Pick something and go July 20, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, papers, research, work.Tags: overwhelmed, papers, priorities, research
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I wrote up a list of things I need to be dealing with at work. While it was helpful for me to have a list to reference, it was also rather disheartening. I came up with over 10 things, and all but three were fairly sizable goals, like writing a paper.
I was rather overwhelmed, but happened to think about GMPs recent post on writing in a crunch. Her method was to break things down into bite-size chunks until the project was done. But what do you do when you have half a dozen big projects at the same time? I guess I tried to take a similar approach.
The thing is, I’m not in a huge time crunch to get most of this stuff done, but if I try to tackle several of these things at once, I’m fairly certain that none of them will get done, ever. So I picked off the easy things that I can work on here and there or that have definite deadlines (those first three). Of the 7 remaining items, I prioritized the ones that would be easiest to finish as well as providing the least amount of conflict in terms of computational resources with my current projects. I decided to just focus on the first one until I get to a point where I can’t work any more. Once I reach that point, I’ll shift to the second on the list until I can get back to the first or it gets finished.
I KNOW I can’t multitask well (or even passably, for that matter). The problem is that there are still these six other things that are sitting there, and it makes me uneasy to not even touch them. There’s this little voice that says, “If you don’t work on it now, you might NEVER get to it.” It’s really an irritating voice because it fails to recognize that I can only work on one thing at a time, and I’ll be more productive if I can maintain some decent focus. It also fails to recognize that there is a significant reduction in stress every time I can cross one of those things off my list entirely. And even if I start working on three or four of them, there are some that will have to get left behind as well. There is just no way to work on all of them simultaneously.
I wish I knew where that little voice came from and why it doesn’t listen to reason. Somehow I keep feeling like I could convince it that this is the sane approach. Instead, the best I can do for now is to ignore it.
How do you deal with things when they seem overwhelming?
Now I’m ready to start January 4, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, family, personal.Tags: completion, priorities, theme
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I mentioned that I wasn’t making any resolutions this year, but I’m putting together a plan. Part of the planning process is coming up with a theme for the year. I have to tell you that I really stink at that sort of thing. I’ve been reading about other people’s themes with envy. How can one think of a single word (or two) to describe a year?
On the other hand, I know where I’m going with this. The past three years have been utter choas with me finishing my MS, my husband finishing his PhD, me going to grad school in Minneapolis. Things have been left up in the air…important things…or nearly everything.
Chris talked about asking what he wanted out of life. That was a good starting point for me. I can certainly identify with relationships suffering because of work. But it was Luke’s post about giving up on adoption that brought things home for me.
I want to find a better balance in life, and to do so means not figuring out all the things I will get done, but figuring out what I will leave behind. And so while looking at my list of objectives for the year and the list of projects I’ve been cooking up, I think I really need to prioritize. Not everything is going to get done, but there’s something I really want out of the things I do finish: I want a sense of completion. I really want that sense of accomplishment that comes from going start to finish on something. So many things are hanging in the balance, and I feel like I should clear some of those things out to make room for the next things. I think focusing more and getting things out of the way will really help the out-of-balance feeling I’ve had. It comes from not ever feeling like I could make significant progress on anything either because of time constraints or physical absence. So my theme this year will be completion. If I’m going to do something, I need to complete it before doing the next thing, which means I have to back off from my ‘try to do everything at once mode’. I think the lack of focus due to too many balls in the air is the reason I haven’t made good progress on things that are very important to me. May this year be a step in sorting those things out and following them to fruition.
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