continuation from diny’s questions from the headache post.
why is it that i feel so overwhelmed? it is not like i am responsible for the world’s survival. well, i know what destresses me somewhat – writing down everything that’s on my mind. thankfully, i am not stressed now, but let me write down the list of responsibilities that i have. maybe, diny, its more than yours. it is probably (definitely) less than maha’s. but perhaps our individual tolerance levels are different for activities. i know, for example, tim doesn’t like to keep more than a few things on his to-do list at a time. neither do i, really, it is just i’ve seen him time and time again be “ruthless” with task creep, and just cut out things he doesn’t want to think about completely from the sphere of his concern. very smart. (reminiscent
of carnegie’s advice to “live in the sector of today“)
i suppose my activities list has several sections:
- personal responsibilities:
- close people who i’d like to keep in touch with on a daily/weekly basis, such as friends, parents, tim
- people who i need to spend at least an hour/month writing, or 2 hours/month meeting (per person) acquaintances at school, ex coworkers, coworkers, photography acquaintances
- schoolwork
- since i attend all my classes, this is 11 hours a week for classes alone.
- for school work, it is about 4 hours of reading a week, plus about 20 hours per assignment – with assignments usually being due every other week.
- 2 hours a week at the computer science office, this is really friend-time though.
- work
- depends on the week; thankfully this is more of a mental pressure as my manager understands that i can’t be available 8-4.
- on average about 5 hours a week.
- chores
- since i’ve moved out, this list has increased significantly. beyond daily cleaning that takes around an hour a day (dishes, bathroom, bedroom) there’s also..
- weekly cleaning: laundry (~2.5hrs per load, mostly waiting), floor washing (30 mins), dusting (10 mins), cleaning up after the week’s activities (1hr) (if we didn’t have time to put things we use away)
- about once every 2 weeks i dedicate myself into scrubbing down an area of the apartment. that takes around 3-4 hours per area
- shopping – of course tim helps – but independently of what he ends buying, i usually need to spend about 2 hours each week on a shopping trip
- cooking; the foresight to take things out to defrost them or to buy them. coming up with things to cook. the actual process of cooking. breakfast is easy, thankfully, but dinner is slightly more complex – at least in the amount of works it always feels like.
- personal time
- interior design: ~2 hours a week easily on just reading/planning
- humor: ~2 hours a week reading random things
- random things: ~3 hours a week
- blogs: ~2 hours of reading, commenting, writing lists like this one
- books: ~4 hours a week on leisure reading of some sort
- tv: ~5 hours a week on watching the shows that we follow (ads aren’t part of the equation
- transportation: ~30 mins a day biking, if i’m not leaving downtown. (or going too far, or making more than one shopping trip)
- fashion and gossip reading: forced myself to go through these faster as i know its a total time waste. BUT FUN. ~2 hrs/week
- my photography: yeah, that thing. anywhere from 0hrs to 6/week on shooting. on any average week about 2 hours editing old work.
- random knowledge: ~4 hours a week on news, various tutorials/guides, just learning new things
- showering, make up, choosing clothes: :) this is as much relaxation as it is a time “waste” of picking what to wear! (yesss warm weather)
- shopping, not groceries: decoration stuff, clothes, stuff for home (like cleaning stuff), books/journals. ~5hrs/month
- pure day dreaming, aka meditation: ~1 hr a week
- sleep: whatever time is left
granted most of these are things that EVERYONE HAS. probably the entire freaking list is identical for most of us. i guess maybe its my conscious awareness of all that i have to do in the next few days that makes me so frazzeled – and consequently forget what i need to do now, in an hour, was going to do, will have to do in a week.
also note i love doing most of the things on this list! :)
i’m too lazy to make any calculations though.
The main difference between your list and mine is the things that you do because you live on your own, such as cooking, grocery shopping, mad cleaning, and so on. I do those things, but it’s not my full responsibility.
And whatever I dont “have” to do just falls into the “other category for me.
Now, I’m about to quote you…OMG BLASPHEMY!!
“…just cut out things he doesn’t want to think about completely from the sphere of his concern.”
I noticed that I do that too. Like when I’m working on something, sometimes the idea of “yea man you gotta do this too and its badass, time consuming, and all this crap” comes to mind, but my concentration just slaps it back and I keep my full attention on whatever it is I’m doing. I only let the idea through when I just want to space out my current activity and think of something I look forward to, sort of like “man this design blows…..yea but later I gotta work with that other design which is totally badass.”
This goes back to that blog you wrote a while back about concentration. This is why I sometimes get irrirated when I get interrupted, especially if I dont consider the cause of the interruption to be more important than my current activity. I’m working on trying to keep a poker face, so far so good.
Now, not that I’m being sexist, but I think a big factor of how you handle your responsibilities different than I do mine could be that women handle things different than men. Actually, IT IS. I’m not sure if it applies to this situation, though.
To be continued.
See, the things you’ve listed are your routine things. Something you end up doing every week or every other week. Most things you have to do i.e. school, cleaning, grocery shopping and other things that you do for your leisure.
I have my own things as well. yes, no more school which took up a lot of time but I have a full time job, I go to the gym (for the past 2 weeks been going 4 times a week, hope to keep that up!) and I have a very big social life which is more of a leisure thing for me. But I need it cause it’s my way of relaxing after a hard day at work.
I start feeling overwhelmed when I can’t plan out my week to do everything I want and if something happens on top of my usual schedule i.e. me stage managing a show for a week.
You wrote out everything by hours, you know exactly what you need to do and how long it takes you. It may feel like it’s too much but look at your entry – you have it under control :)
And if you know you’re running low on sleep, for example, you just kinda move around some things to accomodate that.
I think you’re doing just fine, m’dear :)
i think writing everything out in detail like this and obsessing about it probably makes things worse than they actually are. it also makes your relationships with friends seem like burdens when you put them in the same timeline as your school assignments, etc. one thing you don’t ever want to do is start to resent the time you spend with friends, thinking that it’s taking away from time you could be doing other things. the simple way to deal with it is this: do what NEEDS to be done. make time for the things you WANT to do. everything else can wait. :)