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Monthly Archives: September 2003

time management

September 17, 2003

I’ve been pondering my methods of time management since I read this article.

I’m definitely not a Franklin day planner convergent thinker type. Except lately, I have been. And as much as I love my tendency to just work in a burst of inspiration, my depressive tendencies tend to blunt my motivation a bit when I work that way.

I took a stupid online test once that was supposed to test your hemispheric tendencies. I thought, since I am fairly ambidextrous, that it would be interesting to see if I was more artsy-brained or logic-brained.

“A problem with hemispheric balance is that you will tend to feel more conflict than someone who has a clearly established dominance. At times the conflict will be between what you feel and what you think but will also involve how you attack problems and how you perceive information. Details which will seem important to the right hemis- phere will be discounted by the left and vice versa, which can present a hindrance to learning efficiently.”

Turns out I’m neither. Turns out I’m both.

So what this means for my time management is that sometimes, when anxiety creeps up and I start having a day like Keri’s, the “take a break and breathe” solution only works about half the time. The other half, I use it as an excuse to stop working and let the anxiety take hold. I haven’t yet found a solution other than trying to plow through and force myself to work.

Right now, I am writing this instead of doing a mockup that I was supposed to have done, oh, a year ago. And the thing is, I won’t let myself paint until this stupid thing is DONE. And if I do let myself paint, I’ll just spend the whole time thinking of this mockup instead of getting to that happy alpha-wave color bliss state that painting always puts me into.

So here is my solution. I am going to eat lunch, away from my computer. I am going to come back, and get this stupid thing built. I am going to email it, and then I am going to shelve it until it needs building.

Let’s see if I can do it.