Having laid on my bed for a good 30 minutes staring at my phone I finally gathered enough strength to plop myself up for perhaps one more hopefully 2-hour session of dancing with my data. While I had been lying down, I could not help but wonder why I felt like I had been through 2019 twice and I was now on my 3^rd lap of journeying through January to December 2019.

I simultaneously felt waves of disappointment, excitement and absolute panic. It really is quite possible to experience many emotions in one go. My disappointment came from the realisation that we are still in the first quarter of the year whilst my excitement came from the realisation that there’s still time to accomplish a lot.

My panic? That came from the remembrance of a looming deadline which I misread to begin with. I thought I had a good 4 weeks to continue preparing for my annual progress review for thine research but turns out I only have 3 weeks (*inhales deeply, exhales… repeats process 5 times….then repeats again*).  It would not be too big a problem losing a week, but you see, I’m already playing catch up! In addition to playing catch up my mind has found comfort in being a devil’s advocate and asking some rather unwelcome and untimely questions. As a result, I now must decide what this all means for my project and what kind of workload this will toss up. Not the most thrilling of times!

The last fortnight or so has been a rather intriguing episode of forgetfulness, agitation, overeating and did I say forgetfulness? I’ve had to write down notes for myself to remember some of the most basic things and there’ve been more days where I could not recount what events have occurred or cups of hot drinks I’ve had. Heck I have caught myself even dosing in the most unlikely settings. #ResearchisReal and #ThestruggleisREAL

I’ve also realised that my time estimation skills esp. around my own research leave a lot to be desired. Couple that with the monster called perfectionism and voila – I have myself the perfect cocktail of long working hours and minimal sleep. I’d like to say that I’m slowly learning to be somewhat ok with not knowing upfront how long something will take me but I’m still questioning myself on how true a fact that is. I’m learning lessons I’m not entirely happy with because some of them seem costly time wise. If only we could pick and choose the lessons each season in life teaches! If only.

An hour has felt like 5 minutes and my level of ruthlessness when it comes to distractions has gone up a notch. Thanks to the Iphone downtime and the “limit use” features I’ve been able to even learn a thing or two about my time-wasting vices. The time limit feature allows me to have certain apps e.g. Twitter, Facebook etc be inactive during my preferred time periods. If I choose to override the function, I can set a reminder (currently at 15 minutes) where the app will automatically close if I have been on it for 15 minutes. I love it and it gives me good insights on how much time I’ve spent on social sites etc. So iPhone does have one good thing…that’s as far as my iPhone compliments go at this stage.

I’m counting down till my return to Android land following the unexpected cease function of my Nexus. I’m also counting down till I find sweet serenity and sanity. For now, I return to my cave to tango with the data!! Feeling inspired now that I’ve kinda “written some of this off”. Also counting down to the “Behold I do a new thing” GPM Women’s Conference running from the 8^th-12^th of May! Heaven surely knew this child needed an entire refresh! Rumour has it the Friday morning session may be high tea. I’m all in and in need of a boost 🙂

How do you tend to cope with high pressure periods? I can certainly do with pointers – Netflix and YouTube are not an option though! lol