One of the easiest ways to manage mental health and well-being is to build some self-care practices and routines into your day. Most of us are well aware of at least some of these practices, like regular exercise, meditation, sleep, indulging in hobbies, spending time with friends and family, travelling and taking time off.

Regular self-care ensures that we are giving our minds and bodies ways to process emotions and information. Self-care also allows us to recover from physical, emotional and mental fatigue. It allows us to build resilience and to stay focussed.

The challenge with most of our lives today is that we are always pressed for time. And all of the self-care practices are good at times when our schedules are easy to manage and we have time on our hands.

But for most of us, when the workload increases, our focus on self-care goes down.
Some of us may also be balancing a lot of personal and professional priorities, and that inevitably means that we don’t have enough time for ourselves. At moments like this, it may also feel that taking time for self-care is selfish because you could be doing so many more important things at that time.

And this is not surprising because most self-care practices require time and energy. And when we are busy and don’t have time or energy the easiest thing to let go of are these self-care practices that help us take care of ourselves.

The unfortunate paradox is that our busy and stressful times are when we need self-care the most. This is because it is during our busy and stressful times that we are using our mental, emotional and physical resources the most. We are in a constant depleted state. So, we need to have ways to be able to balance and build our energies.

Think of your energy reserve as a bank account. You need to deposit money to be able to withdraw it.

Sometimes, we convince ourselves that we don’t need self-care because we are “strong” and resilient. And perhaps many of us can keep going for some time. But eventually, the wear will show up in the form of fatigue, a drop in performance quality or burnout.
Self-care is your prevention from all of the above. And prioritizing yourself is not selfish.
But how do you find time for self-care when you are super BUSY?

An easy way is to have a list of self-care practices that take < 5 minutes and minimal effort.
I like to think of these as the pitstops that Formula One cars make for refuelling and tyre changes. The stops are quick, but they ensure that the car can keep going.

Here are some of my go-to ideas for quick and easy self-care, but just because they take less time and effort does not mean they aren’t effective.