Some time ago, Derek wrote this amazing post titled Needs More Whitespace. I was thinking about it lately because it seems like things are so hectic, and no sooner does one thing end than another begins – I got back from California, was on a panel, my boyfriend moved to Canada, then my friend moved here from Edinburgh 3 days later and is staying with us, I went to Toronto and gave a talk, I switched teams, we announced AF KW. Next week I’m going to Ottawa, and climbing the CN tower, and there’s a paper deadline – I meant to reformat and add some stuff to my last paper and resubmit. Who knows how that will go. My new team is headed to California next week and wants me to go. I managed to say no – aside from everything I already have on next week and the stubborn inability of my body to be in multiple places at once, I have the ultimate excuse right now, visa issues. It looks like things will be fine now but I’m likely going to be unable to leave the country for a little while. That has been stressful, too.
I am so tired that my fantasies feature hanging out in my pajamas and not speaking to anyone. It feels like, if things could just stop, for a moment, and I could catch my breath, things would be OK.
Not. Enough. Whitespace.
I keep writing, again and again, the same post, that this is no way to live. So strung out. Completely overcommitted. And then I get my breathing space, appreciate it briefly, and take off again. Until next time.
It seems so easy, when things are calm. Have a routine! Stick to it! Prioritize things that keep you sane! Delegate! Say no!
And yet, here I am again, feeling like I’m being crushed. Unable to decide whether I want most to cry, or to sleep.
So – no grand plans or resolutions. Just an acknowledgement. Have taken on too much. Again. Feel completely strung out. Again. Exhausted. Again. Questioning whether it’s all worth it. Again.
I’m reminding myself that thus far, it’s invariably been worth it. And so I’m heading to the gym to train for that tower climb – it’s more productive than crying myself to sleep, afterall.
It’s so simple that whatever state I’m in I can’t argue with it. It’s so easy that there can never be an excuse. But, applied diligently, it can change pretty much everything.
When I’m in a tizzy, one of the first things to go is the state of my apartment. If I say one positive thing, and keep at that for a week, it becomes livable again. Some days all I do is load the dishwasher. But others it snowballs. I start with “take out the trash” and end up with a sparkling bathroom. I just need to start.
When my self-esteem is on the floor because I’m unhappy with how I look, I use it. It’s a lot easier to get out of bed and go to the gym for 6am when I know that this is all I’m going to ask of myself in that regard all day (of course, having started off so well I’ll tend to eat better and sleep earlier, too). If it’s not a gym day, my one positive thing can be “no chocolate”.
Often one positive thing is about attitude. It’s focusing on the design that I came up with, rather than the change that I didn’t get approved (again). It’s thinking, “I made time to go to the chiro which will make my shoulder better and then I can work out harder” rather than focusing on the fact that I rolled over and didn’t go spinning that morning. It’s thinking about the thing I did for my boyfriend, rather than the fact that we are (still) on different continents.
The power of sustained small achievements is underrated. If every day I did one positive thing for my health, my living space, and my relationship, what would my world look like a month, six months, a year from now?
I decided that February I would focus on rehab. What this has meant for me, is that almost every day in February I did one positive thing for getting my shoulder better – sometimes chiro, sometimes massage, sometimes the gym, and sometimes (frankly) strong painkillers. It’s in a lot better shape now, and I’m in a lot less pain than back in January.
Meanwhile, one of my friends is completely overwhelmed by… life, I guess, but particularly school work. So I shared this rule with her. She’s been getting overwhelmed by everything, but one thing? That seems totally doable.
So it seemed worth sharing with you as well. Try it, and let me know how it goes. Meanwhile, what tricks do you have for making things seem manageable when you’re overwhelmed?
I saw someone I hadn’t seen in a while, as part of enquiring how I was, he asked specifically how my blog was.
I quipped,
Oh the internet’s good. It’s the real world I have problems with.
