A few weeks ago, I had the bright notion of writing down all my current projects, commitments and goals. It covered a full page in a regular spiral notebook.
“Aha,” says I. “No wonder I feel so busy.”
I really felt the power of the list this Monday morning. I had already gone to my stats class (which I’m auditing), and I didn’t have “work”-work until 5:30, but the list of things I could be doing in that intervening 6 hours was overwhelming, not to mention a newly exploding tutoring calendar thanks to midterms and October standardized test dates. I was already tired, feeling sick, and not able to cope with all of these demands.
So as a reference to myself, here are ways to cope when it’s crunch time:
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Stay off social media (and email, sort of). This is huge for me. Nothing make me feel more overwhelmed than falling behind on my twitter feed, or the emails I get re: projects of which I am a member, but not the lead. In the grand scheme of things, they should be a secondary consideration. So I do check my twitter (and email, obviously), but I try not to do it continuously throughout the day. Instead I’ll do a quick scan/triage at two points during the day (usually lunch time and late evening for me) and then concentrate on other things.
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Do one thing at a time.
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Make (short) (detailed) lists. If I write out everything I have to do, even if it’s as mundane as “put away the dishes when I get home”, I get the satisfaction of crossing at least some things off at the end of the day.
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Take (intentional) breaks. Most of us take breaks while we’re working, whether we realize it or not, because there’s only so long you can focus in one shot. But there’s a difference between a I’m-descending-into-a-youtube-vortex break and a I’ll-go-outside-and-people-watch-for-fifteen-minutes break.
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Say no. I’m terrible at this.