it was one of those period days where I genuinely couldn't sit upright for more than twenty minutes without my body filing a formal complaint. I had my hot water bottle, my blanket, my very dramatic playlist, and absolutely zero intention of doing anything useful. and then for some reason I still can't fully explain I picked up my phone and started watching a documentary about a woman who built a business from her kitchen table.
I don't know what it was about that specific afternoon, lying there half-dead with cramps, but something in that documentary just. clicked. I started writing things down. messy, half-formed thoughts about what I actually wanted to do with my own life. by the end of the day I had three pages of notes and the rough idea for this blog.
that's genuinely how Simple Printables started. during my period. horizontal. with a hot water bottle on my stomach. so honestly? period days might be underrated for certain kinds of thinking and I want to talk about that.
most people don't tell you this your period is actually a good time for planning, editing, learning, and organizing. not for starting huge new projects. use it right.
not a random movie. specifically a biopic a real person's story. Michelle Obama's documentary. the Malala film. anything about a woman who built something from nothing while the world was not particularly cooperating. there's something about watching a real person's actual life during a period day that hits completely differently than fiction.
I think it's because your emotional sensitivity is genuinely higher during this time? like things land harder, you feel more, you're more receptive. and a biopic during that state doesn't just entertain you it kind of rearranges something in your head about what's actually possible. I've come out of period-day biopics more motivated than I've ever come out of a motivational video and I cannot explain why but I've stopped questioning it.
pick someone whose life genuinely interests you. not someone you feel like you should be inspired by. someone whose story you actually want to sit with. give it your full attention. no second screen. let it do the thing it's trying to do.
this one changed my life a little bit. genuinely. I don't say that casually.
during a particularly awful day-two situation I decided, mostly out of boredom, to deeply research one thing I'd been vaguely curious about for months what it actually takes to start a blog. not "blogs make money" YouTube videos. actual research. how do people find their niche. what platforms work. what kind of content gets traffic. I went deep for about two hours and by the end I had a clearer picture of the real path than I'd gotten from six months of passively scrolling past content about it.
your brain during your period is actually really good at absorbing and processing information, especially when you're not trying to also produce something at the same time. pick one thing you've been curious about starting an Instagram page, a YouTube channel, selling something online, literally anything and research it properly. not to do it today. just to actually understand it. that understanding is an asset that costs you nothing and pays you later. and if you're looking for things that are worth your time when you're feeling low-energy, I talked about this over at 20 simple ways to reset your life planning and learning during your rest days is one of the most underrated forms of productivity.
not a journal entry about your feelings. not goals. specifically about who you actually are. what you're like. what you care about. what you've been through. what makes you different from other people. what you know that most people around you don't.
this sounds easy and it is surprisingly hard. most of us know ourselves mostly through comparison I'm like this person, I'm not like that one and when you have to describe yourself on your own terms, as your own complete thing, the words don't come as easily as they should. I tried this once and got stuck at sentence four and sat there genuinely confused about what I actually thought about myself outside of what other people had told me.
just write. messy, wrong, whatever. 200 words. it doesn't need to be deep or literary or make sense. it just needs to be yours. sometimes the person you describe on paper is different from the person you think you are in your head and that gap is actually really useful information. period days are good for honest things. this is an honest thing.
this is the fun one. find a poster or a graphic or a design you genuinely love on Pinterest, on your saved folder, anywhere and try to recreate it. by hand if you like drawing. on Canva if you want digital. using whatever you have.
you are not trying to make it identical. you're trying to understand what makes it work why that font, why that layout, why those colours together. recreating something teaches you things about design that you can't learn just by looking at it. it forces you to make all the little decisions the original creator made, and in making them you suddenly understand why they made the choices they did.
I did this once with a Pinterest quote graphic I'd saved ages ago and realized halfway through that what I actually liked about it was the specific combination of white space and one bold word. I started making my own graphics after that because I finally understood what I was going for. creative productivity from your bed. no sitting upright required.
not habits to start. habits to quit. this is more useful and almost nobody makes this list.
we spend so much time adding things new routines, new goals, new systems when sometimes the better move is figuring out what to remove. the habit of checking your phone first thing in the morning. the pattern of saying yes to things you don't want to do. the way you talk to yourself when something goes wrong. the scrolling that happens not because you enjoy it but because you don't know what else to do with your hands.
write them all down. no judgment, no action plan yet. just the list. sometimes seeing them all on paper at once is enough to make you go "oh. okay. that's actually a lot of things working against me." and that awareness is the first part. the quitting can come later when you have more energy. right now just the honest list. if you want to go deeper on this, I wrote about some of the bigger things worth letting go of over at 12 things to stop carrying and be happy.