Credit: flickr / Scoobymoo
Lately, that keeps coming back to me. I feel like reality has a big stick that it’s beating me with. Dealing with legal issues – like how do I disclose something that I can’t reveal the name of? Panic, because (for unknown reasons) when I filed my tax return my postcode got changed, and then I couldn’t verify who I was, couldn’t change my address until I had a new number, which couldn’t happen until I’d moved… and then the postal service work it out and it’s a bill, not a return, because there was some interim letter that of course, didn’t arrive. Returning home from New York to discover that my electricity had been disconnected (why that happened is a long story), and that the fire alarm wouldn’t stop beeping. Discovering that the power being returned wouldn’t fix it, attacking it with a broom, trying to find 9V batteries at 9pm on a Sunday, climbing a terrifying 10ft ladder and pulling it apart – to no avail! Eventually my friend brought her brother who rescued me from the beeping. Once it had stopped – nearly 24 hours after I’d returned – I was still tense, waiting for the sound again.
I don’t think people who know me would describe me as a practical person. I can’t rewire a plug, or hang a picture. I did not enjoy the time I spent up the ladder. I am easily overwhelmed by forms and bureaucracy.
Mostly, I tick along. Bills arrive – preferably electronically – and I pay them. I managed to master filing my tax return, at least, even if it then went horribly wrong. Periodically something like that, or a form, arrives, and I procrastinate, prevaricate, and eventually take care of it and wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.
However, there’s nothing like moving to bring out the real world. And – Canada is still foreign to me, so still I often have no clue what’s happening or how things work.
Meanwhile, I turn things into intricate dependency chains because I want to optimize everything. For example, I’m heading back to Europe shortly. I need a new passport and to see a doctor about my shoulder. But, I’m agonizing about the optimal time to go – and freaking out, because if I go away for a week and return to no electricity and 24 hours of incessant beeping (which caused me to think I was losing my mind), what will I return to if I leave for the better part of a month?
It’s probably fine. I should just choose a flight – and make it work. I’m good at airports. After much practise as an international hobo, I’ve got pretty good at packing. I’m good at making the most of the situation that is. If I could just be a little less of a dreamer, and panic less about what might, I’d be a lot better off.
Credit: xkcd
For example, I’m spending the holiday with my boyfriend’s family. If he can move to Canada, I should be able to cope with that – even if they are all 6ft tall and terrifying. Working out how to get to Scotland, I’ve presented him with at least 5 highly plausible (to me) situations featuring death (from us driving a smart car/me driving stick), nervous breakdown (lack of escape route and terror by family) and breaking up (from him trying to teach me to drive stick). The benefit of dating someone I’ve known for a long time is that this level of neuroticism doesn’t faze him in fact he seems to find it amusing. Long may that continue.
Actually the story I should be telling myself is that we’ll go up in a manual car. He’ll drive. We’ll have a nice time – I’ll be charming, and his family, although giant, will be lovely. And then we’ll leave, and I’ll head back to Canada, to find my apartment intact, the power on, and a cheque from the tax man waiting.
Or not. And if not, I’ll work it out.
Still feeling shaken up from the beeping and stressed about the tax issues, I took some Cate-time and read The Undomestic Goddess (Amazon). It was really the perfect book for the mood I was in! I calmed down and realized that reality can be overwhelming when you’re already stressed, and I shouldn’t beat myself up for not coping better with it. I am tremendously fortunate, but it’s hard to keep that in perspective when every few minutes you hear “beep — low battery — faible”. It’s all fixable – but it’s okay to be stressed by a sudden demand from the tax man.
Last week, I returned to Canada and signed and sent in my offer letter from Google. Then, 3 days later I rushed off to Kitchener to find an apartment.
Because I didn’t get a TA at uOttawa (stupid union, and yes, I have noticed the irony and hilarity of – offer from Google, no TA from UO), I’ve decided to relocate earlier because the cost of living in KW is lower and it’s unpleasant to move in December.
