Splash No. 9
Productivity
A common saying is “Good grades, social life, sleep: pick two.” I’ve been hearing this saying throughout high school and sometimes in college, but the idea is that it’s tough to balance the different aspects of life. Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of what’s happening in life. For me, it’s probably more like “good grades, money, social life, family, freelance, career, organizations, mental health, physical health: choose as many as possible and struggle to do so.”
Some might say that I’ve overcommitted myself, and they might be right. Despite my many committments, I think that this is pretty standard for the average college student. Since there’s so much opportunity in college, I feel like it would be a waste for me not to be doing everything I could possibly do. I’ve also found that the busiest times of my life are also the most satisfying times of my life. In the past, I’ve sacrificed my mental and physical health in order to get everything done, but I legitimately believe that I can accomplish them and maintain balance.
In my first few weeks of class, I’ve been doing great in my social life, bu. As an introvert, socialization is objectively the most energy and time-intensive activity, and it’s been difficult for me to find the time and energy to get anything done. After this epiphany, I’ve decided to change things up and try out some different productivity techniques to bring balance into my life.
I’ve recently started to bullet journal, which is basically creating your own planner with all sorts of different “modules” to fit your specific needs. There’s an enormous community of people around bullet journaling, making beautiful spreads to plan out their days and weeks, and ways to solve problems specific to their lives. For me, it’s just functioning as a planner that I can take notes in about different meetings I have.
My journal also serves as a place for me to write out my timeblocks. Timeblocking is essentially taking todo lists a step further and planning out when you will do each thing and figuring out what to do every hour of the day. This may sound robotic or absurd, but it really helps me to create focused space in my day to accomplish tasks instead of continuously multitasking. Of course, this is immensely difficult when it comes to my social life, since social gatherings are rarely planned out super far in advance. I’m doing the best I can and it works for me.
I’ve been reading about productivity since middle school, yet it’s still so easy for me to lose my discipline and stop getting things done. I feel like I know such an enormous amount of the practices people folllow in order to get things done, yet actually doing them has always been difficult. In this new semester, I’m seeking to be different, and begin building habits around these techniques to find balance in my life.
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Playlist
am - I made this playlist on the fly during an Art Matters Exec retreat and invited my fellow members to add their own music to it. It felt like a beautiful use of technology to be able to just so easily collaborate on creating our atmosphere.
Motion Simulation
Elements - Zhestkov - super cool animation based on particles
Web Experiment?
Computerized Forms - I’m not sure how to categorize this - it’s a cool project to have poster designs move to music. I’m always excited about the intersection of art and tech, so check it out!
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below).
Love,
Nikhil