It’s that time of the year when the first assignments of the term start to peek around the corner, and the readings begin to pile up to insurmountable volumes. Work starts to build up and before we know it, we start to feel the passion drain away and a sense of resentment set in. Of course, that’s bad news — both in terms of not enjoying the things we work with on a daily basis as well as opening up a gateway to overworking and burnout.
The good news is, these things aren’t an inevitability! Here are 3 simple ways to reframe your work habits and manage your pipeline better. Here’s to a healthier, happier work ethic!
1. Managing Cognitive Load
Probably one of the biggest struggles we face when juggling multiple projects and classes at the same time is filing all of the tasks in our heads. Constantly running through to-do lists and processing the parts that make up all separate projects takes up a lot of mental energy and leaves behind even more anxiety. But there’s a simple way around this:
Set aside some time every day to organize your ideas and projects externally. Invest in a planner, Post-It notes, and some colored markers or download a planning software and do it digitally. Either way, getting the web of lists and tasks out of your head and setting it up in a way that’s visually accessible is a step towards more efficient work. Oh and reduced stress of course!
I recommend: Notion is one of my favourite project management and organization software and I mean it when I say I use it almost every day. The best part? You can get the pro-version for free if you have access to a university-related email address!
2. Importance of Closing
Even though it can feel like it sometimes, work-life isn’t really a never-ending race with one project jumping at you after another. Stopping to recognize milestones and celebrate the small victories along the way can change the way work fits into our lives. Projects are almost always made of smaller tasks and breaking them down into them can help keep the overwhelm in check. Projects are like cake — they taste great when you take one bite at a time, but trying to work the entire cake into your mouth straight up hurts.
I recommend: Boosted is a free app that helps track the time you put into each project and each task within the projects. Set aside a number of hours for your projects weekly and track the time you spend on each one so you don’t stretch yourself too thin!
3. Collaborate, Not Compete
Ever wondered why humans have a brain so big and complex? A big evolutionary reason behind this bit of magic is often referred to as the social brain hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the benefits of living in strong social communities were reflected in the exponential growth of our cognitive abilities. Essentially, collaboration and community through the millennia are what resulted in our big, crinkly brains.
If collaboration is what got us as a species to where we are today, why not bank on that more in our everyday lives? It’s understandable that we’ve learned to see our classmates and colleagues as competitors, vying for the same prize, but what if I told you that reframing it as finding solidarity with people in a similar position helps us reach our goals better? Imagine developing a caring friendship with your classmates and helping each other study for midterms and finals — it would not just be extremely helpful with the work we do, but also give us a space to rant and get out our built-up frustrations. Rather than merely sharing the same workspace, it could be a support system that lifts us all up to do our best. Trust me, just sitting at a café with your work/classroom friends and having a long complaint session every once in a while is super therapeutic, leaving me feeling better almost instantly. You should try it too, I think you’ll find you enjoy it thoroughly!
I recommend: Group chats and Google docs. Need I say more?
References:
R.I.M. Dunbar (2009) The social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution, Annals of Human Biology, 36:5, 562–572, DOI: 10.1080/03014460902960289