I stopped by the Google office to get my police check form signed and they gave me a t-shirt. I love it! This is really happening! I’m still in shock, and alternating between excitement and freaking out about going to work with such amazing and smart people. Periodically, I panic that I don’t know how to code Google docs, and then reassure myself that no-one expects me to come in knowing how to do that (right? Right?!?!)
Meanwhile, I’m heading to GHC 2010 next week, and Boston sometime later in the month, I’m giving two talks in October (I think – the earliest one is unconfirmed and I have no clue what I’m talking about). I need to pack up my life into boxes and move. I need to say goodbye to everyone. I also need to work on my thesis. I really need a haircut.
Meanwhile, there is a family issue that is really horrible and upsetting (I can’t write about it right now) and because of that it’s difficult to plan times of things. Also, I’ve been dealing with some conflict and having just finished The Anatomy of Peace (Amazon) I’m also having a crisis that I’m not truly living outside of the box in accordance with my values. Sometime soon I’m going to work out how to write about that, too.
I don’t think I’ve spent a week straight at home since early August. All this rushing about is making me feel like I’m going slightly crazy, and without the structure of an office and expected times to be there it’s hard to be productive on my thesis – especially after a summer off.
In times of stress, it’s really important to prioritize. I’m aiming to give myself some structure by working out first thing in the morning, and will try and spend my days in the office. I’m also throwing my posting schedule out the window.
Just a heads up. Expect to hear from me here but perhaps not on the same Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday schedule that I’ve been on during the summer. Don’t expect prompt replies to email. Do expect bad hair.
At Ignite Waterloo a guy gave a talk about “Why All My Ex-Girlfriends Are Crazy”. Of course, I was dying to know why.
The reason? They were women who having achieved at university and then started their career had got to a point in their lives where they no longer had the same level of stress professionally, so were creating it in other areas of their lives. Really, what the talk was about was that we all have a level of stress that we like to operate at and we seek out new stress if we are at a level that is too low.
This resonated with me, to the point that when I went to the chiropractor the following week and they asked what my stress level was I said,
High. And that’s how I like it.
Cue two people looking at me in absolute horror!
However, it’s completely true! Knowing this, I can be more aware of where I am creating stress and try and do so productively – i.e create stress in ways that does not negatively affect others (e.g. not by arguing with my significant other, but by taking on some new challenge instead).
Because of this search for stress, I’m always looking for the next challenge, the next thing. When things seem too good (by which I mean, quiet, post-achievement) I worry that everything will come crashing down. Maybe that’s why I focus on what’s next, rather than what is.
Sacha wrote a lovely post after our conversation last week about feeling like you’re living in a Greek tragedy – that things are too good and everything is going to fall apart. She is an inspiration because she thinks that things can just get awesomer and awesomer. She’s is a genuinely happy person.
I am not. At the moment I am – optimistic, productive, energized – about what I’m doing.
I wouldn’t describe myself as happy. I have happy moments, but I don’t know if I want to be happy in general. In fact, I worry that would kill my drive. Recently I wrote about how I’d prioritized an interesting over a happy life, and I still do. I think I fear an awesome life, because I worry that I would become complacent. Content. I’d stop jittering from task to task, inspiration to inspiration, and just be.
Oh the horror.
I realize that this may sound ridiculous. But I regularly have conversations with people where they say, “Cate, you do so much” and I look at them in blank bewilderment because compared to what I want to be achieving, what I think I should be doing. What I do barely registers. Because I’m always pushing forward to the next new exciting thing, the next challenge I rarely stop and take stock of what I’ve actually done.
So I fear being happy because I fear being in this moment rather than chasing the next moment.
Yes, OK, bizarre – but it seems to be what works for me.
Optimistic. Productive. Energized. Sounds about optimal.
My friends and some of my colleagues have been mocking me for “outsourcing my life”. I don’t think that expression is accurate though – it’s more that I’ve been outsourcing details in order to enjoy life more (and achieve more). For me, it’s all about leverage. How can I leverage myself in order to do more?
