Yellow Time is what I want to write about today – that time we use for preparation. It may not always feel very exciting, but it can make everyday life considerably easier.
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It is perhaps even the kind of time we often postpone.
But when Yellow Time works, life can become a little easier.
You know that stress that can appear just when you are about to leave?
Have I got everything with me?
Is everything ready?
Do I know what I need?
Where are my keys now?
Suddenly, you are running around looking for things while the clock keeps ticking and you should really already be on your way.
That is exactly where Yellow Time can make a difference.
Yellow Time is what you do before doing
Yellow Time is, as you have probably already understood, preparation.
It is what you do before you do the thing you actually need to do.
It can be laying out your clothes the night before.
Packing your bag.
Putting your papers in order and checking that you have everything you need.
Setting your alarm – and perhaps even checking one extra time that you really did set it correctly.
But Yellow Time can also be about places.
If my keys always have their own place, I do not have to start looking for them when it is time to leave. I have created a little Yellow Place for my keys.
The same can apply to my bag, important papers, charger or all those other things that seem to have a strange ability to disappear just when I need them.
An ordinary morning is full of different colours
Let’s take breakfast as an example.
When I prepare breakfast, I am in Yellow Time. I am preparing.
When I sit down and eat, that can be Red Time. I am doing what needs to be done – eating my breakfast.
Afterwards, Yellow Time returns when I clear things away and prepare for the next part of the morning.
Then perhaps it is time to brush my teeth, get dressed and do the last things that need doing.
And maybe something rather nice happens.
I finish before I have to leave.
Suddenly, there is a little space for Green Time.
Perhaps I scroll on my phone for a while if I feel like it. Or I sit with another cup of coffee and enjoy the morning before it is time to go.
Then comes the time when I actually need to leave – Red Time.
It is quite interesting when you start looking at an ordinary morning this way.
Yellow prepares for Red – and well-used Yellow Time can create more space for Green.
The activity itself does not decide the colour
This is important.
The same activity can have different colours at different times.
Eating breakfast can be Red Time when breakfast is something I need to do before leaving for the main task of my day.
But a long breakfast on a day off, when I sit with my coffee and genuinely enjoy the moment, can be Green Time.
The same applies to many other things.
A walk can be something I need to do and therefore part of my Red Time. On another day, I might take exactly the same walk because it gives me peace, pleasure and energy – and then it is Green.
It is not the activity itself that has a colour. It is the function it has for me at that moment.
When there are several people in the family
In a family, everyone has their own Yellow, Red and Green Times.
And that makes things a little more complicated.
Young children need help with their preparations. Someone may need help finding clothes, packing a bag or remembering what they need to take with them.
When I help someone else prepare, I am also in Yellow Time.
That means my morning needs to make room not only for my own Yellow Time, but sometimes for someone else’s as well.
Perhaps that is one reason mornings can become so stressful when preparation has not been given enough space.
Because all the Yellow things still have to be done.
The only difference is when we do them.
Either we do some of them beforehand, when there is time.
Or we try to do everything at once when we should already be on our way.
What happens when we skip Yellow Time?
As you can probably imagine, Yellow Time does not disappear simply because we skip it.
Quite the opposite.
We risk being in Yellow Time all the time.
The keys are not where they belong – in their Yellow Place – so we have to look for them.
The clothes have not been laid out, so we have to choose them while we should really be getting ready.
The bread is still in the freezer. Or worse – it is still at the shop because we forgot to buy it.
The morning becomes more stressful. Dinner may become more unplanned because we have not thought about what to cook or checked what we actually have at home.
And somewhere in all of this, something happens to Green Time.
It may not disappear completely, but it becomes harder to recognise when it is actually there.
Instead of being able to think, I’m finished now, this is Green Time, I might sit down while my mind continues working:
I must remember that.
I need to sort that out later.
I absolutely mustn’t forget that tomorrow.
It becomes almost like a Grey Time.
I may not actually be doing anything, but I am not really free either. My mind is still trying to keep track of everything I need to remember.
Green Time matters because that is where recovery, relaxation and the things that give energy back need to have some space.
I sometimes call this Grey Time. It is not a fourth part of my model. It is simply my way of describing those moments when I am neither doing what needs to be done nor truly recovering.
Let the place remember for you
Part of Yellow Time, for me, is about not having to carry everything in my head.
For example, if you have a work bag in a particular place in the hallway and make a habit of putting things into it as soon as you remember that you will need them, you do not have to keep remembering them until the following morning.
The thing is already there.
The bag almost remembers it for you.
The same idea can be used for many things.
The keys have their place. Papers that need to come with you are put where they belong. Something that needs to be returned can be placed by the door instead of becoming yet another thought you have to keep in your head.
They are small preparations.
But every little Yellow thing means one less thing to search for, think about or try to remember just when you need to leave.
