thank you for reading.

With less than two weeks before I embark on my summer journey halfway around the world to Sri Lanka , I’ve been giving this blog some serious thought.  I’ve asked all the logistic questions that come to the mind of Type A individuals – like how will I post when I will only have intermittent internet access?  And, how will I charge my laptop without a plug adapter?  If I am going to be honest, though, it’s not the logistics of blogging abroad that seem most troubling to me.  My reason for seriously considering taking a blogging hiatus runs much deeper.

When I started doing yoga, I learned that one of the keys to relaxation and meditation is thinking about one’s breathing.  When you focus on your inhales and exhales, you focus less on the external – less on what is going on around you – and more on your body and how you feel.  Since I am always thinking about how I can apply life lessons to scheduling, I tweaked this idea of refocusing just a bit.  When I am having trouble paying attention, I think about thinking.  When I’m having a bad day, I think about feeling better.  When I’m feeling stressed about getting things done, I think about scheduling.  I bring everything inward, narrowing in on something that relates to what I should be focused on, and block out the unnecessary distractions.  Thinking about scheduling – it’s my anti-procrastination tool.

And, thinking about scheduling (which with three jobs and a full class-load is pretty much all the time) has helped me write this blog.  When I’m stressed, I think about a topic related to scheduling, i.e. how am I going to manage to get all of this stuff done?  I use that topic and those thoughts to formulate a post, and voilà – a blog is born.  This blog, I guess I’ll admit, has been somewhat of a coping mechanism for me.

Thinking about scheduling – it’s what I do.  It’s who I am.  But, what if I didn’t have to schedule?  What if I didn’t have three jobs and a full class load?  What if my friends, who are always hounding me to hang out, were halfway around the world?  Better yet, what if I was?  Would I have to think about scheduling?  Would I have to use this coping mechanism to deal with stress?  And if not, then on what topics would I post?

When I tell people I am going to spend the summer in Sri Lanka, they usually respond by saying they think the experience will be amazing.  “You’ll find yourself over there,” they always say.  My hope is precisely the opposite.  As I embark on my journey I hope not to find myself, but rather to lose myself.  I hope to build a different me – start anew like a phoenix. The only way I know how to do that is to take away all the crutches on which I lean, to separate myself from everything I know, and to deprive myself of all the things to which I might cling.  So the bottom-line would be, then, no television, no pillow, no thinking about scheduling, no blogging.  It’s a crazy idea, I know.  I’m still not even sure it’s a good one.  What I do know is this summer will change me, and that’s all I want.

This blog will stand, nonetheless, as a testament to my crazy work-filled college years.  I may even come back to it when I return to the states – who knows?  For now, though, I hope the two years worth of posts I have accrued will be enough to help you in your own balancing act.

Click here for your double-two minutes of procrastination.

guiltless procrastination

It is 7:34 PM, and I just sat down to write this blog post.  I meant to start in on this at 6:30 PM.  Instead, I worked an hour later than I had planned.  Now I probably will not get back to my apartment until 10 PM.  By the time I get everything ready for tomorrow it will be too late and I will be too tired to do the homework I planned to do tonight.  I’ll push it off until tomorrow night or the weekend.

I hate procrastination.  Of all the things in the world that I hate, it makes my top five list of greatest evils (among ignorance and racism).  Most people know this about me, and most of them would say that I never procrastinate.  This is not an entirely accurate statement.  In all honesty I do procrastinate – just not the way normal people do.  You won’t ever find me watching television when I have a paper due or surfing the web the night before a big test.  If I ever did either of these things (or things like them), I’d just end up feeling really guilty.

But, I do procrastinate.  For instance, I worked late tonight.  I probably could have put off some projects for the next time I will be in the office, but instead I worked through to finish them.  I was productive.  I got stuff done.  Except, now I won’t have time to work on my school work tonight – the school work I was really avoiding.  You see, by deciding to work late I was really just giving myself a reason to put off writing a paper.  I feel less guilty about the procrastination because I got stuff done at work, but in the end I’ve just put off doing my school work.