Relinquishing Control
My dad is a wonderful person and I love him so much, but he has a terrible problem delegating. He takes on too much and agrees to do things that he should have someone else take care of, and it drives my mom crazy. I worry that I have a tendency to do this too, so I’ve been forcing myself to give stuff away to other people. I tell myself that even if I don’t think they will do as good a job as I would, at least I don’t have to do it – in the worst case, I just have to fix it and that will take less time than actually doing – because starting is the thing that takes most time. But it turns out, I rarely have to fix things I delegate.
Sometimes it’s easy. If you’ve been shopping and taken advice on what to buy from your friends, a personal shopper is not a great leap (I did this when I had only a couple of days to get the right clothes to wear for my internship in the UK between 3rd and 4th year). If you do group exercise classes, a personal trainer is not so bizarre (I’ve been training with one in order to recover from my recent injuries). Outsourcing my resume was harder, but I had to acknowledge that it did not work to my strengths and so Maureen McCann of MyPromotion wrote it and she did a much better job.
Now, I’m outsourcing details. I have a PA for a couple of hours a week and she’s mostly been taking care of insurance stuff and scheduling things. It’s great, because I gave her a stack of insurance nonsense and she’s taken care of it (if I was going to, it would have happened sometime in the last 6 months that it’s been on my desk). Also, for scheduling something often I don’t really care when it is, as long as it fits within the current commitments I have. She can pick Monday at 5, and that’s fine. If I have to decide, I’ll end up agonizing about the difference between Monday at 5 and Tuesday at 5. The truth is, there probably isn’t that much of one.
Working to Your Strengths
My teammate and I were talking about being detail oriented – and I am, in terms of programming. One of my friends gave me a little trick the other day, why would you do:
if (myString.equals("something")) { myString = "something"; }
(clue, it involves immutability). I find that fascinating – I just don’t find details elsewhere that interesting. In fact, I find them draining.
Technically, my PA knows a little bit of programming (I would know, I taught her most of it). But if I have a script to write, it would be useless to delegate it to her when I can do it, and have it working in a fraction of the time it would take her to even get started. I could delegate some research stuff, but again – it would probably take her much longer. What I’m finding, though, is the things I give her to do are the things that take me a really long time and make me stressed and/or miserable, and she gets them done really quickly. This means I can get on with the tasks that give me energy, rather than drain it.
Whilst my resume was being written, I read Effective Java (Amazon). Now which is really the more productive thing to do? By doing my own resume, I save some amount of money. By reading Effective Java, I develop my expertise in my field (it is an amazing book) – to me, it’s obvious that is a better use of my time. As a bonus, I have a better resume for it.
Two weeks ago, I was in the wilderness. Last week, I gave a talk. This week, I have a terrifying job interview. All this is on top of my internship. Could I cope without a PA? Yes. But I would be more stressed out and have less time to devote to the things that matter most to me.
Putting a Value on Your Time
It seems like people sometimes think it’s arrogant to suggest that your time is worth more than someone elses. But – we all place value on our time. If you’ve ever opted to pay more for the direct flight rather than the one with multiple connections, you placed a value on time, and perhaps the stress of trying to make connections. It literally had a $ value. At work, my time is worth a fraction of that of a Distinguished Engineer. So we’re going to meet on his or her schedule, not mine. When working, we exchange time for money. So our time has a monetary value, and it varies person to person.
When I was TAing, students would sometimes send me all their code with a description of the problem that basically amounted to “it’s not working”. As a result of this, we had a chat about “iPhone optimizing” their emails. Initially, all I want is the error message. After that, I will accept the small section of code that is the problem. If we still have a problem, it’s most likely a design issue, and I expect them to come in person to see me. Yes, I can compile and run their code, but I would maintain that is not a good use of my time, and is not educational to them. By teaching them to respect my time, I’m also teaching them to debug better. And hopefully disabusing them of the notion that I’m a compiler, which, worryingly, I had to tell more than one of them.
Why is that relevant? Because all the time we make judgments as to whose time is worth more. We just express it in a different way.
