(Not LGBT related but i could use some advice or some words of reassurance, or at least having a place to put my feelings) I'm in my last year of university, I'm working on my bachelor's degree project, I need to find options for master's degree, I need to choose something specific to focus on in my career going forward and I'm torn between two niches. Put more urgently, finals are starting in one week and I'm starting some sort of unpaid semi internship or something tomorrow and I feel completely paralyzed because of the amount of work I already have to do for uni, whatever will come with the internship (I'm completely in the dark about what my tasks entail), and the self doubt about how well I'll do this semester and if I'll be able to keep up. What if I'm not good enough? What if I am, but I'm so disorganised that I'll mess it all up? What if I keep freezing and won't be able to get out of that paralysis? I feel like there's so much stuff being thrown at me and I'm actually, genuinely, terrified. And the worst part is, usually I'd feel afraid and then get unreal amounts of motivation, but now??? I can't do anything. I know this is incoherent, I'm not in the best mindset right now lol.
Hi Redstatic, I completely get what you're saying. From what you've described, it sounds like you're suffering decision fatigue. Studies have shown that we can each only make so many decisions a day, and when we become overloaded, we begin to struggle to make decisions and eventually reach a point where we just can't make a decision, the paralysis you describe. Decisions are anything where you have a choice. This ranges from the obvious of what to have for dinner to the less obvious of which pair of socks to wear. Famously, Steve Jobs wore the same clothing everyday to eliminate several decisions each day. There is a wealth of material out there but I suspect the last thing you need is more research. I'll describe what works for me in the hopes that it helps you. For context, I have several children who have their demands and appointments, a house to run and keep up, a job with a mixture of short and long term projects and ad hoc demands for information, data and reports and finally several personal projects on the go. First thing is to dump everything in your mind so it's no longer occupying your mental capacity. I use Trello with boards for different groups (e.g. Family, Work, etc) and then lists in each for each topic (e.g. child, project, etc) where I capture everything that comes to mind. Once this is done, you no longer need to worry about remembering things as it's all in one place that you can access from your computer, phone and/or tablet. The next thing to do is add a column called "Today" and another for "Done". At the start of a period where you're going to focus on, say the internship, you open that board and look at the cards. Select a couple of cards that you are going to get done today and move them to the "Today" column. Obviously when finished, move them to "Done". The reason you pick only a couple is it limits your work in progress. Studies show that completing small tasks one at a time is more efficient than juggling several larger ones. The "Done" column helps visualise your progress, and as they mount up, you can feel the achievement. Lastly, when I have picked a card that I'm going to progress, I focus on it exclusively for 25 minutes. I turn off all notifications (I'd silence the phone but need to be contactable in case of emergency) and dig in. As I know it's only 25 minutes, I'm confident that everything else can wait. At the end, I'll get up and stretch, maybe get more coffee, check notifications and after about 5 minutes, I'll repeat this. This is known as the Pomodoro technique. I keep a pad of paper to hand in the event that something comes to mind unrelated to the task at hand as I simply write it down and move on. The idea is to remain as undistracted as possible, and seeing everything in Trello at this stage can derail your focus. Hopefully this will give you some ideas. You can take and twist what I do to suit your needs. Over time you can introduce labels, due dates and even priority as you see fit, or use a completely different tool. Should you wish to dig deeper, check out Deep Work by Cal Newport and Personal Kanban by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry.
I used to drive myself insane while worrying about all the what ifs. I got burnt out and I realized that what happens happens and you just have to adapt. So just do what you gotta do and the rest is irrelevant. Also Work hard to play hard. When I have to step up or get a lot on my plate I have to play hard, in order to counteract the stress. I also found out recently when you stop stressing out you have so much more time in the day to spend on other things. So you can look at it as saving you an hour or few in the day to apply to your goals or down time.
