How To Handle Having TOO MUCH To Do

How to Handle Having TOO MUCH To Do

So let’s say you’re in the same boat I am (this is a running theme, have you noticed?) and you’ve just got, like, SO MUCH STUFF that HAS to get done YESTERDAY or you will DIE (or fail/get fired/mope). Everything needs to be done yesterday, you’re sick, and for whatever reason you are focusing on the least important stuff first. What to do!

Take a deep breath, because this is a boot camp in prioritization.

Make a 3 by 4 grid. Make it pretty big. The line above your top row goes like this: Due YESTERDAY - due TOMORROW - due LATER. Along the side, write: Takes 5 min - Takes 30 min - Takes hours - Takes DAYS.

Divide ALL your tasks into one of these squares, based on how much work you still have to do. A thank you note for a present you received two weeks ago? That takes 5 minutes and was due YESTERDAY. Put it in that square. A five page paper that’s due tomorrow? That takes an hour/hours, place it appropriately. Tomorrow’s speech you just need to rehearse? Half an hour, due TOMORROW. Do the same for ALL of your tasks

Your priority goes like this:

5 minutes due YESTERDAY

5 minutes due TOMORROW

Half-hour due YESTERDAY

Half-hour due TOMORROW

Hours due YESTERDAY

Hours due TOMORROW

5 minutes due LATER

Half-hour due LATER

Hours due LATER

DAYS due YESTERDAY

DAYS due TOMORROW

DAYS due LATER

At this point you just go down the list in each section. If something feels especially urgent, for whatever reason - a certain professor is hounding you, you’re especially worried about that speech, whatever - you can bump that up to the top of the entire list. However, going through the list like this is what I find most efficient.

Some people do like to save the 5 minute tasks for kind of a break between longer-running tasks. If that’s what you want to try, go for it! You’re the one studying here.

So that’s how to prioritize. Now, how to actually do shit? That’s where the 20/10 method comes in. It’s simple: do stuff like a stuff-doing FIEND for 20 minutes, then take a ten minute break and do whatever you want. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s how I’ve gotten through my to do list, concussed and everything.

You’ve got this. Get a drink and start - we can do our stuff together!

Grow Up - Glo Up Tags Masterpost

The tags have been available on the blog site for a while, but I decided to put them in a post that you lovelies can save for future references as well. Enjoy💋 

Bathroom ~ Cleaning and bath time fun

Beauty ~ Skincare, makeup, you get the gist

Bedroom ~ Organization, decorating, and possible relationship advice

Carpe Diem ~ How to get yoself together and become a better person

Cleaning ~ Overall organizations and cleaning tips

Education ~ Your brain is your biggest asset, so feed it

Earth ~ Zero waste, and other things regarding the planet we depend on but treat poorly

Finance ~ Money, and how to get more, and keep what you have for longer

Fitness ~ Get off the bed and keep your body and mind fit

Food ~ Any recipes or food related content

Garden ~ Plants, gardening, and how to develop a green thumb

Glo Up ~ Inspirational glo up pictures and stories

Grounding Box ~ Hobbies and knickknacks to ground yourself with when responsibilities overwhelm you

Health ~ I just want y'all alive and well

Home ~ How to turn your house into a home

Kitchen ~ Y'know that place in the house where you’re supposed to cook and store food?

Languages ~ Learning languages is always fun and good for you

Luxury ~ The finer, more selfish, things in life, because I’m selfish

Mod Musings ~ Just me rambling into the abyss and sharing snippets of my life with strangers on the internet

Mod Stuff ~ Any updates or information I want to tell you guys regarding this blog

Moving ~ We can’t all live in our parents’ basements forever

Parenting ~ Can you believe some of us are responsible for little humans?

Pets ~ They’re basically millennial kids, anyways

Relationships ~ Platonic and romantic

Resources ~ External resources that may be beneficial to you

Reproductive Health ~ Your body, sex, and how to do it right

Safety ~ Stay safe, slay safe

Socialize ~ We all have to talk to other humans at some point

Style ~ Clothes, fashion, just put something on, please

Tech~ Tumblr-related stuff and other technology and internet stuff

Travel ~ The world is your oyster so explore it

Vegan ~ Any recipes or food advice that applies to the vegans as well

Work ~ Unfortunately, capitalism makes the world go round

Writing ~ For the little souls with lots of stories to tell

This is possibly the coolest video I’ve ever taken.

My Notes Masterpost

Hey guys! It’s finally that time of year, the time where I post all of my notes from the semester! (I’m actually posting all of my notes from the last three years) Feel free to use and distribute these notes as you please, but please do not repost on Tumblr without giving credit!

High School Notes

Algebra II- These are by far my largest files to date. Both PDFs are a mixture of my own notes and notes that my teacher gave me. 

Physics- I don’t have a whole ton of these notes, but they include key ideas, as well as step-by-step instructions for 1-D and 2-D motion problems.

AP Human Geography- This folder includes chapter outlines, worksheets, articles, and practice tests.

AP World History- FIFTY PAGES WORTH OF APWH NOTES! These are the notes that got me through the exam!

AP Psychology- Chapter outlines + two projects I did. I don’t have a whole lot of notes on this subject because I mostly used a workbook.

Introduction to Digital Technology- These notes are helpful for anyone taking a computer science class, but these do focus fairly heavily on web design.

Digital Design/Web Design- These are from second and third year web design classes, focusing on HTML/CSS.

Sociology- All vocab from a textbook written in the 90s.

Spanish II- I’m gonna be honest here and say I did very poorly in Spanish, but I did at least take a decent number of notes.

College Notes

ENGL1101- These are all Blackboard handouts from my professor. 

ENGL1102- These are all vocabulary terms for all things literature.

