How to keep an activity / pain log

People with chronic pain may not realise that how they schedule their every day activities, including how they fit sleep and rest into the schedule, can influence the level of pain they are feeling in each day. I always get my occupational therapy clients to keep an activity / pain log to show me how they are currently planning their day (when in uncomfortable situations, planning can really go a long way - regardless if the discomfort is referring to health or even other parts of life like parenting and finances.)

Example of an activity log.

Time	Activity	Pain Level (0-10)
7.00am	Wake Up, climb out of bed to go into toilet, morning toilet activities	0
7.30am	Prepare breakfast for family, wake the kids	0
8.00am	Eat breakfast together with kids	0
8.30am	Drive kids to school	1 (pain slowly creeps up while driving)
9.00am	Shopping for groceries at market.	5 (still tolerable)
10.00am	Completed shopping, start the drive home	7
10.30am	Reached home completely exhausted, quickly sorts out groceries and urgently needs to rest	9

And the details of the rest of the day until my occupational therapy client goes to bed. This log provides the occupational therapist with lots of very valuable data, which the client and the therapist can use to come up with strategies to manage pain better.