Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

Today we’re lucky to have a guest post by Martin of The University Blog!  You can see more of his excellent work there. 

Spending so much time on the search for improving productivity can become unproductive. You read the thousands of blogs out there suggesting one thing or another, just in case it speaks to you in the right way.

For once, how about looking inward? What if you could listen to yourself and figure out exactly what makes you tick? Here are some ideas that could lead to you finding a strong inner voice. Who knows where it could lead?

Read the rest of this entry »

Another guest post! I’m quite fond of getting various points of view and new voices here at Scholastici.us, and this week Amy Brown offers us some advice on the Quarter-Life crisis. Having gone through one of these myself, I can speak to the veracity of her claims. Times, they are a-changin’, fast, and individuals are not always going to easily fall into the rolls that they were once supposed to. All I can offer here is: Hope Your Road is a Long One…

You suck. How many times has that thought crossed your mind? How many times have you had a sense that everyone is doing better than you are? I had a quarter-life crisis (QLC) when I turned 23. I work as a supervisor in a call center and I go to school full-time. When I had my 23rd birthday, I was unimpressed with my list of qualifications.

I couldn’t believe that I graduated from high school almost five years ago and still was only a sophomore in college. A guy I graduated with just finished his student teaching and is looking for an actual job as an art teacher now, another girl has her first job in a hospital as a nurse. I work in a job that requires a high school diploma.

After spending a few weeks in my crisis, I finally recovered and am now energized and excited to move on with my twenties. My quarter-life crisis began as unproductive and less meaningful than a bowl of Cheerios. Listening to my boyfriend tell me, “But look at all of the things you have done,” was not what I needed to hear. I needed a better how-to guide on navigating the quarter-life crisis. So, drawing from my own and others’ quarter-life crisis, here is a how-to on the quarter-life crisis:

Put Yourself on Autopilot

Put yourself on autopilot when your crisis hits. Go to work, to school, and go home. You don’t need to take on extra responsibility, but don’t go crazy and give up on your job just yet. Acting impulsively will magnify your QLC. If you are having a crisis related to your current lifestyle, losing that lifestyle financially will make a much bigger impact than the existential issues themselves.

If you are having the QLC, don’t make any kind of big decisions. Don’t buy a car, don’t move out of your apartment, don’t quit school, don’t quit your job. Despite the guidance given by all the productivity gurus, its okay to stop going to the gym for a while. It’s okay to watch House MD reruns and eat ice cream. Don’t let the impulses to do those things interrupt your actual life during this time, though.

Find a Muse

Find your inspiration for what you want to be. Don’t find a person to idolize, find a community. When my crisis hit, I started reading blogs of productivity gurus daily. I found Study Hacks (Cal Newport’s blog) after reading his book. I found Scholastici.us though Study Hacks, I found Lifehacker through Schlastici.us, I found HackCollege through Lifehacker. Read a book, read a magazine, read a blog. Find links; find other people that want to know the same things that you want to know. By subscribing to four RSS feeds, I really felt like there were so many other people out there that were in my situation. Knowing you’re not alone in the QLC endeavor is underrated.

On the converse of this, I also had a great example of what I didn’t want to be in my life. I had a group of friends that had all moved into a house together and were becoming a vortex of stagnation, triviality, and pollution. Seeing their situation gave me small ideas on what I didn’t want to turn into. I wanted to move forward, and I took a summer class. I wanted to be concerned about the bigger picture of my life, and I brainstormed all kinds of long-term goals. I hated their messy living quarters, and hired a cleaning lady.

Choose good models of what you want and don’t want. Both will give you ideas for your own life.

Don’t Run

Don’t run away from whatever thoughts you may be having about the QLC. It’s okay to tell people that you are having a quarter-life crisis. It’s become common. Give it credence. Admit that it’s really happening. By fighting internally, you’re only going to prolong it.

Tell people what you are thinking about. Tell them that you think you have a dead-end job, and that you will never have any of your past glory (whatever that may have been). Don’t try to go back to the past glory, but it’s okay to say it out loud. One day, I wrote down all of the things that I was annoyed with and couldn’t believe that I was concerned about them.

Don’t Ask Why, Ask What’s Next

In the early episodes of The West Wing, President Bartlet’s catch phrase is “What’s Next?” Try and think about where you could go from here and not why are you here. Focusing on the why brings up the past and makes the catch phrase “I should have…” Choose dates in the far future and decide where you’ll be those days. “I will be in graduate school in Chicago in four years… I will be picking up my kids from school in ten years…” By looking at what could be happening that far in the future, you create a reality about what’s important now.

Find a Short-Term Unachievable Goal

My favorite QLC story is that of my friend who is now a quasi-pro-wrestler. He had his quarter-life crisis when he turned 25 and couldn’t believe what hadn’t happened during the last ten years. He wasn’t in a band, he wasn’t in a really excellent job, and he wasn’t in any of the places he had wanted to be. His community was a group of pro-wrestlers from NWA Wisconsin. He got involved, started by practicing non-stop and refereeing matches, and set his goal to win a title his first year.

It’s been two years and he still hasn’t won a title. Ask him if he cares. It isn’t the destination, it’s the journey. My friend honestly loves being in the ring. Although his wrestling career has become a sidebar to everything else he’s doing now, it is what led him to where he is. Working towards that goal of the title is what pulled him out of his pit.

