This worksheet is about scheduling pleasant activities into your day. When we feel low, it can be hard to get motivated, and we often withdraw from people and activities we used to enjoy. Planning one or more pleasant activities each day is a way to bring more positive experience, social contact, and activity back in, which may help with energy and mood.
How to practice
- In your mind or on paper, brainstorm one or more pleasant, fun, or pleasurable activities. It is easiest to do this when your mood is good or neutral.
- Activities can be large or very small: dinner with friends, a hot bath, listening to music, a walk in the park.
- Each day, choose one or more activities and set aside a specific time for them in your planner or schedule.
- While you do the activity, pay attention to how it feels and to the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that are present.
- After a few days or weeks, check in with yourself. If you wish to schedule more than one a day, go for it.
Behavioral activation
This worksheet draws on behavioral activation, a therapeutic approach used in treating depression. It starts from the idea that low mood is sustained when we withdraw from rewarding activities, and that scheduling them can help bring some positive experience back. Psychologist Peter Lewinsohn and colleagues developed it into a stand-alone treatment in the early 1970s. The linked article goes deeper if you want to know more.
Don’t be disheartened if it is hard to get going or to think of activities. Low mood makes these things difficult, and it is not your fault. Be gentle with yourself. If low mood lasts or makes daily life hard, a doctor or therapist can help; this worksheet complements that care and does not replace it.
