Had to sit through a study skills seminar with one of my classes recently. The presenter was pretty good, which made it bearable 🙂 99% of the tips were things I already do/used to do as a student – including breaking tasks down into tiny steps and then scheduling them backward from the deadline – this is the secret to how I get so much stuff done, FYI.
But there was one tip early on that made me pay attention, because wow yeah am I not good at doing it.
What was the tip?
Schedule your fun time first.
Yep, you read that right. These seminars are based on massive data collections and studies, and one of the tips they found that top-performing students did compared to others was schedule in fun time and relaxation time BEFORE study and chores and school.
I am really not good at this. Writing tends to fall to the bottom of the priority list a) because it’s fun and b) because by the time I get three spare seconds, my brain is pretty fried. It’s *easier* to do basic admin chores than sit down to write, and there’s this perverse, fallacious belief somewhere deep inside that if only I could get all the admin stuff done *first*, writing would be easy/more fun/less tiring/more justifiable.
The lie there, of course, is that the admin will *never* be done. And neither will the housework, the day job tasks, the family chores/management, etc etc etc. And so writing drips to the bottom and is forced to subside in the cracks, the liminal spaces of my life.
One of my key goals this year is to stop overworking myself so much, without also diminishing my writing. I guess this is the key I need to learn: schedule the fun stuff first.
(What ‘fun’ thing do you always find yourself making excuses for not doing, even though you actually enjoy the activity? I’m so curious as to what other people do this with.)