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Now more than ever, there are many things in our day-to-day lives that are beyond our control: this can be difficult. We feel like we are asea with no shore in sight and little idea how to navigate these new waters. Below are some simple tips that are useful for keeping on top of your work in this unfamiliar remote space.
Several times throughout the day, inhale deeply through the nose and exhale passively through the mouth. This will help ease anxiety slightly and ground you, creating room to make progress.
Write out a list of all the tasks that come to mind, then rewrite this list in terms of urgency and things that can be completed quickly. There are many fancy ways to do this, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If notes on your iPhone or old-fashioned pen and paper work best for you--use that method.
Spend a portion of this time organising and cleaning your workspace and notes. This can be filing away AP US History notes or deleting some of those 50 tabs that you’ve kept open hoping to have time to get to someday. Bookmark the important websites and declutter. As you go through your tasks, try using this method: if a task takes less than two minutes, you can do it immediately.
You should see this task-writing and organization time as high-quality work time, and you should feel like you’ve accomplished something!
If you want to write an essay, then open a new Google document, create the title, and add a date. This small step will help ease anxiety, as you will have already achieved the task of beginning the essay. The accomplishment of a small task can start the ball rolling, and this can lead to further progress with the task that you’ve started!
There may be times when we have an ‘ahead’ or ‘behind’ day; this is OK. Communicate with your family, peers, schoolmates, counselor, and/or academic mentor when you’re feeling overwhelmed. A problem shared is often a problem halved, and, more often than not, the support of others can help ease the burden.
I find this to be super valuable, as it’s a reminder that learning can be very cool. As a Physics Major, I find the fact that there are more than 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone helps put everything in perspective.