I hadn’t noticed that I do this (and do it quite often) until a good friend pointed it out to me.  She asked me why I was working late during weeks when I should have been focusing on writing my undergraduate thesis.  My initial answer was because I had projects to finish at work.  The more honest answer – which I admitted only after she pushed me on it – is that sometimes even I don’t feel like doing school work.  “Yeah, you’re a work-a-holic,” she said to me, “but sometimes that’s only because you don’t want to have to write your paper.”

My point tonight is not so much that this kind of procrastination is bad.  It is; don’t get me wrong.  The bigger point here is that we sometimes don’t realize our own motives.  We think that we are doing something for one reason, when really another is driving us.  This week think really critically about why you schedule things a certain way.  Are you self-sabotaging?  Avoiding work in innovative ways?  Procrastinating guiltless-ly?  If you have trouble evaluating your scheduling methods, don’t fret.  This kind of self-reflection is really hard.  Try getting an outside opinion on your methods.  You never know what another perspective can teach you about yourself.

Click here for your two minutes of procrastination.

 

my gripe with extensions

If there is one question most college students are really good at asking, it’s this:  Can I get an extension?  Since I started at John Jay College in 2008, I’ve heard countless classmates asks professors to extend deadlines, accept late papers, and push back tests.  And every time I hear a request like this, I cringe internally… okay, sometimes externally, too.

I’ve never asked for an extension on a paper or a test.  Never.  Not in college, not in high school, not as far back as I can remember (which for those of you wondering encompasses all of my schooling back to kindergarten).  When I was out sick for two months with mono in my sophomore year of high school, I turned in all of my assignments via email – early at that.  When I was preparing for the first presentation of my thesis at the ACJS conference in New York this past month, I worked on my PowerPoint slides for two months straight and managed to turn in three other papers the Friday before I presented.  I meet deadlines – always.  So when students, students who I have to assume work fewer jobs and take fewer classes than I do, ask for extensions I am easily frustrated.

Perhaps, this frustration is tied to my personal aversion to extensions.  I hate when I can’t meet a deadline.  It literally drives me crazy.  When I can’t complete a task and I end up having to roll it over to the next day, I do so ever begrudgingly.

But sometimes it has to be done.  There are only so many hours in a day.  I am starting to learn that there are going to be times when I just cannot physically meet a deadline and an extension is the only option.  So while I refuse to ask for extensions in school (because I am one month away from getting through 18 years of schooling without having to have done so), I have learned that sometimes I just have to postpone projects at work.  In doing so I am being honest with my supervisors and realistic about my abilities.

I hate extensions.  I think I always will.  Getting stuff done and on time is just what I do.  It’s who I am.  But, having time to work on projects and put my best work into them eliminates stress.

Next time you need an extension think about how much work you can realistically do.  Think about the role procrastination plays in your ability to get things done on time.  And be honest with yourself about whether or not asking for the extension is appropriate.  An extension may not be an ideal situation, but it is better than pulling an all-nighter.  Click here for your two minutes of procrastination.

transparency

Busy people only get busier.  I’m sure there is some rule of physics for this – something about inertia or acceleration, perhaps.  When you’re organized and on top of your stuff, people just assume you can handle more.  Bosses pile on the projects, professors pile on the assignments, friends pile on the favors.  They think an organized and hardworking individual can handle it all, and if you’re like me you find this incredibly flattering.  It can also be pretty frustrating – not because it means more work, but because it means having to make more time for that work.

When I started writing this blog, I wanted people to think of me as a great scheduler – an organization guru even.  I tried to put on this persona – someone who could take on anything and everything and all at the same time.  I wanted to come across at cool, collected, and in control.  I wanted to be a scheduling super woman.  All this, of course, led only to more busyness – something about which I am not and will not complain.  It’s just that all that busyness also led to a whole lot of stress.  That I will complain about – endlessly, in fact.

I managed these expectations for two years, and now I’m trying something new – transparency.  Having everyone believe I’m a master scheduler who can always make time for everything is just too hard act to keep up.  I’m finding it much easier to be honest, to tell others I’m feeling overwhelmed, to set more reasonable expectations.  Anyone who knows me knows my go to response these days is, “I’m working three jobs, taking four classes, writing a thesis, and planning a summer trip abroad.  I’m a little stressed out at the moment.”  And yeah, telling people the truth means they won’t see me as an organization guru.  It also means getting a lot more understanding, tons of help, and a little bit of slack.  To me that makes the tradeoff one that is worthwhile.

