Tag: Time Management

What if I’m really, really screwed?

The advice here is always to choose sleep and a good meal over perfection. If it all falls apart and you really, REALLY have to stay up all night, here are some tips to get through it without feeling terrible.

I can’t get started! (Part 2)

The trick with making sleep nonnegotiable is to make “go to bed on time” the stress trigger. If you work better while feeling a bit under the gun, start telling yourself at Noon that bed is only eleven hours away. You’ve only got eleven hours, move move move move. All that stuff you say to keep yourself awake and moving at 1AM? You need to start saying it 1PM. You are the one creating pressure for yourself, not the time of day or night; you can pour it on just as easily at 4PM.

I can’t get started! (Part 1)

Procrastination is a friend and an enemy. First of all, calm down, it really is OK to procrastinate. Some people work better under a bit of stress and sometimes those people have to manufacture it themselves. It’s fine! There are two situations you have to look for, though. 1) You procrastinate too much (it leads to lost sleep, lost fun, self-recrimination, and poorer work.) 2) You’ve lost all motivation and are replacing it with plain old stress.

“I literally do not know how to study.”

Studying is a problem for many students, especially if they’ve always done well enough school simply by doing the readings, the homework, and paying basic attention in class. Different people hit their personal wall at different times. Some people never do because they avoid classes they are not certain of succeeding at, or they lower their expectations rather than raising their efforts. The truth is, all of that is fine. It’s OK to avoid challenges; it’s OK to seek them.

Dealing with Mental Illness as a Student

There won’t be any answers here, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded that there are options, especially because so many mental illnesses function in ways that hide your options from you. Depression and anxiety each make it their job to the erase possibility of improvement. Other illnesses persuade you that nothing was ever wrong in the first place; it’s just other people’s perceptions that are off. No blog post can account for everything that mental illness will put a person through

Summer Classes Are Over, Now What?

Relax. Yes, folks, that is the advice. Plan to spend two weeks doing as little as you can get away with before you start readying yourself for fall. Go to bed early, sleep late, have an extra helping or two of your favorite foods, and focus on rest and recovery. Read your favorite book, watch your favorite moves, spend time with your favorite people, whatever works for you!