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Showing posts from July, 2015

To New Strategies

July has been particularly hectic and August will calm down for a bit before Orientation. I've been trying different things in order to make progress on my massive to-do lists. First, I closed Outlook. Just closed it. And it was a miracle. No more interruptions, no binging or flashing whenever I got a new message. There was a downside to this: my calendar also didn't interrupt me. I missed two appointments. So then I went into Outlook and turned off all non-calendar notifications. I know, I know: everyone says to do this. I thought it was stupid. I thought I wanted  to know when I got a new email. Turns out, I don't care when I get a new email. I check it strategically throughout the day and I feel so much better . My other "new" strategy is called "do one thing at a time". It's also not all that ground-breaking. In fact, it's what I used to do in grad school. Shut off the tv, close the browser, focus on reading, or writing, or researching. S