#abbey sharp

Set Systems, not goals*

Instead of setting lofty goals for your semester, try coming up with systems that will help you be productive on a daily basis (or you know, more often). Rowena Tsai has a wonderful youtube video about this concept here, and she explains how to create systems here.

*Rowena Tsai 2020

Make a fun playlist to dance to! Or use this one! I recently learned about the stress cycle from Emily and Amelia Nagoski's excellent book Burnout:The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (you can find their podcasts here! and the book here!).

In the book they talk about how stress and stressors are two different things. A stressor is something that causes your body to go into the biological state of stress. A stressor can be anything from a scary tiger ready to pounce to an annoying email from your professor.

Because the stress response (fight, flight, freeze) developed under conditions where your life is in mortal danger the body often doesn't get the signal that you've dealt with the stressor when the stressor isn't something you can run from or fight. So the Nagoski sisters emphasize that movement can be a helpful way to balance stress on a daily basis!

Personally, before working on a something that is stressing me out I like to listen to Lover or this playlist that I made and dance around my room so I can get to work without the stress.

Find a planning system that works for you! I have tried out a lot of planning systems over time, and none of them have necessarily worked long term for me, but that's okay. I think it's helpful to think about what has worked well and not well for you in the past.

For instance, I hate dated planners because then I feel guilty wasting paper when I happen not to use that week's spread. I also need to be able to easily move tasks around my week, yet be able to also brain dump a bunch tasks at once.

Currently I'm using monday.com which is free for college students and I've been finding it a great tool this summer to keep myself organized. I also use google calendar to keep track of all of my appointments etc.

If you are taking online classes create a context for them If you, like me, already found it hard to focus in in-person classes, you probably have noticed that focusing in online classes is about 50% harder. These are some things I am going to try out/have tried to to help me focus more in these classes.

1. Find a space that is for class: last semester I spent all of my time at my desk (which is right next to my bed ugh) and that wasn't as helpful as I wished it to be since in college I go to different classrooms and lecture halls. These spaces set the tone and make it easier to concentrate in my experience. So for classes this semester I'm planning to work in my family's dining room. That's not something that's available to everyone, so some ideas include sitting in a particular orientation on your bed only during class time or having something that you put on your desk during class time to remind of the context.

2. Wearing clothing that I would wear to class (bonus if it makes me feel good about myself). PJs are comfy, but wearing them to class bleeds the boundary between relaxation and work which is just not so helpful in the long run.

3. Closing all of my tabs and having only the ones necessary to the class open. Bonus if I get my notebook out and ready before lecture starts!

4. Putting zoom in full screen and writing in a notebook instead of on my computer.

5. Finding something distracting to do with my hands that is not on the computer. Embroidery is 100% better for my concentration than Teen Vogue's newest lip balm recs.

6. Having a not distracting computer background, and using the Mission control setting on my MacBook.

Find time to eat!

It's really easy to forget to eat when you are super busy, but eating is really important! Eating gives you the energy you need to pay attention and do well in school and just generally live a happy healthy life.

Figure out when in your day you can set aside time to eat (hopefully without rushing), what classes you can snack in, and when you get hungry. If it's not triggering to you, you can pay attention to how certain foods make you feel and which ones give you the best energy for your day.

Also food is amazing and delicious and makes my day better. Meals are a great time to see other members of your household or get off your phone! I really treasure my daily pre-class breakfast with just me and the newspaper.

I'm not a dietician or a nutritionist so take my advice with a grain of salt. Abbey Sharpe's Youtube channel is a great place to learn about nutrition from a dietician.

Get Good Sleep!!!!!!!!!!

This has been one of the most important things for me in my academic life, and when I've fallen off the getting good sleep track I have definitley regretted it.

Set yourself a bedtime and a wakeup time and try to be consistent. Even if you get the same hours of sleep a night but you go to bed at 10pm one night and 1pm the other night, your body will not necessarily be so happy, because this messes with your internal clock.

Here is a blog. 

Abbey Sharp and Unnatural Vegan are good Youtube channels to follow as well. 

It’s about building sustainable habits over time.