Happy May Day! I'm a stress monkey.

[aisa0]

A couple of years ago CrimeThInc publish a May Day poster that I still love reading today.

I suppose after two years it actually being May Day is a good reason to share the poster! I'm certainly happy to share Beltane with the International Worker's Day. But, well, some people aren't welcomeI've recognized in myself, but forgotten from time to

Comments

[anda]

We can talk about this more over lunch, but my first thought is that I am in many ways similiar.

Until I have enough to do to reach the sweet spot, I can't get going and keep adding more things to do until they're "urgent" enough to get moving. If there are too many things to do, it does become paralyzing because I can't prioritize right.

The trouble is keeping in that sweet spot.

When I get too many things, I sometimes just pick something small to do that I can get done and out of my queue (most often this queue, for my volunteer work, is "email in my inbox", so I can -see- when I'm getting behind), and that gets me moving on the next little thing, and then ... yeah.

[ravendisplayed]

I am having much the same problem at work. My list is too long and too scattered for me to concentrate and do anything. This leads to me not really getting anything done and my todo systems start to break down. What normally works for me when I reach this point is to clean off my desk, do a big reset/re-evaluation/sweep of my list, delegate what I can (including to my future self) and start picking off smallish high priority items to work on.

Which is what I am going to go do now.

[aisa0]

I think the reset the todo list is a good thing to try. Maybe also arranging your todo list in such a way where it can be slashed like that with the ability to resurrect it someday. I have a single page of "someday" tasks. Maybe I need a whole section. :p

[ravendisplayed]

This is why I like my index card board. I can just take them all down, shuffle them around a bit and then start sorting through them.

[yarrowkat]

cleaning desk sounds like a great idea. i do that at work when i start to get overwhelmed; if i can see the surface of my desk, it helps enormously to feel like i am in control and can actually accomplish everything. coffee helps, too. :)

and i also think that if you took a day off work to do list-clearing stuff at home, and spent 8 hours of that day focusing on stuff that needs to happen at home, you'd feel a lot better, and some of the psychological fog would clear and you'd be able to focus better on work while at work.

which is what Angelina said when i thanked her for letting me go yesterday at 2 to do just that--she said, sympathetically, "if you're not focused while you're here, then you need to go do those other things and get to where you feel better and can actually do your work while you are here."

[x77303066]

I tend to become paralyzed when it looks like I can't make any progress, and that's the defining characteristic even if the root cause is a prioritization issue.

This means if I clear the interrupt bit and just pick something to work through that usually gets me going again. Something easy or fun maybe.

That poster is pretty neat :).

[aisa0]

Thank you for giving the poster some love, I appreciate it. ^_^

[crankles]

Stress response:

-Sleep, read a book, or do something else to completely remove myself from reality for an hour or so. It's like an emotional reset.
-Take a walk in nature
-Divide my to-do list into urgent and not-so-urgent, and then hide the latter so I don't have to look at it and get stressed.
-Remove all social obligations unless it's something that will help me unwind (this isn't common for me)