14/08/2024 by Therapy For You

What to expect from CBT: Activity Scheduling

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – CBT for short – is one of the most common and effective forms of talking therapies, recommended by NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) to treat a variety of different disorders.

Based on the relationship between our thoughts, emotions and behaviours, CBT teaches techniques designed to replace negative thoughts and behaviours with more balanced, positive ones.

By breaking the vicious cycles that affect your daily life, you can start the journey to feeling better.

However, we understand that starting CBT can feel like a step into the unknown. That’s why in our “What to expect from CBT” series, we will shed light on various coping strategies and practical exercises you can try at home to unlock the benefits of CBT, before potentially moving on to more structured therapy sessions.

In this edition, we’re going to explore Activity Scheduling; a powerful therapeutic technique to help you break free from unhelpful habits you’ve fallen into and engage in more pleasurable, rewarding activities.

What is Activity Scheduling?

Activity Scheduling is an exercise where you deliberately schedule activities throughout the week that give you a sense of pleasure or achievement, establishing a routine that helps you reconnect with positive experiences you may be missing out on.

This is important, because our behaviours directly influence our thoughts and our mood, and can easily spill over into our daily routines for better or worse.

For example, if you are one of the many people in the UK living with depression, anxiety, stress or similar challenges, you may find that you lack the motivation to engage in activities you used to enjoy.

Think about your own situation. Maybe instead of going out with friends a couple of times a week, you now stay at home alone more often? Or rather than waking up early for your morning walk, you lay in bed longer?

These are just examples. However, it’s less about the specific activities themselves, but what the change represents; swapping out activities that previously gave you a sense of pleasure or achievement for ones that offer neither.

That’s where Activity Scheduling comes in. By shining a light on your existing routine, it can bring you back to pursuits, hobbies and interests that you once enjoyed or have always wanted to try.

Starting with small, manageable steps, this is a proven exercise to change your behaviours and benefit your long-term mental wellbeing.

What is Behavioural Activation?

Activity Scheduling is a practical example of a wider CBT skill called Behavioural Activation.

Behavioural Activation is the study into how our behaviours and actions influence our thoughts and feelings.

Used separately or in conjunction with other CBT skills, such as Cognitive Restructuring, Behavioural Activation techniques have proven highly effective in treating depression and anxiety disorders.

Activity Scheduling is one of the key exercises in the Behavioural Activation toolkit – increasing engagement in activities that improve the way you think and feel.

When might Activity Scheduling be beneficial? An example

Sarah is a graphic designer who has been struggling with low mood for several months. Previously, she was a keen photographer, would paint on the weekends, did yoga in the mornings, and would go out with her friends a couple of times a week.

But recently, Sarah has found it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. She often feels exhausted after work, so spends more time at home watching TV or scrolling social media, instead of doing the hobbies and activities that once brought her joy.

Other necessary tasks, such as washing up after a meal or emptying the bins, have also become harder and less frequent.

As a result, Sarah spends more time engaging in negative activities, such as ruminating how difficult her life has become or the areas where she is struggling.

This has created a vicious cycle: as Sarah neglects both necessary and pleasurable activities, her feelings of hopelessness and pessimism grow, which in turn affect her motivation to start them again.

Does Sarah’s situation feel in any way familiar to yours? If so, Activity Scheduling can help you gradually return to the activities you once loved, putting you on the path to feeling better in the process.

Your step-by-step guide to Activity Scheduling

1. Record what you’re currently doing

To get started with Activity Scheduling, it’s first important to understand what activities you currently do each day and week, when you do them, and how these make you feel.

So, for the first week of this exercise, simply observe and write one or two activities you do in the morning, afternoon and evening. Note:

What the activity or action is
Where you do this activity
When you do this activity

Then alongside each activity, write how the activity makes you feel, be it positive or negative. This helps you identify any current activities you do that are causing your mood to decline, and also ones worth keeping in your new activity schedule.

2. Identify, categorise and rate activities

Next, identify what activities you want to include in your revised activity schedule.

This could include pursuits that previously brought you joy that you haven’t found time for recently, or hobbies and interests that you’ve wanted to try but have never gotten around to. This is your list, so make the choices personal to you.

Once you have a full list of activities, separate these out into 3 categories:

Routine: Activities that fit into your everyday life (e.g. cooking, walking the dog, having a shower, etc.)
Pleasure: Activities designed to bring you joy and accomplishment (e.g. hanging out with friends, reading a book, watching a movie, etc.)
Necessary: Activities you must do (e.g. paying bills, washing the dishes, tidying your room, etc.)

Your activity schedule should have a healthy mix of activities across all 3 categories.

Finally, rate your activities on a scale of 1-3: 1 being the easiest and 3 being the most difficult. For example, watching TV or paying your electricity bill may be a 1, while going for a jog or cleaning your bedroom could be a 3. Again, it’s based on your perspective.

3. Break activities down into manageable chunks

If you find that you’ve rated many of your activities as a 3 for difficulty, see if there’s a way you can break these down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

This can make the hardest parts of your activity schedule feel easier to fulfil, rather than a significant hurdle that you must overcome.