Click here for four (that’s right two times the usual amount) minutes of procrastiantion.

being a silo and the self help book debate

Sometimes people make the assumption that because I write this blog, I must consider myself a scheduling pro.  I guess, if I am going to be completely  honest, these assumptions are not entirely false.  Yeah, I consider myself better at scheduling than your average Joe, but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in any real sense of the word.  I tell these people, the ones that assume I must be some sort of Ph.D in scheduling to be keeping a blog like this, that I simply blog about the techniques I’ve tried, what’s worked for me, and my trials (including failures) in the art of time management.

All that being said, I want to post tonight with a bit of a different tone.  Tonight I don’t have any suggestions, new techniques to try, or stories to tell.  Tonight, rather, I have a question.  It’s an age-old one, by which I mean one that came about in the 1990′s.  Self-help books – how useful are they.  Already I can feel some of you judging me.  “Only losers need self-help books,”  you’re thinking.  “But,” I have to response, “then why are they so popular?”

Sure, I’m not the type to buy a book about relationship advice.  I’m probably not the type to buy a cook book either, but my point is this:  when does being independent lead to becoming a silo?  When does figuring things out for oneself turn into building up a fortress and closing oneself off to helpful advice?  It’s a fine line, or at least I think it can be.  Sometimes we’re so used to being self-sufficient that we become skeptical of others and their advice, when we could really benefit from it.

I’m not advocating running out to the nearest bookstore to buy Stress Management for Dummies.  I’m not even suggesting reading this blog every week (though, I’d love it if you did).  What I am suggesting here is being a little more open-minded about advice.  After all, thinking we know everything is the most immature and naive kind of thinking.  Perhaps, someone should tell self-help book authors that.

Click here, here,  and here for your two minutes of procrastination.

stress management pt. one

I have come to the conclusion that life is always going to be stressful.  In the past, I would always think to myself, “The craziness will die down in a few weeks,” or, “Once the semester is done, I’ll have time to breathe.”  I was wrong.  It’s just the nature of being busy that once one stressful task ends and your schedule opens up, another stressful task naturally takes its place.  I am never not busy.  I’m starting to accept that.

This realization makes stress management ever more important for me.  If am always going to have a packed schedule (and it’s just the case that I am), I better just stop resisting it and figure out how to deal with it in a healthy way. 

The winter intercession (a time that I promised myself way back in October would be stress-free) has proven to be even crazier than the fall semester.  Balancing forty-five hours of work a week (spread out over three jobs) along with my Watson Fellowship responsibilities is hard enough.  Add on top of that the research I am conducting for my honors thesis, which is in itself a full-time job, and you can begin to understand why my day planner cannot accommodate all the things I need to schedule.  My New Year’s resolution to stress less has truly been put to the test, and it is only the 10th of January.

This week, even though it has been one of my busiest yet, I worked on a new stress management technique.  I’ve posted before about knowing yourself (click here to read all about it) and how it can make scheduling easier.  This is a similar technique.  Know yourself.  Know what stresses you out most, and be proactive in preventing these situations from arising.

For instance, my biggest pet peeve is running late.  I hate being late or even thinking I am going to be.  I literally stress this more than anything else.  So to combat my stress, I am going to take precautionary measures.  I am going to try to schedule small fifteen-minute buffers between tasks (when I can) to allow for running overtime.  I am also going to schedule “spill-over” time, time during the week that I can use to tackle tasks I planned to finish but could not.  Both of these precautions will allow me to be late without really stressing it.  I can just tell myself, “You have time to finish this later.”

Knowing what stresses you out is important, if you are going to be able to eliminate that stress.  Learning how to minimizing the stress in my life is something I plan to work on this year.  However, sometimes stressful situations arise that cannot be avoided.  Next week we’ll tackle how to handle these situations!

Click here for your two minutes of procrastination.

it’s not about scheduling

When I signed on to my WordPress account tonight, I was initially shocked to see a sudden surge in the number of people who viewed my blog since January 1st.  Then, the thought occurred to me that I shouldn’t attribute those readers to my skills as a blogger.  They are more likely a function of New Years resolutions to get organized.