Yellow Time is therefore not only about preparing for what I am going to do. It can also help me stop carrying all of tomorrow’s reminders in my head today.
Why call it Yellow Time?
This way of thinking probably is not necessary for everyone.
If you already know what you need to do, remember your things, prepare what needs preparing and manage everyday life without it taking a lot of energy, perhaps you do not need to give your time different colours at all.
But I have noticed, both at home and throughout my working life, that colours can sometimes do something that words do not quite manage.
For some reason, saying Yellow Time has felt easier than saying preparation time.
Yellow has become a signal:
Now we prepare.
Red Time is the doing. Now we do what needs to be done.
And then comes Green Time.
Green is time without demands.
But that does not mean I have to do nothing.
Quite the opposite.
I can cycle, paint, read, drink coffee, spend time outdoors or do something else that gives me pleasure, calm or energy.
When it is Green Time, the task is actually to be in the Green.
Not prepare for the next thing at the same time.
Not think about everything I should be doing later.
I am allowed to be where I am.
Actually being in Green Time
For me, Green Time can also serve as a reminder.
I find it easy to keep thinking ahead. I can be sitting with a cup of coffee, taking a walk or doing something I genuinely enjoy while my mind has already started planning the next thing.
What am I going to do afterwards?
What mustn’t I forget?
Shouldn’t I take the opportunity to…?
That is when the colour can remind me:
I am in Green Time now.
I do not have to use this moment to plan. I do not have to stay one step ahead right now.
Instead, I can try to taste the Green Time.
Feel it.
Be in it.
Enjoy what I am doing and allow the moment to give something back.
For me, that may be one of the most important parts of Green Time.
It is not always enough to have an empty space in the calendar.
I also need to allow myself to actually be in it.
I had no theory – I simply saw that it worked
The colours did not come from an established method.
When I started using them, I had no theory behind what I was doing. I needed to find a way that worked for a person I was working with.
I had seen how colours and visual aids could make things such as time and structure easier to understand. There were already aids such as the Timstock, which made something as abstract as time more visible. I had also met people who associated different days of the week with different colours.
So I used colours.
We tried it.
And I saw that it worked.
It really was not more complicated than that.
Yellow became preparation.
Red became doing.
Green became time without demands.
It became a shared language where we did not need long explanations. We could talk about what colour the time was right now and what colour would come next.
Over the years, I have continued to use this way of thinking in different situations because I have seen that it can make preparation, doing and demand-free time easier to understand.
Why these particular colours?
When I think today about why I chose yellow, red and green, I think of a traffic light.
But I honestly do not know whether that was how I thought when the model first developed or whether it is an explanation I have created afterwards.
Perhaps it does not matter very much.
For me, the colours have become a way of understanding what mode I am in.
🟨 Yellow – I prepare.
🟥 Red – I do.
🟩 Green – I am in the time that is allowed to give something back.
And perhaps that last one is the most important.
Green Time is not empty time.
It has a purpose too.
It gives me the opportunity to be where I am without constantly being on my way to the next thing.
My own model, with ideas that can be recognised in research
Only much later did I become curious about why something so simple could actually work.
Looking at it today, parts of my way of thinking resemble ideas found in research on planning, memory offloading, visual support and recovery.
But Red, Yellow and Green Time is not an established psychological treatment model.
It is an experience-based way of making different kinds of everyday time visible, developed through my work.
I did it.
I saw that it worked.
And so I continued.
What could Yellow Time do for you?
Take a moment to think about your own everyday life.
Is there something that often causes stress because it has not been prepared?
Where do your keys usually end up?
Are there things you keep trying to remember in your head that could instead have a particular place?
And above all:
Could a little more Yellow Time create a little more Green Time for you?
You do not have to structure your whole life.
Start with one thing.
Perhaps the bag that can be ready in the hallway tomorrow morning. The clothes that can be laid out tonight. Or the keys that, from today, get their own Yellow Place.
See what happens.
Would you like to work with your own time?
In this post, I have described how I think about Yellow, Red and Green Time. But our everyday lives are different, and the interesting part really begins when you start looking at your own time.
In my Red, Yellow and Green workbook, you can use reflection questions and practical tools to explore your own colours – what takes energy, what needs preparation and where Green Time actually has room to exist.
The aim is not to structure every minute.
Quite the opposite.
The structure should help create space for the life that happens in between.
The Red, Yellow and Green workbook is currently available in Swedish.
You can also read my post about ADHD and structure in everyday life, where I write more about how the colours work together with my squares.
“Live today, right now. Yesterday is history and tomorrow is the future. Right now is where life happens.”
— Carina Ikonen Nilsson
If you would like to follow my continuing thoughts about everyday life, ADHD, recovery and the tools I use, you can subscribe to Malix.se and receive updates when a new post is published.
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