One Week Down...

Only fourteen to go.

I can say with confidence that this week was one of the most stressful I have experienced so far. (That is, in my life. Not just in college.)

I was IN class 43 hours this week, and working on homework the other spare moments I had. One thing I learned about myself in the last 5 days is this - that stress makes me flaky and forgetful.

On Thursday alone I managed to:
-Accidently leave two notebooks I needed at my apartment when I went to campus for the day
-Accidently leave my insurance card at the CVS pharmacy counter
-Accidently leave the STOVE ON at my apartment when I went home to get the two notebooks I forgot in the morning
-Accidently leave one of the needed notebooks at studio when I went to the meeting I needed it for

This is not ok. I can't just leave the stove on for 3 hours. I know it is normal for me to be stressed when I am not used to a routine but I want to get to the root of why I get this way, what I can do about it next week, and how to prevent the overwhelming feeling one, five, and fifty years from now. College will not be the only stressful time in my life - there has got to be a better way to manage stress than by making haphazard lists on the backs of receipts and flitting around like I have never taken a college course before.

So WHY has this week been so stressful? WHAT parts of my personality make me this stressed? HOW can I prevent this in the future?

I have determined that my fatal flaw this week has been my lack of balance. My stream of consciousness is a rollercoaster with peaks of productivity obsession and valleys of laziness bingeing. The problem with this is the valleys of laziness last much longer than the peaks of productivity. I spend three hours working really hard and then "reward" myself by spending the next 8 hours doing absolutely nothing. I spend 5 minutes typing up this blog post, then 20 minutes on facebook. A solution I am going to attempt this week is to make a more intentional to-do list with specific "rewards" for projects accomplished. All rewards will be limited to shorter spans of time than I am currently allowing myself and if I feel myself going off track I will turn back to my to-do list and choose a different task to complete in order to maintain productivity.

When it comes to the rest of my life, I think it is important to use the calmer times in my life for productivity instead of putting things off. There are so many things I could have done this summer that I didn't do and (surprise!) they still need to be done and I now have far less time available to do them. I also hope to adopt the practice of short spurts of intense focus. Growing up my mom got my brother and I to help clean the house by doing a "10 minute blitz" where she would set the timer for 10 minutes and we picked up/cleaned as much as possible in that time. I still do the "10 minute blitz" when cleaning my room at my apartment, but I think I can adopt it into my schoolwork as well (maybe "1 hour blitz" instead of 10 minutes - see how much work can get done in 1 hour). Setting a time limit and shutting out all distractions for that amount of time should help me to get more done in less time, whether it's math homework, cleaning my house, or any other less than desirable activities. It will also make my opportunities to relax more refreshing.