Produce a one-page plan that protects your time, your relationships and your recovery.
Write module 7 onto one page: two boundaries, one rule for criticism, a weekly recovery routine with times, your warning signs, one named person and where you would get professional help. Then share part of it with someone and review it every month so it lasts past the next busy week. The exercise takes about 30 minutes.
Good intentions about boundaries and rest usually fade by the next busy week. You answer a work message at 10pm, skip the gym, and argue back on reflex when someone criticises you in a meeting. A month later you're back where you started and feel that nothing you learned stuck. Putting the module on one page gives you something you can see, share in part and review.
Nadia is the worked example. After her hard December, covered in lesson 7.4, she wrote her plan in late January.
Pick two boundaries to state this month. Lesson 7.2, "Set a boundary and hold it when it is tested", gives the criteria: each boundary describes your own action, is specific enough to follow, and comes with a plan for the first time someone crosses it. For each one, write three lines: the boundary, the exact sentence you will use to state it, and what you will do the first time it is tested.
Nadia's first boundary was one she had already started: no work messages after 9pm, except calls about a live event. She states it with the same sentence she had already used with Patrick, her manager. When it's tested, she replies pleasantly the next morning by 8.30am and says nothing about it.
Her second boundary is new: no extra projects during the December event season unless she and her manager agree what gets dropped. Her sentence asks which current project moves or goes to someone else before anything new is added. If she's pushed, she will use the priorities question from lesson 7.1, "Say no without burning the relationship".
Write one standing rule for criticism: a one-sentence rule, decided in advance, for how you will receive criticism. A rule decided in advance is easier to follow than a good intention, for the same reason the if-then plans in lesson 3.4 work. Some examples: ask for one specific example before responding; say thanks, say you will think about it, and reply within two days; name the trigger to yourself before speaking.
Nadia's rule is to ask for one specific example first and not argue in the same meeting. She chose it because the launch feedback in lesson 7.3 would have gone much better if she had asked the example question on Monday instead of Tuesday.
Build a weekly recovery routine from your lesson 7.4 activity, and attach a time to each part. A routine without times gets pushed aside by whatever is most urgent that week.
Nadia's routine is lights out by 11.30pm on work nights, swims on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, phone-free dinners with her partner on Wednesday and Sunday, and one evening a week, usually Thursday, at her mother's with no work or planning.
Next, list your early warning signs: the things that show your reserves running down before you notice it consciously. They're often physical or behavioural, like the signals in lesson 2.1. Nadia's are under six hours of sleep three nights running, eating every lunch at her desk, snapping at her partner, and checking email in bed.
Add a line saying what you will do when two or more warning signs show up together. Nadia's line is to tell her partner, protect the swim, and see what can be pushed to next week.
Name one specific person you can reach when a stretch gets hard. A vague group such as "friends" doesn't count. Nadia named a former colleague, the one who had told her everyone feels flat in January.
Then write down where you would go for professional help if low mood, anxiety or exhaustion lasted for weeks or began to affect daily life: your doctor, mindline.sg, and your company's employee assistance programme if it has one. Write these details while you're well, so you don't have to look them up when you're not.
Share the boundaries section with one person it affects. Doing this makes the boundary real and tells someone else what to expect. Nadia showed hers to Patrick at their next catch-up. He pushed back on boundary 2, then agreed to talk through workload before the next event season, and that outcome alone made the page worth writing.
Set a monthly reminder to review the plan. Boundaries drift, routines slip, and warning signs change as your work changes. A ten-minute review once a month catches most of that drift.
When it's finished, your one page holds:
two boundaries, each with its sentence and a plan for the first test one rule for criticism a weekly recovery routine with times your warning signs and what you'll do when two or more appear together one named person where to go for professional help
The plan is also the last deliverable of the final project, which asks you to update it after holding the conversation you planned in module 6.
Write the first version now, in the activity below, while the lessons in this module are fresh.
Write your one-page plan. Share the boundaries section with one person it affects, and set a monthly reminder to review the plan.
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