This is something I'm telling you, but that I'm telling myself - and I've been telling myself that for a very long time now.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed with ideas and tasks, or to feel completely lost whenever one wants to start a new project. I feel that every single day. But I've read time and again that procrastinating - or not doing anything despite having loads to do and feeling bad about it - isn't real laziness or sloth, but rather having no idea how to execute whatever one has to execute.
Thinking back to when I was completely engrossed in my Master's degree, all the guilt and angst I directed at myself at the time for not being able to hand in more and more and more work and research results would have been half as heavy a burden, if only I had a roadmap. However, I had set out to study something that hadn't been studied before, and I felt like someone had dropped me in the middle of the ocean and told me to "swim". Where to? How? How long will it take to get wherever I have to go?
And that impostor syndrome!
So I tried all kinds of tips and tricks to get somewhere. The "just do it" style, the "talk to your peers" strategy, the "sleep and drink water and work out" - all this felt as if I was running in circles around the real issue. Because no matter how much endorphin I had going on in my brain, or how my colleagues worked (one of them went to her friend's house, where she had no wi-fi, so she could focus on writing), or how I just sat in front of the computer, I still felt altogether lost.
But I found out, with good old trial-and-error and self knowledge, that my brain is prone to overthink, and to overthink about dozens of topics at the same time, at that. It is absolutely debilitating. What I needed was a direction and a set of constraints. I do have the energy, I do have the disposition and I do have the resilience to endure lengthy work sessions, as I have seen myself work with barely no sleep for 4 days straight. I just needed a strategy to focus my attention and vigour into one single task at a time.
So I plan everything out. Every single little task.
The joy of crossing out listed items in my daily to-do list is sometimes almost hysterical.
Organising tasks may be or appear obvious to some, but it isn't for me. By planning everything out and classifying tasks as obligatory steps to achieve a goal or optional sidetracking that may result in adding flavour to the real objective, I feel safe, comfortable and capable of finishing whatever it may be.
To complicate things even further, Trello, Asana and other to-do list platforms or apps just don't cut it for me. Of course, when working on a team, I make do with any app that is thrown my way, and will use it - and abuse it. But personally, I like mapping thoughts and tasks on paper better than anything else - whiteboards being a distant second place. I just feel my brain juice flows more easily when I'm holding a pen, sketching things on a piece of paper. This might be due to the fact that I have always loved drawing on traditional media and therefore hearing the pen lightly scratching a blank piece of rustling paper brings me small waves of joy and satisfaction. But it is crucial for me. It makes planning fun.
And in an increasingly dystopian world, I do believe that finding the tiniest sources of fun or enjoyment are the secret to keeping it together.
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