mental health, I shall link you to a playlist here.
Take care of yourselves, see you next week. Bye Bye.
#Time #Management #Mental #Health
source
Looking to get more flexibility in your life for a better work/study/life balance? Check out my T.I.M.E flexibility tool, which identifies four key ways to use flexibility for any situation and in any environment!
I love the way you talk about things so simply, calmly and honestly
Thank you so much for this tool, Finn. As someone who has to live with both physical & MH challenges this is a really valuable addition to my metaphorical toolbelt. I especially love the idea of implementing TIMES on days either side of high intensity events (whether physically intense or mentally intense). I think this is going to help me a lot xxx
Thanks for this! I really liked your Ted talk as well!
Do you ever have a hard time separating your work and your "off time" when you work from home? I find it a bit difficult to do, I always get distracted by chores that need to be done, or other things. It's hard to feel like you're really done for the day you know? How do deal with that?
I absolutely adore you as always
Great video my friend 🐑 🥰
Ah this is really interesting finn, i have a personality disorder and really like structure and routine (being flexible is doable but quite stressful for me). Having a set routine helps my mental health but i can completely understand why it wouldnt for others. Society is so rigid sometimes, i'm a bit of a nightowl and its so inconvenient how so many things favour early risers. I get the same amount of stuff done just with a later start and a later finish. You are so righ though about covid, its shown how flexible the working environment can be if employers give it a chance. Great video as ever <3
My dear Finn, this is very interesting and useful!
I am a person that live many situations with anxiety because I am insecure and timid since ever.
When I have to deal an aapointment for work or a medical visit or also know new persons, my anxiety grows up.
I try to tell to myself some encouragement, or ‘then it will be ended’, or try to think somethig compensatory for later.
Sometimes, if I can, I try to postpone the appointment for having some time to convince myself and reduce the anxiety.
So, you can understand that your video is right for me!!!!
You speak clearly and I am sure that you could be a very good teacher of university but with the big heart of who lived first the difficulties and want to help everybody else!
😘
You really are helping me in my journey to getting my life back… thank you 😊
nice t-shirt!
I’d love to see how this model could be incorporated for blue collar workers
Thanks for this Finn. This is great to share to make others aware of how to help us maintain the balance. Hope you are both doing ok? Xx
I'm so happy to see your smiling face again! This came at such a great time… (possible trigger ahead)
Here it is.👀
My boyfriend's dad passed away on the 3rd this month, we are struggling to use our time wisely while still trying to take care of ourselves and balance the needs and wants of others along with our schedules 😵🤪😳😱
I hope you don't mind, I want to share this with my therapist? I also took notes for my own personal use. Thank you so much my dear Finn! 👏😍💖✌
I also have perused your store and have a few things picked out I want to purchase, will have to check my finances first, but really want a tee and a tank top, and I think I can swing it, I notice the colors I want are getting sold out though, will there be a restocking/more product available again at some point or is it "This is what's available, when it's gone it's gone."? That will help me figure out what colors I want to pick and the sizes as well 🥰😁👍😎
HUGS
Love this, some really great points. Flexible working has massively helped me look after my mental health too
Really valuable information, Finn! Thank you for all you do!!!! ♥️♥️♥️
It’s like you went right into my brain and grabbed the exact thing I needed to hear as I’m literally working on my schedule and practicing flexibility! (Still watching but had to comment)
Great video (and T-shirt), bro. 😀