He set an unbelievably high goal that he wanted to attain during a short period of time. He didn’t wrestle in an actual match until three months after he started. The goal gave him a starting place for what he wanted to be the rest of his life. He didn’t wait for a sign, he didn’t give up when it took three months to get in the ring. He knew that wrestling would be the new centerpiece for his life and he followed it.

Adlai Stevenson once said, “We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.” Knowing where you’ve been is only the first step, knowing where you want to go is the second, but going there is the third. It doesn’t matter what comes after that, because at least you’ve done something.

Amy Brown is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Marathon County (one of the two-year UW-Colleges), transferring to UW-Green Bay for the 2008-09 academic year. She is pursuing a dual major in Economics and Environmental Policy and Planning.

In response to my post yesterday, Martin Hughes offered his take on the tougher times as a student. Martin is the writer of the University Blog, the best thing to come out of the UK since Hugh Laurie.

There’s no hiding from it. We all get bogged down with a pretty heavy load from time to time. Although it cannot always be avoided, you owe it to yourself to make sure you can keep the difficult moments to a minimum. So here’s a few tips that certainly helped me to stay balanced when faced with tougher times:

1. Keep your sense of humour / Keep your sense of fun: At times when I was stuck with my revision or couldn’t find the words to use in an essay, I would feel myself descending into unhappiness. Even the funniest situations would seem pointless and annoying. I realised pretty quickly that this was a bad move, because the more I felt the unhappiness, the less I felt I could achieve in my work. One time I noticed what I was doing, so I splashed my face with cold water and went for a run around my halls of residence. I finally spent 15 minutes chatting with my housemates just to get a more positive feeling inside. It worked so well that I managed to retrieve a lot of great info from my head and I did a good job in the end. I would always remember that moment at the more difficult points and it really helped to boost me.
2. Talk to friends and those on your course as part of some breaks: Contact with others is great to calm you down, think about more relaxing topics, and also to focus your mind back by discussing the way others may view what you’re writing/revising…it may give you some helpful points and new lines of direction.
3. Get your priorities straight: You might be stressing, but some things are more important than others. Strict deadlines need to be prioritised, as do matters that hold up other tasks until you’ve done them (it’s no use trying to climb the wall if you haven’t built it yet…). Other things, such as notes, everyday study, minor (i.e. less important & non-graded) tests, outings, and so on, can wait. However, do set aside time to eat, drink, speak to others and relax. No matter how bad the situation may seem, it’ll be a heck of a lot worse if you don’t take the rough with the smooth!
4. Don’t compare your own study regimes and writings with others: You don’t have to ignore them, just don’t start comparing…you’ll end up feeling unhappy with your own work and falsely believing that your methods suck, no matter how good they might be. If you need advice, ask the right people instead! And always listen to yourself…if a study technique seems to work brilliantly for you, who cares if it doesn’t seem to work for anyone else?
5. Be prepared to ask for help: Tutors and advisers won’t bite. They should be able to point you in the right direction so long as your questions are a bit more focused than, say, “How do I do the essay?”
6. Get daylight!: The number of people I knew who shut themselves off to the world in order to complete an essay or presentation is amazing. Even in the middle of the day, they would have their curtains closed, and work by their desk light alone. Why they did this, I’ll never know, but it doesn’t help. Get some natural light in…your body will thank you for it.
7. Study/Write in comfort & find an area where you won’t be disturbed: If you feel uncomfortable in your surroundings, you won’t be able to deal with your work properly. Make sure you have at least one special place (be it your room, a park, or a quiet corner of the library) that you can use to get your best mental focus. When you’ve found a place, maintain your calm by giving yourself everything you need to get comfortable. Some people have a mascot, others want a chair they can curl up into, I personally liked to listen to music in the background (so I stayed in my room to work most of the time).
8. Tidy: I learned that when all my stuff was thrown all over the place, I couldn’t find everything I needed. In turn, this made me lose track of what was going on and I would lose a lot of time in the process. When I started my second year at university, I vowed not to have those untidy moments any more. My tidy strategy was a great success and my study seemed to fit into place a lot more easily. My advice is:

• —Use different coloured folders for different subjects/courses/books/essays
• —Have a stationery drawer and keep it stocked up
• —Set aside a part of your room (even if it’s just a section under the bed, or on your highest bookshelf!) that is dedicated to keeping all your uni work together and in one place. Then you won’t need to tear the entire room apart if you lose something. Oh, and you’re less likely to lose it in the first place…

9. Use a diary for future planning: While some presentations and tests may be sprung upon you in surprise, a lot of work can be scheduled in advance. If you’re really organised, you could even speak to tutors to find out what plans they have in place…you never know, they might inform you! But even with the scheduled tasks, try to list the deadlines and exam dates in a diary, including reminders a week, a fortnight, a month, beforehand. Then you won’t be in danger of forgetting or losing track of your priorities. Even better, add all your big social events in the diary so you don’t end up planning too much enjoyment right in the middle of your busiest period.
10. Emergency Time: If all else fails and you know you’re going to miss a deadline for whatever reason, do ask for an extension and be sure not to winge and moan. Just apologise and explain you require a little extra time. I did this once and I was granted a week’s grace without having to explain very much. However, this is a last-ditch thing and should never be relied upon as extra time or used as an excuse to procrastinate. Especially as your request may be turned down…

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Special thanks to Martin for his great post! Read more of his work at the University Blog. As to this post in particular, I think he’s right on the money. In particular with 7 & 8.