HIST2111- EXTREMELY HELPFUL FOR APUSH. This folder is literally hundreds of pages of American History notes from my college lectures.

American Government- Every single vocabulary term from my American Government textbook. These notes were written with Mildliners so I apologize for the light-colored text.

That’s all I have for now! As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions/technical problems with these notes. Remember that what I did may not work for you, but I hope these notes will at the very least help you out come exam time! Good luck and happy studying!

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

A question mark walks into a bar?

Two quotation marks “Walk into” a bar.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.

The bar was walked into by a passive voice.

Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.

good emotional skills to know 4 college but also in general

this is stuff that i’ve found helpful and am in the process of working on. they may not be achievable for you without help and may not work for your specific circumstance, but this is a list of suggestions that you might be able to think about. i am also not a mental health professional so please do feel free to contradict me!!

self soothing.  having a toolbox to take care of yourself by yourself. bc sometimes nobody else is available and you just gotta put some lotion on, listen to a tune, and go to bed early. 

checking in. checking in with yourself to see if you’re okay. knowing how to alter your strategies when your strategies aren’t working. knowing when your strategies aren’t working. this is just taking some time every day to reflect on what goals you didn’t meet and why and what you can do to fix that.

there’s nothing you “should” be doing. if you get caught up thinking “i should be doing x” that’s false! stop that! “should” be doing better implies that you have some obligation to do whatever it is that you “should” be doing. you don’t owe anybody except yourself. analyze why you think you should be doing that thing and change that into…. “i want to be doing x because…” or “doing x will make me happier, because…”. overall, more productive and less self-shamey. 

disconnecting from the crowd. eating in a crowded dining hall can be stressful! knowing how to be alone in a crowd and stay calm is helpful

being okay with being alone.  tbh college is kind of… being alone a lot, in my experience. even though you’re surrounded by people, a lot of time is spent alone. making friends is hard. your friends have different schedules. you’re busy. shit sucks. we make the best of it.

knowing yourself. this relates to a lot of what i’ve already said but like. knowing your emotional state and knowing what helps trick the monkey brain is helpful. stop repressing your feelings, friends.

talking to strangers. ordering from a menu! paying library fines. going to office hours. asking for a cashier at the register if there isn’t one. ya this is hard. ya you gotta expose yourself. sometimes i just try playing a persona. like this isn’t me ordering a sandwich. this is a cool me who knows how to talk to people who is ordering a sandwich.

you don’t have to be friends with your roommates. you just have to live together in a way that doesn’t make you two hate each other. ideally, you two will coexist in a way that doesn’t interfere with the other’s daily life.

give and taking. on the topic of roommates, sometimes your roommate can be a shitty person, but sometimes you are the shitty person! give a little but if they’re negatively impacting your life, communicate.

communicating during disagreements. explain what your emotions are instead of blaming them. “i feel hurt when you…” or “i feel frustrated when” or “i feel unappreciated when.” if things get heated, ask if you both can take a ten minute break and then come back. and don’t bring up disagreements when the other party is preoccupied or going somewhere. you can legitimately schedule a discussion.

it’s okay to apologize. learning to swallow your pride gets easier each time.

knowing that people work differently than you. some people are not gonna click with you and it’s gonna seem like they have this whole brain process up there that is totally unlike yours. and yeah! that’s how it is. and that’s chill if they aren’t hurting anyone else. work with them and be flexible!! 

comforting people. you will probably/definitely see someone cry! hell if i know how to comfort people. someone please help. but some things i’ve learned are: 1) different people need different things. different people need different things! 2) people need different things at different times. 3) you can ask them what they want and it won’t be weird. 4) apparently a lot of people like hugs? but ask. and it’s okay to not want a hug. 5) just show that you care in some way if you don’t know what they need. i used to think that if somebody needed to tell me what they needed it was a sign that i just didn’t know them well enough and we weren’t compatible or i wasn’t being a good friend. that’s fake! friendship isn’t based off of fitting naturally in every way and making an effort to be good for them is important.

knowing it’s okay to not be liked by everyone. it’s okay if strangers think you’re dumb because you said something dumb in public. you know you’re not dumb. it’s okay if not everybody you meet likes you. it’s okay if you do something cringey. everybody has their own shit to deal with and you will not shatter their world.  grow and move on!

forgiving yourself. i’m trying this new thing where when i feel embarrassed about something i say. out loud. “i forgive myself.” and then i just try to grow from that and move on without getting caught in a spiral of shame.

knowing what you need vs what you want and what is better at the time. what you need: a shower. what you want: to not do that. solution: take a shower! or maybe what you actually need is to go to sleep? but guess what. you probably know what is good for you. the hard part is actually doing it.

realize that building habits is less work than discipline. emotional effort is expended every time you have to make yourself do something. just make it part of your routine and you’ll just think it’s normal to do all the good things! like, for example, i’m trying to make it a habit to eat structured meals instead of a “eat when i’m hungry” thing because i know that makes me skip meals, which is bad!

you won’t be able to do everything. forgive yourself for that. write down  things that are top priority and focus on them. everything else is not important right now and you shouldn’t beat yourself up for not being able to do them.

your health is important. i’m not saying health will solve all your problems. it won’t! but health will cause a lot of your problems to go away. because let’s face it. not sleeping causes a lot of problems. 

it’s okay to ask for help. we say this a lot but it’s hard to internalize it. here’s a thought: there’s so much shame and hesitation about asking for help so by doing that you’re actually being proactive (which is respectable) and mature, and therefore… not weak or stupid. ask for help even before you need it! most people love to help others. and especially take advantage of people who are OFFERING help. for example: counselors at school or TAs. it’s literally their job. they want to do it. and if you don’t want to talk to anybody in real life, my inbox is always open.