Delegating Details, Not Responsibility
I’ve been embroiled in a disagreement with Goodlife, because I want to work out with a trainer once a week just to make sure that I’m realigning myself (I dislocated my right knee, right shoulder, twisted my right ankle, and messed up my right hip – bit of a disaster zone) and I don’t want to commit to 9 months of 3 times a week, which seems to be their (utterly ridiculous) minimum. So I negotiated, or rather, I convinced my trainer who then negotiated with her manager. And then they backed down a little, to 2x a week for 6 months and they would sell any that I had over. I explained that I would be gone for about 2 months out of the next 6 and countered with 2x a week for 4 months and this was refused because they “couldn’t guarantee results” with that many sessions.
This really frustrated me, because I don’t want to delegate the responsibility for me to get back into shape after this many injuries. I just want to delegate the details of what exactly I should be doing to rehabilitate. I also see PT as a complement to the other exercise I do (kickboxing, swimming, rollerblading, body pump, yoga, cardio…) rather as the exercise I do.
Likewise with my PA, I don’t tell her “plan my life after graduation and decide where I should apply for jobs”, I give her concrete tasks like, “please deal with this pile of insurance stuff as per this form”, and “I have to be in location X for an interview on date Y at Z time for a duration of i minutes – please work out how and when I’m going to get there and where I’m going to stay”.
Things We Don’t Do
In North America, it’s normal to have an automatic car. This makes sense to me, because the car does a better job of changing gear than most people do. For the most part, we don’t cut our own hair (if we have any sense – this applies to dramatic eyebrow reshaping too), grow our own food, or produce our own electricity. It’s not productive to implement our own source control systems, or test runners. We don’t create our own crawl of the web, we Google.
Obviously this can go to far, if we say “I don’t need to know how to entertain myself, I have a TV for that”. But one crucial thing that I get from other people is confidence – I get driven forwards because other people believe in me, even when I doubt myself.
As part of this minimalism malarkey that I’m not such an aficionado of, I’ve read a number of times “Don’t outsource – if you don’t want to do something, just stop doing it”. I don’t really understand how that works, I mean what if you don’t want to do your taxes? Will that hold with the IRS?
Delegating does force me to evaluate things though. If I don’t want to give up responsibility, then I actually need to get it done. If I’m going to pay someone else to do it, it should be something that it’s really worth doing.
It also helps me with saying no, which I’m not great at doing. Someone asked me to do something the other day that I really wanted to say yes to but would have been really difficult and caused a lot of stress. Rather than saying yes and trying to make it work logistically, I just delegated it. But if someone’s asking me to do something and I’m literally going to pay someone else to do it so I don’t have to, it had better be a reasonable and worthwhile request that I really want to accommodate.
It’s not Minimizing “Work”, it’s about Maximizing “Great”
I read the book The 4-Hour Workweek (Amazon) and it is a really interesting book that helped me evaluate where I’m spending my time, but I agree with Penelope Trunk – the thrust is not about just “working” 4 hours a week, it’s about making the vast majority of what you do not feel like work (she represented that a little more negatively).
Another book I read recently is Do More Great Work (Amazon). I was working through the exercises in it, and it was great because I realized that Extreme Blue is all about Great Work.
The thing about Great Work is that it’s easy to get caught up in Good Work and not get to it. So delegating good work helps me move forward with great work. Managing my email might be good work, but it’s time consuming and rarely as rewarding or useful as a blog post or a piece of code.
Really, what it comes down to is that there are only a finite number of hours in a day. Delegating is buying a little more time and energy to make a little more progress on the things that matter most to you.
I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I was told my work didn’t make a contribution, went through a rocky patch with my boyfriend, had loads of events for WISE, including one huge, never been done before one, had the whole job search and resume writing process, wrote a paper in just over a week, hurt my lower back trying to teach a small child to ski and aggravated my knee injury training.