If you are expecting a post on how to get organized for 2012, I’m sorry but I will have to disappoint.  Perhaps, my post from January 1st, 2011 might help you (check it out by clicking here).  Or, you could click here to see all my posts on new scheduling techniques.  Nope, this post will not address how to keep a day planner (but check that out by clicking here) or how to organize a messy cork board (but here’s a post that will).  This one is going to go in a bit of a different direction.

Due in large part to some soul-searching and critical evaluation I have been doing of late, my posts (I know) have been less about scheduling techniques and more about stress management.  Sure these are not the same thing, but they are certainly related.  The more balls you have to juggle, the more anxiety you will have about dropping one.  Keeping with this new theme, my resolution this year is to better deal with my stress.  I want to maintain all my responsibilities (and my crazy schedule), while learning to enjoy life instead of constantly feeling anxious about it.

Aer go, this post is the first in my quest to stress less.  How do we manage all our responsibilities, while still finding time to do the things that make us happy.  And, how do we deal with the anxiety of making sure everything gets done on time?  These are the questions I am asking myself now, and I plan to share my journey through posts here. 

Think about it.  Wouldn’t it be a terrible thing to turn around twenty years from now with regrets, thinking we were too busy to enjoy what is supposed to be the greatest time of our lives?  A schedule is just our way of organizing the things we have to do so that we have time for the things we want to do.  Those things we want to do are the ones that really matter.  In the end, life isn’t about scheduling.  It should be about enjoying.

So, why not embark with me on a journey to happiness through better time management, stress management, and life management skills?  I’m sure we will visit new scheduling techniques along the way.  I promise we will visit ways to deal with anxiety.  And, I hope we will find a way to enjoy our busy lives.

 Click here for your two minutes of procrastination.

overworked = oversleeping

My six days in California were amazing.  Sure, I was working most of it, but I made some time for site-seeing also.  Trying to make the most of my time there, however, meant getting very little down time and sleep.  For seven days (the six days of my trip and one day prior when I was preparing to depart), my schedule was packed, and it was nothing but go go go. 

On Sunday I worked for most of the day, spent the remainder of it packing and hitting all of the cliché San Francisco tourist spots, and then hopped on the red-eye at 10:30 PM.  Needless to say, I passed out immediately, and before I knew it the five and a half hour flight was ending.  I foolishly thought, as we got off the plane, that those five hours would be enough to sustain me for the rest of the day.  I planned on catching up on sleep over the Thanksgiving break, because I did not have time to do so right away with school work, work work, and a tone of laundry to catch up on.  But then, I got back to my apartment and saw my bed.  It looked so inviting and my feet hurt so badly from being on them for seven days straight.  I thought, “Well, I do have forty-five minutes to spare…”  So at 8 AM I crawled into bed without unpacking a single thing and still in my clothes from the night before.  And at 2:45 PM I woke, having slept a whole six hours longer than I intended.  I had slept through two alarms, the time I allotted myself to do laundry, four hours of work I had committed myself to, and about an hour or so of time to catch up on school work.

I have never overslept before.  I make sure to set two alarms just to ensure that I will not.  What I took away from my California trip, however, is that I rush too much.  I often go from one thing to the next without being present and without taking anything in.  I can be too focused on getting things done that I sometimes disregard what’s best for myself and my health.  So while I was disappointed that I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to yesterday, I ultimately shrugged it off, rescheduled my tasks, and thought, “Wow, I really needed that sleep.”

The take away this week is that being busy is okay.  Working hard is okay.  Being dedicated is okay.  But one’s health and well-being should always be a priority.  You cannot do the work you need to do to the best of your ability if you are sleep deprived, worn out, or in the wrong state-of-mind.  This week spend your two minutes of procrastination doing something relaxing, and remember to always put your health before getting things done.

whatever happened to predictability?

When I was a kid, I used to spend every Friday night watching Full House on FGIF with my family.  That was back before my life became organized chaos, back before work and other responsibilities.  Looking back on those days I do not miss the carefree feeling so much as the predictability of it all.  Everything was part of a routine: school, lunch, recess, homework, television, dinner.  Ah, things were so much simpler then, back when I knew what to expect.

