Waiting is more sustainable in general… but specifically when it comes to mental health, putting a pause on action (big actions specifically) can be a big benefit to your mental health.
Right now, our list of big projects – ones we hope to tackle soon – include a decent amount of remodeling of the house, building a berm for target practice, and getting started with raising chickens… and those are just the *big* expenses.
That doesn’t include things like homeschooling our oldest child next year – he’ll be five for the 2026 – 2027 school year!!! Keeping our rather large garden producing, and the fact that our third baby will be born early May of this year at the very latest.
That’s a lot!
Why is Waiting More Sustainable?
For some people (like me) the tendency is to ACT and do it NOW!
But that isn’t helpful or sustainable for mental health especially… it can add unnecessary stress about finances, timelines, and overall fatigue from trying to accomplish too much.
The last thing someone with mental health issues needs to worry about is adding more to what is probably already a very full plate… so waiting is more sustainable because you can prioritize projects, and pick ONE thing at a time to tackle.
How to Wait Productively
Waiting productively is a key part of waiting to act being more sustainable for mental health… because if you aren’t “waiting productively”, odds are the waiting isn’t benefiting you much at all… and might even be stressing you out.
For starters, every good waiting period starts with planning.
You need a plan for *which* project to tackle first. When we decided on the three projects mentioned earlier – the remodel, the berm, and the chickens, we calculated the cost of *each* project (minus the remodel, we will get an estimate for that closer to time) and put them in order of priority – so we know in which order the three projects will be taken on.
After deciding which project was first in the list of priorities, we decided *how* to fund the project… and the waiting began.
But we aren’t just waiting pointlessly…
We are waiting to save up funds to pay for the project. Every pay period, money gets put aside (our bank account has “buckets” but you could also designate a savings account) to go towards that project. When we hit the goal for the account, the project will proceed.
How Does that Help Mental Health?
We talked about waiting *being* more sustainable, but not so much the WHY behind it… and we also talked about how to wait productively. So it’s time to think about WHY waiting to act is more sustainable for mental health.
When someone is overwhelmed, or takes on too much all at once – looking at you, new habits and health goals – they tend to quickly fall off the wagon so to speak, and lose momentum. Often those habits or goals or even projects get shoved to a back burner and forgotten or left until the following New Year for the person to tackle again… and often run into the same issue of overwhelm and/or burnout.
A Project with the Best Intentions
For a road trip we planned a probably about two years ago, we started making our own busy books for my two boys. The intention was good… but we went out and bought supplies, and worked on those books every spare moment.
The end result?
A few pages were finished, but nowhere near a complete book (much less two!) and the unfinished books (and supplies) sit in a closet ignored… because every time we *consider* resuming the project, it’s so daunting and overwhelming remembering how much work we put into it (while we still have so far to go) that we feel defeated before we even start.
Hopefully, we will resume the project at some point in the near future, but for now, it sits collecting dust and useless – a waste of money unless finished.
That is NOT how we want our projects to go… and so we at least try to take the more sustainable route of planning for our projects instead of jumping into them head first.
This is the article I wrote about preparing for our first toddler road trip… with a toddler AND a baby! Although I didn’t write about the busy book failure, it is still good information if you are preparing for a road trip with littles for the first time!
Just Tell Me the Bottom Line!
Waiting to act is more sustainable for our mental health because it gives us time to plan, prepare, and save any needed funds… while not jumping into something we cannot (yet) afford or getting so overwhelmed that we burn out and give up.
Christian, wife, “hybrid” mama, I run the site All Behind A Smile to help others like me.
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