I know this sounds like the opposite of productive and I'm asking you to trust me on this one.
one hour. phone in another room. no laptop, no TV, no background noise. just you and the room and whatever comes up in your own head when you stop filling every second with input. lie there. sit there. look out a window. let your thoughts wander without chasing them anywhere.
what happens in that hour is different every time. sometimes nothing obvious and you feel vaguely restless. sometimes something surfaces that you've been too busy to notice an idea, a feeling, a clarity about something you've been confused about. your brain is constantly processing things in the background and it only gets to show you the results when you stop drowning it in new inputs. one hour of nothing is not wasted. it's actually some of the most productive time you can give yourself and period days are perfect for it because the low energy makes lying there feel natural instead of guilty.
here's the thing I figured out that genuinely changed how my weeks go. period days especially the really bad ones where I can't actually do much are some of the clearest thinking I do all month. I don't know if it's the hormones or the forced stillness or the fact that I'm not trying to do seventeen things at once, but something about lying there with nothing to execute makes me weirdly good at planning.
I started using day one and two to plan the coming week in real detail. not a vague list. actual specifics what I want to do each day, what the priorities are, what can wait, what I've been avoiding that needs to go first. by the time I feel better and have energy again, I'm not starting from scratch figuring out what to do. I already know. I just start doing it.
the planning during your period, executing during your energy this combination is honestly one of the most useful things I've figured out about my own productivity cycle. your rest time is not separate from your productive time. it's part of it. and if you want to understand your own patterns better, period week is actually a great place to start because the contrast between how you feel now and how you'll feel in a few days makes your own rhythms really obvious.
period week isn't lost time. it's just different time. the things it's bad for high output, starting new projects, pushing through resistance are not the only kinds of productive things. the things it's actually good for thinking, planning, absorbing, learning, being honest with yourself those matter too.
use what you have. your brain still works. it's just working differently for a few days. meet it where it is instead of dragging it somewhere it can't go right now. the week after will be better because of it.
rest is productive. horizontal is fine. and this blog literally started from a period day so I'm speaking from experience here. 🌸
💬 tell me in the comments what do you actually end up doing during your period? I'm genuinely curious what works for other people.
read this when you're feeling more like yourself
I don't know what it was about that specific afternoon, lying there half-dead with cramps, but something in that documentary just. clicked. I started writing things down. messy, half-formed thoughts about what I actually wanted to do with my own life. by the end of the day I had three pages of notes and the rough idea for this blog.
that's genuinely how Simple Printables started. during my period. horizontal. with a hot water bottle on my stomach. so honestly? period days might be underrated for certain kinds of thinking and I want to talk about that.
✨ save this for the next time your period shows up and your plans do not.
Watch a Biopic
I think it's because your emotional sensitivity is genuinely higher during this time? like things land harder, you feel more, you're more receptive. and a biopic during that state doesn't just entertain you it kind of rearranges something in your head about what's actually possible. I've come out of period-day biopics more motivated than I've ever come out of a motivational video and I cannot explain why but I've stopped questioning it.
pick someone whose life genuinely interests you. not someone you feel like you should be inspired by. someone whose story you actually want to sit with. give it your full attention. no second screen. let it do the thing it's trying to do.
Research One Income Idea
during a particularly awful day-two situation I decided, mostly out of boredom, to deeply research one thing I'd been vaguely curious about for months what it actually takes to start a blog. not "blogs make money" YouTube videos. actual research. how do people find their niche. what platforms work. what kind of content gets traffic. I went deep for about two hours and by the end I had a clearer picture of the real path than I'd gotten from six months of passively scrolling past content about it.
your brain during your period is actually really good at absorbing and processing information, especially when you're not trying to also produce something at the same time. pick one thing you've been curious about starting an Instagram page, a YouTube channel, selling something online, literally anything and research it properly. not to do it today. just to actually understand it. that understanding is an asset that costs you nothing and pays you later. and if you're looking for things that are worth your time when you're feeling low-energy, I talked about this over at 20 simple ways to reset your life planning and learning during your rest days is one of the most underrated forms of productivity.
