Spoon Theory

All my occupational therapists and speech therapists for Long COVID incorporated spoon theory into our work. I hate the name, but I love the concept.

In spoon theory, everyone has a given number of spoons each day symbolizing available energy. As we go about our day, different activities will consume or replace the energy represented by one or more spoons. By understanding which activities consume or replace energy and how many spoons of energy they take or replace, we can make choices to reduce the number of days we run out of spoons long before the end of the day.

I love this concept because it is true of everyone whether you have a chronic health condition or not.

I hate the name because I didn’t understand what spoons had to do with energy management. I kept thinking of Mary Poppins and a spoonful of sugar or the card game “spoons.” Neither of which are related to managing energy.

But like most things that bother me, I kept worrying away at it in the back of my mind. And I think I’ve been able to work out an illustration using spoons that sits more comfortably.

My original visualization was that if I start the day with 9 spoons, these spoons are laid out in front of me on a table. As I consume energy, the spoons are removed from the table to some place out of sight. As I gain energy, spoons are added back to the table in my view. In this model, I didn’t understand why spoons. Why not toothpicks or matches or any other object that can be used as a counter.

My updated visualization still has the 9 spoons laid out on the table in front of me. However, the spoons stay there throughout the day. Instead of the spoons representing the energy, the energy sits in the bowl of each spoon. As energy is consumed, it is emptied from the bowls of the spoons. As energy increases, it fills the bowls of the spoons back up.

Now that I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time and energy working out this reconciliation for the disconnect between spoons and energy, I am much more comfortable talking about spoon theory.

Spoon theory is the reason why I have been silent on this blog for most of this year.

Last winter marked a significant shift in my Long COVID experience that I hinted at in the posts of the time. My mental and physical energy increased (some combination of more spoons becoming available and the bowls of the spoons becoming bigger). My most severe Long COVID symptoms dissipated and when they flared up, they were manageable. I see this shift now as the transition from illness to recovery.

At the same time that my energy levels improved, the funding that allowed me to balance paid research work¹ with the full-time job of managing my health dried up sooner than expected.

So early in 2025, I was in a position where I had more energy and needed to spend less of it on managing my health, but I needed to spend more energy on the unpaid work of a self-employed business woman to re-establish my business as the research-education-practice consultancy that I envisioned prior to developing Long COVID. So I adjusted how I used my spoons of energy, spending less time and energy on activities like the therapeutic reflection and writing of this blog and more (nearly all) time and energy on business planning and development.

There are many insights from my experiences this year of managing a recovery phase of Long COVID while growing and expanding a business that I think are valuable to share. Now that I’ve reached a new milestone, having launched my a la carte zoning consulting services for Pittsburgh property, I think I am in a position to readjust how I use my spoons of energy to reincorporate more writing and sharing.

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1. I am proud of the work I accomplished in 2024 despite dealing with often debilitating Long COVID symptoms. The official report of our research, “Protecting Property Values, Not People: Discriminatory Land Use Policies in Pittsburgh, 1910s-Today,” only captures the tip of the iceberg of material I gathered and plan to incorporate in future reports and books. ↩︎

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Feature image credit: Measuring Spoons by Studio 365 from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)