One of the things about escaping from the school vortex for the past 3 years is that it has allowed me to the freedom to explore my interets and passions without the pressure of an externally-derived timeline: midterms every 4 weeks, papers due 11 weeks into the semester. If you're like me and worried about your GPA in college, it can be difficult to let your mind wander off down paths of intellectual interest or personal passion because reality keeps dragging you back to the reality of This Assignment, This Test, This Lecture to Attend.
And even though I left undergrad with a fairly sparkly GPA and I will always be glad that I had the opportunity to stretch my mind and challenge the intellect, one of the odd paradoxes of the post-college working 20-somethings is learning how to structure your time when your time is, well, your own, and not governed by an external agenda and calendar. Hence the hours and hours spent surfing the internet, on Facebook, spent slumped in front of the TV ... and hopefully, eventually, you learn to get up off your butt and start pursuing things that matter to you, or even figuring out what those are, in the first place.
With that comes the need to structure the rhythms of your life. It can take awhile to fine-tune a system that works for you. I know it took me several years. It wasn't until my first "real" job that I discovered I need to plan 1-2 social engagements over the weekend - any more and I'm too drained when the week starts, any less and I start to feel like I'm going crazy, trapped by the circular vortex my own thoughts [ah, but not the centripetal force because that doesn't exist! Nerd alert, nerd alert ... physics joke!] It could be as simple as lunch with a friend, but I need tha balance in my life. Similarly, I figured out that I need to work in spurts, that my quality of sleep improves when I sleep early and wake up early, that I like to run in the mornings.
I discovered I need to cook 3-4 x's/week to have home-cooked meals for most lunches/dinners and that, more importantly, I like eating out 2-3 x's/week to see friends and give myself a break from my own cooking. I realized how important it is to have a relatively neat work environment to feel inspired to tackle projects. Cooking is therapeutic. Sewing is a great stress reliever. I like to multitask podcasts to crafting but not to exercising. I do great setting numeric goals for myself and setting off on a fast sprint [again, working in spurts].
Some questions to ask yourself:
-What are you interested in? What do you care about, and are you spending your time where your passion is, or is it frittered away on other tasks that hold less meaning to you?
-If you 're not sure what new direction you'd like to explore, is there something you've always wanted to try? What about when you were a child, what were your dreams? What stories draw you in, what people are you fascinated by and why?
-How can you pursue this, and what's hold you back? Take a class, volunteer, talk to people, research the subject ... just get out and do something!
-If your efforts are self-directed: When do you do your best work? Morning? Afternoon? The hour before a deadline? The dead of night? Schedule your hardest thinking or your most difficult tasks for those times.
-How do you recharge? Do you like quiet time, or do you feel most energized when meeting new people and hanging out with a large group of friends? It's important to schedule this into your life!
A little planning can go a long ways.
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