Author: Sasha Mayn
It is no secret to anyone who has spent any amount of time at Carleton that life here is busy. Classes, workstudy, sports, rehearsals, volunteering, research and occasional sleep combine in elaborate ways which can make anyone dizzy and make planning ahead and keeping track of all the commitments almost impossible. I remember thinking when I was applying to be a DHA last year: “This job is so awesome! I get to schedule my own hours – that means I can just work on the projects whenever I have free time”. I was only partially right. The job is indeed awesome, except there is no free time. As weeks go by, the term gradually turns into an avaricious time-sucking wormhole – and finding time to work becomes a struggle, sometimes (almost) making me wish I had a set schedule.
My job as a DHA made me realize how inept I am at organizing my time. I can finally feel that I’m slowly but steadily getting better. Here’s what I’ve learned (by many a trial and many an error):
- Having a planner is very useful and marking the hours I expect to have to work on DH projects at the beginning of each week definitely helps.
- Even though there are no official hours, it’s good to set hours for myself as if there were, and adhere to the schedule as much as possible – if there’s a conflict in my schedule for that week, I can deviate from it.
- Project logs are great! Better still if they are detailed and well-written. It has happened to me many times that I would jot down a quick note to myself about what I still need to do for a project or think that it’s so obvious that writing anything down is completely unnecessary. Unsurprisingly, next time I sat down to work on the project I’d be totally lost because I would no longer remember my own thought process. So yes, write down as much as possible.
- Try not to put off until tomorrow what can be done today. Sounds simple but is surprisingly effective.
In this way my work as a DHA has inspired me to start an uphill battle with absent-mindedness and procrastination. It will be a long and tough one. But I have hope.
