Spoon Planner

Spoon Planner Skill

Spoon theory names what healthy people never have to think about: with a chronic illness, energy is a finite daily allowance, every task costs from it, and overspending isn't "pushing through" — it's borrowing against tomorrow at brutal interest (the crash, the flare, post-exertional malaise). Standard productivity advice assumes infinite spoons and actively harms here. This skill runs the actual math: what you've got, what things cost, what's worth spending on, and how to plan so a good day doesn't buy three bad ones. Pacing, not pushing.

What This Skill Produces

• A spoon budget: your realistic daily allowance (which varies — the skill plans for the range, not a fantasy average) and how it shifts with sleep, flares, and weather
• A task price list: what your recurring activities actually cost in spoons — including the invisible costs (showering, socializing, decisions, masking, digesting) that ambush people
• A pacing plan: spending the allowance across the day/week with rest banked before the cost, not after the crash — and the "boom-bust" trap named
• A crash-day protocol: the pre-planned low-spoon day so a bad morning doesn't require decisions you won't have the spoons to make

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• What a good day, an average day, and a bad day look like in energy (the range matters more than a number)
• The tasks of a normal week and which ones wreck the user disproportionately
• The condition's pattern: is there payback/post-exertional malaise (exertion today → worse in 1–2 days)? flares? predictable bad times?
• The non-negotiables — what must get spoons even on a hard day (meds, the kid, the one thing that keeps them sane)

Framework

1. Count honestly, plan for the low end. The allowance isn't a fixed number and it isn't the good-day number. Budget to a realistic average with a plan for the floor — building your life around your best day is the fastest route to a permanent bad one.
2. Price the invisible costs. People account for the obvious tasks and get ambushed by the hidden ones: showering, cooking, a phone call, socializing (huge), decisions, emotional labor, digestion, masking symptoms in public. The price list surfaces them, because an unaccounted cost is where the budget breaks.
3. Rest before, not after — and name boom-bust. The trap is spending everything on a good day and crashing for three. Pacing means resting proactively, spreading spend, and stopping while you still have some — deliberately leaving spoons in the drawer. For conditions with post-exertional malaise, this isn't optional; overspending today is felt in two days, so today's plan must respect the delay.
4. Protect the non-negotiables first. Budget the must-happens (meds, care duties, the anchor that protects mental health) off the top, then allocate what's left. On a floor day, everything else is negotiable; those are not.
5. Pre-decide the crash day. Decisions cost spoons, and a crash is when you have fewest — so make the bad-day plan now, in advance: the reduced list, the permissions ("canceling is allowed"), the grab-and-go food, the message templates to cancel without a paragraph. A crash shouldn't also be a planning session.

Output Format

## Your spoon budget
Good day: … · Average: … · Bad day (the floor): …
What moves it: [sleep, flare, weather, payback]

## Task price list (spoons)
| Task | Cost | Invisible cost people miss |

## This week's pacing plan
[Spend spread with rest banked BEFORE cost · the "leave spoons in the drawer" rule ·
payback delay accounted for if relevant]

## Crash-day protocol (decided now)
[The reduced list · non-negotiables only · cancel templates · permissions]

Quality Checks

• Plans for the range (including the floor), not an optimistic average
• The price list surfaces invisible costs (showering, socializing, decisions, digestion), not just obvious tasks
• Rest is banked before cost; boom-bust is named; post-exertional delay is respected where relevant
• Non-negotiables are budgeted off the top and protected on floor days
• The crash-day plan is pre-made, so a bad day requires no spoon-costing decisions

Anti-Patterns

• Do not import hustle/productivity framing — "push through," "no excuses," and "just do a bit more" are actively harmful in a spoon economy
• Do not plan to the good day; that's the boom-bust trap the skill exists to break
• Do not moralize rest or treat leaving spoons unspent as failure — banked rest is the strategy, not laziness
• Do not give medical or treatment advice — this manages energy around a condition; the condition's care belongs with a clinician
• Do not ignore payback/PEM for conditions that have it — advice that works for fatigue can worsen ME/CFS; ask about the delay and respect it

Related

[[flare-day-planner]] for the worse days this anticipates; [[diagnosis-limbo-kit]] if the condition is still unnamed; [[bennett-time-audit]] and [[deep-work-blocking]] are the infinite-spoon cousins — useful, but read them through this lens.