It’s clear that I am an avid scheduler, I write everything down, I plan, and in many respects I live according to routine.  Yet, inevitably every week something unexpected pops up – without fail.  Most weeks I can work around it.  Some weeks it throws me off entirely.  A few times I’ve nearly thrown my hands in the air in defeat.  Every time something pops up a scramble ensues, as I try to move things around and fit in what needs to get done.  My routine is routinely rearranged, and my day-to-day becomes largely unpredictable.

Unpredictable, for me a least, has for a long time meant scary.  It is the unknown.  It’s the unplannable.  It is everything that can wreck a schedule in one fell swoop.  In the past the unpredictable nature of my life made me anxious.  I would dread late emails at work, changes to the syllabi in class, or invites from friends last-minute, because all of these could mean added work and stress.

This summer I am working on my phobia of unpredictability.  It is the nature of life that things will come up, that routine will have to be broken, that there will be surprises.  How we deal with these things, I have found, depends largely on our perception of them.  If I see any deviation from my schedule as stress-provoking, then I will be anxious all the time.  If I reframe the way I approach these deviations, looking at them instead as spontaneous and adventurous, then I will tackle them with a calmer and more productive attitude.  I may hate having to squeeze in unpredictable tasks, but if I try my best to think of these things positively I can at the very least live a less stressful life.

This week try to be spontaneous.  Routine is great and helps you to be productive.  Stepping outside of that routine occasionally, however, if ever important in helping you to learn how to deal with unavoidable unpredictability.  Be spontaneous now and again.  There is no harm in living in the moment.  Click here for your two minutes of procrastination.

the thin line between organized and ocd

Though the majority of my experiences blogging have been positive, I cannot help but recall one that was no so pleasant.  In November I went on a job interview that seemed at first to be going very well.  Half way through, however, the interviewer noted that she had read my blog.  She said she thought my scheduling was impressive and she loved how organized I appeared to be.  She worried, however, she said that my strict organization would not mesh well with the chaotic work style of my potential supervisor.  She asked me how I approach situations in which I simply cannot be organized.  Needless to say the question threw me for a loop.

If it is not blatantly clear from the posts I have accumulated here over the past year and a half, I have a very Type A personality.  That is, I am punctual, organized, analytical, and headstrong.  I like things done in a systematic way; I just do not do chaos and disarray very well. 

For the past four weeks, however, my obsession with organization has been put to the test.  My internship at the Bronx Defenders is anything but a conventional nine to five job.  My role as an investigator intern is to track down surveillance, speak with complaining witnesses (alleged victims), and create diagrams to be used in court demonstrations.  The entire process of getting investigation requests from perpetually busy attorneys, finding witnesses in a timely fashion, and passing on the gathered information to the proper person is one that literally could not be more disordered.  One could plan and re-plan, schedule and organize, analyze and re-plan again, but these attempts would all be in vain.  The nature of this job is such that it simply cannot be systematized; it simply is not conducive to scheduling.

For the first week or two of my internship I felt frustrated and unproductive.  I kept thinking that there had to be a way to streamline the process, to be more efficient, to get more done.  I tried fruitlessly to organize and plan, but ended up only becoming more exasperated.  After weeks of trying I gave up on trying to control every aspect of my work, I accepted that somethings just are not conducive to scheduling, and I embraced the chaotic nature of the job.  And a funny thing happened - I started not to hate disorganization so much.

What I have learned through this experience is that being organized is a good skill to have.  My supervisors and co-workers always noted that I am on top of my tasks and very punctual.  However, there are times when you just cannot be organized.  In these instances the most important skill to possess is adaptability.  Being able to work with others who are disorganized or in chaotic environments is just as important as being organized and punctual.  I realize now that this is how I should have answered the question posed to me back in November in my interview.

When you are faced with disarray, remember that there is a thin line between being organized and appearing to be OCD.  Sometimes it is just better to let go and embrace the chaos… though I’d argue most of the time it is better to stay on schedule.  The two minutes of procrastination this week is actually 4 minutes, but with good cause so click here.