Over the course of this, I’ve been trying to come up with something new and interesting to write on this blog 5 days a week. I often think of these ideas on the walk to school, and honestly, there have been days when I felt so strung out that what I wanted to write about was how I felt like I was having some kind of nervous breakdown, and how do you tell?
I haven’t. In part because I like to be positive here, but also because I had a job interview on Wednesday and I didn’t want that post going out the day I was Googled (yes, they checked out my website). But then I was looking at the posts that I’ve had featured on Brazen Careerist: there’s The Importance of Perspectives (where I admit that I’ve not been loving what I do lately), Dream Big or Go Home (where I admit to being afraid to fail) and Rediscovering Balance (where I write about last semester being miserable and needing to take a break from my life). Of course, I try and give these a positive spin, and focus on the things I’m learning from the experience. But is that the posts people find most useful/interesting? Not my tech-focused posts like this one on humans and developers, or this one on Facebook?
The truth is, that I take on a lot and want to bring 110% to everything I do, but ultimately sometimes I can’t bring 110% or I screw up and this devastates me. I set myself aggressive goals, challenge myself constantly and as a result Ifail everyday. I feel like a failure a lot of the time, but I try to believe that I am only a failure if I stop trying.
So why have the last few weeks been so difficult? I’ve finally had some space to think and I think it’s not the volume, it’s the intensity; i.e. it’s not how much I’m trying to do, it’s how important the things happening right now are. Maybe this is normal as graduation approaches? The university stuff is stressful because this is something I’ve been working on for months, and it directly impacts when I will graduate. The job hunting stuff, well we all know that’s stressful, right? I think it’s the waiting. I interviewed on Wednesday and at the end of the day Thursday I haven’t heard. On Wednesday I was positive, but as I write this (on Thursday afternoon) all I can think of is better examples to answer every question and a concept for the problem we were talking about that I think is really workable (I had the genesis of this idea in the interview, but not enough to think it worth mentioning. Now it’s fully formed). I was convinced after the interview that I would be a perfect fit for this project – and I still 100% believe that – but, I’m also 75%+ convinced I’m going to be rejected and debating my backup plan – should I ski in New Zealand, do yoga in Ibiza? Apply to a work experience/language program in France? Or, stop running away and keep putting myself out there for potential rejection.
There’s an obvious analogy between dating and job hunting, but here’s the kicker: if some guy rejects you it’s easy to rationalize, weird uber-Catholic interfering parents, for example, or (the classic) commitment issues. But when a successful and innovative company rejects you, it has to be you, right? Either you wouldn’t be great at it, or you didn’t present yourself in such a way that you managed to convince someone else you would be great at it.
Now, time for my positive spin. How have I been hiding my meltdown? Literally physically hiding is one way, I guess. Aside from my non-response to email, who can tell? I have been (trying to) maintain a positive attitude in conversation, where instead of moaning about “oh I’m so overwhelmed” I talk about what I’m doing instead. I’ve tried to minimize my commitments, but keep the ones I have made already (I hate being flaky, the guilt of letting someone down typically is more time consuming than actually doing the thing I’ve committed to). Last week, I gave myself a break from working out. I’ve grabbed relaxation time whilst I could, e.g. watching movies whilst marking and running experiments – I find I focus better on boring and somewhat mindless tasks if I’ve allocated a distraction, and as a result I’m less likely to be sidetracked by other distractions.
And going forward, what can I change? Really, I want to try not to cram so many stressful/highly important things together in a short space. I think for the past 3 weeks, it’s been unavoidable, but maybe I could have managed it better – or managed expectations better so that during this period people at least stopped asking me for things. But aside from that, being told my work had no value hit me for six, and I spent a week and a half feeling discouraged by that (or, until I had a meeting where someone who understood better what I was doing made it clear that he didn’t think that was the case). Linking my productivity to my self-esteem is not great. Linking my self-esteem to what someone who doesn’t know what I’m doing says about my work, though, is really ridiculous, and I see that now. I should be confident enough in what I’m doing, the value I’m creating, and in the feedback I’m getting from so many other people that this one person doesn’t carry that much weight with me. So I guess I’ll be working on that, too.
