Tag: Organization

Burnout, Executive Dysfunction, and Indulgence

~ Olivia Hill ~ 1 Comment

I typically post my blogs at a different day and time than when I wrote them so I’m going to start marking the actual day and time. It’s 16:42 on September 19th, and I can’t decide what to do with my Saturday afternoon.

My planner works really well during the week because my schedule is consistent due to work. Sometimes on the weekends it’s not as great if I’m feeling rundown. Today it’s definitely been more like the latter.

I’ve been laying here thinking “I know I’m tired and it’s good to sleep, but I also need to [insert my entire todo list].” It’s difficult to get up and just do something.

I think I’m giving myself a pass this weekend because I’m feeling a bit burned out from 2020 but that doesn’t mean I get to skip my responsibilities and my actual self care. Indulgence is sleeping longer than you need because getting up sounds hard. I don’t want to be indulgent, so I think I’m going to start with something small and get my momentum going.

My hope is that this will get me moving to do other activities. Sometimes the resources we use for mental and physical health and products stop working, or need a jump start. When that happens I try to do an activity I enjoy that gets me moving, or turn on music I like while I work. Occasionally the making a list and just tackling one thing on it and deciding whether to rest afterwards or not is helpful.

Today, I think I’ll make tomorrow’s schedule so I start the day off right, and I’ll pick one cleaning chore, and one mindful activity (so not videogames) to do to relax.

This year is tough on everyone. What do you do to get yourself motivated, or started on a more healthy track or to do list?

From Start to Finish

~ Olivia Hill ~ Leave a comment

What’s the best way to manage time? How do you organize your own ambitions and interests? Do/did you just pick one to focus on and leave the rest behind? Do you do a little bit of each every day or week? Do you master one and move onto the next?

I think it’s safe to say I’m an organization fanatic. I love trying new ways of organizing my things and my time. I love filing at work. I love sorting out my things and folding clothes and arranging items. I love trying new time management apps and making lists; you get the picture. Anyway, my whole life, I’ve always made it my goal to improve in every aspect of my life. Lately, due to my graduation coming sooner than expected, and the added fact that I no longer attend classes, I’ve needed to rethink my time management. I’ve got to consider what I want to do for my future career-wise and with my hobbies.

I’ve been feeling like my old method of doing a different hobby/endeavor each day is failing me in terms of my potential. So, here’s my new plan:

Start something. Finish it. Move on.

Whether that thing is beating a videogame, learning a language, getting my body into shape enough to do something specific, writing, knitting, sewing, etc…

The only added rule is I also have to maintain the cleanliness of our apartment, as well as keep up with daily responsibilities and maintain things I’ve learned or achieved already. What’s the point of learning a language if I forget it a month or two later?

This is the way I’m going to try things for a while. Recently I’ve been trying to beat Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for PS4. You can check out my YouTube channel for those broadcasts. Then I’ll do something else, finish it, and move on. I hope this new way proves to be more beneficial. The way I’ve been doing it seems to have downsides.

In K-12 school, the worst part of the way we do it in America, is there’s always a review time which ends up becoming a “we’re learning it all over again” time. We’re thrown so much information, and the focus pinned on testing so much so that students often do rote memorization just enough to remember information for exams and then it’s forgotten in a night. I can’t tell you how many times myself and students I know spent cram sessions trying to “learn” the material to ace the exam. It doesn’t work and our teachers know it, but the system is broken and that’s how we learn here.

My way of jumping between tasks feels a bit like that: I don’t finish learning as often and I have a lot of half started projects which I’ll just have to restart later because I’ve forgotten what I was doing. It’s my little experiment; I hope it works.