Chemo brain's impact on your mind can limit your ability to do many things at once. You may experience a slowness in your thoughts, conversations, and actions. This situation requires you to limit the time pressure you feel when performing activities and going through your day. You need to enhance the amount of time you give yourself to perform tasks, and simply steps.
- According to a study by Fasotti et al. (2000), after teaching patients how to reduce the time pressure they experience on tasks throughout the day, participants ended up using more self-management strategies and had better performance on tasks requiring attention and memory.
By giving yourself more time and simplifying activities, you limit the pressure on your already slower mental processing, and enable yourself to better focus, remember, and stay on track.
Simplify In Advance
Before you start each day, imagine the activities ahead of you. Are there multiple tasks that need to be done at the same time or ones you can only accomplish by rushing. If so, you need to determine what to drop or change in your schedule and activities to reduce the pressure on your time and mind.
You can also create an emergency plan about how you will keep your day simple (such as saying "no" to new activities) if something unexpected happens that puts pressure on your time.
By simplifying activities and giving yourself more time, you reduce the amount of information your mind needs to process, and you reduce pressure on your mind.
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