My entire life I’ve struggled with doing my work. I’m not very good at consistently sitting down and working on something steadily. I’ve always been the type to hold back for a while and then explode outwards with a flurry of work all at once.
Needless to say this has gotten exhausting over the years. Also, I can’t really afford to work like this anymore. If my first semester of graduate school taught me anything, it taught me that I need to work steadily and plan my time efficiently.
I think I finally found the key. After resting this past Christmas break, I was really ready to get back to my work (which I hadn’t enjoyed in a while due to being burned out). However, I held myself to certain time limits. After a while, I would stop looking at whatever I was doing regardless of how I felt about it.
Here’s what I discovered: When I was having a lot of fun and I stopped what I was doing, I was really eager to go back. I had never experienced that before — whenever I’m normally done with my work I’m so sick of it I never want to see it again. The key is to keep myself from getting burned out; the key is to stop while I’m still enjoying myself. This reminds me a lot of the old adage about parties: “Leave while you’re still having fun.” The same exact principle applies.
Not sure if this is helpful to anybody but me, but hopefully it is. I’m slowly getting in the swing of steady, concerted effort. Maybe I’m getting the hang of this grad school thing after all.