Write 200 Words About Yourself
this sounds easy and it is surprisingly hard. most of us know ourselves mostly through comparison I'm like this person, I'm not like that one and when you have to describe yourself on your own terms, as your own complete thing, the words don't come as easily as they should. I tried this once and got stuck at sentence four and sat there genuinely confused about what I actually thought about myself outside of what other people had told me.
just write. messy, wrong, whatever. 200 words. it doesn't need to be deep or literary or make sense. it just needs to be yours. sometimes the person you describe on paper is different from the person you think you are in your head and that gap is actually really useful information. period days are good for honest things. this is an honest thing.
Recreate a Poster You Love
you are not trying to make it identical. you're trying to understand what makes it work why that font, why that layout, why those colours together. recreating something teaches you things about design that you can't learn just by looking at it. it forces you to make all the little decisions the original creator made, and in making them you suddenly understand why they made the choices they did.
I did this once with a Pinterest quote graphic I'd saved ages ago and realized halfway through that what I actually liked about it was the specific combination of white space and one bold word. I started making my own graphics after that because I finally understood what I was going for. creative productivity from your bed. no sitting upright required.
Write the Habits to Quit
we spend so much time adding things new routines, new goals, new systems when sometimes the better move is figuring out what to remove. the habit of checking your phone first thing in the morning. the pattern of saying yes to things you don't want to do. the way you talk to yourself when something goes wrong. the scrolling that happens not because you enjoy it but because you don't know what else to do with your hands.
write them all down. no judgment, no action plan yet. just the list. sometimes seeing them all on paper at once is enough to make you go "oh. okay. that's actually a lot of things working against me." and that awareness is the first part. the quitting can come later when you have more energy. right now just the honest list. if you want to go deeper on this, I wrote about some of the bigger things worth letting go of over at 12 things to stop carrying and be happy.
One Hour Fully Offline
one hour. phone in another room. no laptop, no TV, no background noise. just you and the room and whatever comes up in your own head when you stop filling every second with input. lie there. sit there. look out a window. let your thoughts wander without chasing them anywhere.
what happens in that hour is different every time. sometimes nothing obvious and you feel vaguely restless. sometimes something surfaces that you've been too busy to notice an idea, a feeling, a clarity about something you've been confused about. your brain is constantly processing things in the background and it only gets to show you the results when you stop drowning it in new inputs. one hour of nothing is not wasted. it's actually some of the most productive time you can give yourself and period days are perfect for it because the low energy makes lying there feel natural instead of guilty.
Plan Next Week Properly
I started using day one and two to plan the coming week in real detail. not a vague list. actual specifics what I want to do each day, what the priorities are, what can wait, what I've been avoiding that needs to go first. by the time I feel better and have energy again, I'm not starting from scratch figuring out what to do. I already know. I just start doing it.
the planning during your period, executing during your energy this combination is honestly one of the most useful things I've figured out about my own productivity cycle. your rest time is not separate from your productive time. it's part of it. and if you want to understand your own patterns better, period week is actually a great place to start because the contrast between how you feel now and how you'll feel in a few days makes your own rhythms really obvious.
period week isn't lost time. it's just different time. the things it's bad for high output, starting new projects, pushing through resistance are not the only kinds of productive things. the things it's actually good for thinking, planning, absorbing, learning, being honest with yourself those matter too.
use what you have. your brain still works. it's just working differently for a few days. meet it where it is instead of dragging it somewhere it can't go right now. the week after will be better because of it.
rest is productive. horizontal is fine. and this blog literally started from a period day so I'm speaking from experience here. 🌸
💬 tell me in the comments what do you actually end up doing during your period? I'm genuinely curious what works for other people.
read this when you're feeling more like yourself
Things to Romanticize Your Everyday Life
you planned everything during your period week. now here's how to actually use that energy when it comes back 20 things that genuinely move the needle.
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