Grad school & Update

I officially started grad school today. I’ve been working in the same lab/place for a couple of weeks now since January but now the real work starts. The work that will contribute towards my final degree (hopefully). Already, meetings are piling up, teaching duties are beginning this week and I have lots of ideas to generate, and experiments to start planning. Sounds stressful, right? Luckily, I devoted a lot of time this year to sort out my workflows and organisation strategies. I cleaned out my desk and lab bench surface. I added an in/out tray to my desk (which has made a LOT of difference). There are also lots of forms to be initialed, people to find and importantly, people to catch up with!

I’m trying to prioritise this year, which I think is one of the major challenges during your candidature. Finding time to spend with the important people and doing things just to relax and take a break from work. This weekend I’ve planned to go to some local markets and spend some time with my significant other. 

I also started watching House of Cards. It’s my main vice, TV. I love it and would probably find it very hard to give it up, so there’s always always time for TV. It helps me unwind and think about nothing which is very much needed sometimes!

Apologies for the roughness of the writing in my blog here. I’ve written a blog before but never in a formal sense, and I am doing little to no editing due to time constraints. But, just writing for about 10-20 mins a day has been really helpful and I can foresee it removing those mental blocks I get so much during the work week. 

Workflows

Workflows, productivity, automation, to-do, lists: all words I love. I love thinking about efficiency and improving the way I work so that I get the maximum work amount done in the least amount of time. I’m all about working smart, not hard. Over the past year in particular I realised that working a lot does no equal more productive work. I never took breaks, didn’t take a holiday and worked constantly on my project in my limited amount of time. As a result, towards the end I was depressed, unmotivated, burnt out, mentally and physically exhausted. 

I forgot to do the most important thing - look after myself. I lost sight of the bigger picture and focussed too hard. This causes a lot of strain on my brain and as a result I sort of took a step backwards. At the beginning of this year I was super prone to stress, anxiety and mental exhaustion. So I’m still working on rebuilding myself.

I feel like I’ve improved already. I now utilise valuable tools; apps, notebooks, my phone, and organise my life so that I can carve out time for myself when I feel like it. I have to realise that even if I’m missing in action, the world will move on and everything will be ok. It’s important to sit back and take a break sometimes. Do something mind-numbing, relax, and eat whatever. I really like having something like that to look forward to. It’s extremely good to just stop thinking about work for some periods of time. It does wonders and lets your mind “reboot". That might be my word of the month.