For example, say you’ve rated cleaning your bedroom as a 3. Instead of doing this in one go, you could potentially break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks, such as a 1 for making your bed and a 2 for putting away your clothes and other items.

Taking this approach can help you keep up motivation for the tougher activities in your schedule, allowing you to reap the benefits and support relapse prevention.

4. Write out your activity schedule

Great work so far – you’ve identified, categorised and rated your list of activities, so it’s time to plot them out in your calendar.

Now, this doesn’t mean establishing a strict regimen for every hour of the day – start small with easy-to-accomplish tasks and expand out from there.

On a piece of paper, create a grid running from Monday to Sunday, splitting each day out into Morning, Afternoon and Evening. Begin by putting one activity in one timeslot on 3 or 4 of the days, clearly noting:

What the activity is
Where you will do it
When you will do it
Who you will do it with

Let’s go back to our example of Sarah. For her first week of Activity Scheduling, she’s written the following in her plan:

Monday evening: Cook my favourite meal; Kitchen; 7pm; My partner
Wednesday morning: Make my bed; Bedroom; 7:30am; Myself
Friday evening: Go to the cinema; Cinema; 8pm; My friends
Saturday afternoon: Draw a sketch; Living room; 2pm; Myself

Sarah is starting with simpler activities and a healthy mix of Routine, Pleasure and Necessary tasks. Over time, she’ll gain the confidence and motivation to fill up more slots and introduce more complex activities to her routine, which in turn will improve her mood.

5. Reflect on how activities make you feel

On your Activity Schedule, next to every activity you’ve listed, leave a space to “score” your mood once you’ve completed it.

This could be as simple as rating your mood on a 1-10 scale, or putting a percentage score for the different emotions you felt during the activity.

Writing your feelings down allows you to reflect on how positive these experiences make you feel, so that you can build upon these in future.

6. Adjust your activity schedule over time

As time progresses, you might aim to add a couple more feel-good activities each week to your schedule, in addition to specifying times for your more necessary and routine tasks.

Your activity schedule should be an ever-evolving page – at the end of each week, aim to reflect on what you did and did not do, and make changes accordingly.

Furthermore, if you find that a pleasurable activity did not give you the joy or sense of accomplishment you anticipated, or this declines over time, you may want to consider switching this for a new activity you’ve wanted to try for a while.

7. Stick to the plan

Finally, and arguably most importantly, try to stick to your activity schedule as closely as possible.

You may miss an activity here or there – life has a habit of getting in the way at times. But the more activities you are able to fulfil throughout the week, the more likely this will make a meaningful difference to your behaviours, thoughts and feelings.

How soon can I expect to see results from CBT Activity Scheduling?

The timeline for seeing results from Activity Scheduling varies from person to person. You may notice improvements in mood and motivation in just a few weeks, or it may take months to feel any meaningful change.

Consistency and persistence are key – the benefits often build over time with regular engagement in your scheduled activities.

3 mood-improving benefits of Activity Scheduling

1. Improve mood and stress management

Purposefully scheduling enjoyable and engaging activities into your routine can help you break cycles of inactivity and depression.

Replacing unhelpful patterns with ones that release feel-good chemicals over time will lead you to feel more accomplished, self-confident and satisfied.

Plus, assigning set times to tackle routine and necessary tasks that you’ve been putting off for a while can address the anxiety these delays can cause.

This results in more sustainable stress management, taking care of essential tasks before they become a major headache.

2. Reduce avoidance behaviours

During extended periods of depression or anxiety, it is common to want to avoid activities and isolate yourself from others.

Activity Scheduling encourages gradual exposure to situations that you once avoided, so you can approach these with a more positive, eager mindset.

3. Enhance long-term motivation

When you check something off your to-do list, no matter how small, it brings a sense of accomplishment for completing your goal.

Consistently completing tasks on your activity schedule can unlock the same feeling, which over time breeds motivation to add more activities to your routine.

Activity scheduling and CBT: How will this work?

We hope this introduction to Activity Scheduling has given you a great starting point to consider your own routine and whether it could benefit from a more structured approach.

When followed closely, Activity Scheduling can be a brilliant way to break out of unhelpful patterns and behaviours that allow negative thoughts and feelings to thrive, replacing these with activities that make you feel happy, fulfilled and accomplished.

But you don’t have to approach this alone. At Therapy For You, our highly-trained CBT therapists can support you every step of the way as you plan, create and execute your activity schedule:

We can help you identify and break down activities for your new routine
We can supply worksheets and homework to help you stick to your schedule
We can help you reflect on your thoughts and feelings about your schedule
We can advise on ways to maintain your motivation from day to day, week to week

As your dedicated NHS Talking Therapies service for North East and South East Essex, we are here to help you unlock the benefits of Activity Scheduling and further CBT-based exercises, so you can start the path to feeling better. This all starts with our helpful range of treatment options:

For more information on our CBT treatment options or to discuss your circumstances, get in touch with our team today or chat to our Limbic Referral Assistant.

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