Lately, things have been somewhat chaotic. I don’t like it. It makes me stressed, overwhelmed, and unproductive.
Credit: flikr / kevindooley
On Saturday, Treena and I headed out of town for breakfast and a chat. We caught up, and I was talking about how I had just hit this point where I was so overwhelmed I was having a hard time being productive. I’m trying to get a grip; I’ve managed to delegate something that was causing me a giant headache and I’ve been trying to do more things that make me happy rather than I feel I should do (this means I’ve finally caught up on this season of Ugly Betty – love that show).
Credit flikr / flashcurd
However, it’s not enough. At the end of the semester… I think the picture below captures it. It’s like when the snow melts and everything you’ve done all semester needs to be done and final. There’s a cascade of stress, as anything that takes longer than anticipated slides into everything else…
Credit: flikr / mint imperial
Treena tells me (I’m paraphrasing here):
In production, you always schedule at 80% of capacity just in case.
I try to say that I do, it’s just more has gone wrong than the 20% allocated for. Maybe I’m right – I mean, over 4 hours a week spent on physio at the start of term… there’s 20% right there. Having to remark a whole assignment? That’s 20% and it’s happened twice.
Then later, I think about it some more, and realize – I don’t know what my capacity is anymore. Some weeks I’ll work 80 hours and be OK with that. Last week I didn’t achieve anywhere near that (I tried to, but I was having terrible problems focusing). I’ve hit the point where my cup is overflowing – and not in a good way.
Credit: flikr / 96dpi
So Treena is right – I’ve not been scheduling at 80% of capacity. The fact that I don’t even know what my capacity is anymore, tells me I’ve really screwed things up – I’ve sprinted and crashed. I need to be doing 50 hours every week, not 80 hours one week and 20 the next. I shouldn’t be at the point where what needs to happen this week makes me want to curl into a ball and cry.
Credit: flikr / hufse
It’s probably too late for this semester. If I can get through this week, it’s over. For next semester, what can I do to learn what my 80% is and schedule for that?
Working Saturdays – don’t do it. Saturday lunchtime labs screw up my whole weekend, they’ve often overran as well as assignments have been due on Sundays and I feel compelled to stay longer to help.
TA-ing period. No TA-ing in French (it’s much more stressful for me), and if I TA at all it will be a “proper” CS course as the obligatory courses for non-CS students are much harder.
Delegate before it’s panicking me. I arranged for someone to take charge of something last week that I probably should have arranged a month ago.
Better sleep schedule. I was up early for the first chunk of the semester, but then I work late into the evening and it spills over to the following day when I sleep late… need to avoid this and keep on a more regular schedule – especially since the morning is often my most productive time.
Do things that make me happy. Read more novels. Go do things I enjoy. Spend time with my boyfriend. I’m 24 – it’s too young to do nothing but work.
Email. Takes too much time. Unsubscribe from everything I can. This will include Twitter notifications. I should make a custom Twitter landing page indicating that I don’t check the notifications and that I mostly follow back people who talk to me, so send me an @ message saying hello. Once the end of the semester is over (no more panicked emails from students) I should be able to check it just once a day. Try and move to inbox zero.
Courses. Take a course that I enjoy and am interested in. This semester’s course was one I had to take, which definitely made me less motivated. That kind of workload in something I’m more passionate about would not be as big a problem. Spend more time at the beginning of the semester going to a few courses and picking the one that I will enjoy most – this will pay off later.
Some tasks get bigger the longer you put them off. Last week, I spent several hours trying to clear my email. On my desk, there’s a pile of paper 6 inches high. At this point, they become so large I need to set aside a lot of time to deal with them. This makes them much more intimidating, and I put them off even longer… it’s a vicious cycle. Try not to get into it in the first place.
This is everything I can think of for now, but as I try to find my 80% no doubt more will come up. How about you? How do you find your 80%?
Cookie Consent
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using our site, you consent to cookies.
