Hope You Survived Without Me!

Sorry about the hiatus, folks. Finals kicked in and as the saying goes, "All work and no play makes Dia a sleep-deprived, socially inept, cranky girl."

Which reminds me of my horrible time management skills.

But in my quest for survival (and for your entertainment), I remembered how an ex-boyfriend had an obsession with that book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Steven Covey.

Then at work, a coworker mentioned something about a workshop given annually based around this book (free planners included!).

This morning, a trending topic on my LinkedIn covered "7 Things Highly Productive People Do".

So I guess this was a sign that I should take a gander at what all the commotion with these 7 things were about.

I'm obsessed. I mean, it's so simple, it's almost stupid not to do it.

It's so easy to make up excuses as to why you can't get something done. God knows that if I had started writing papers and studying when I said I was going to start, I could have done everything in a whole day.

But the minute I turn my laptop on, hmm...
I wonder if anyone posted anything on Facebook.
Hey, this link is pretty funny.
I'm going to email it to my friend.
So many emails from LinkedIn, must check connection invites.
This status update is cool! Let me log into Twitter and retweet it...

I think you get the point. But my excuse isn't all the distracting sites, it's my attention span.

No more of those excuses. Not playing the ADD victim, the Facebook victim, the Twitter victim, the texting/calling/emailing victim anymore.

I mean, we all have budgets and diets to keep us sane and healthy. Can't we budget our time spent with all this noise?

It's not to say we don't need them, but let's put a numerical value to how much time this consumes even if we were on a "time budget" for these sites.

Let's say we spend 2 total hours a day on the computer and 1 total hour on (personal) phone calls and texts:

• That's 21 hours a week
• 1,092 hours a year
• Considering I'm 21, if the United Nations is correct in estimating I'll live to be 80.8 years old, that gives me roughly 60 years, which accumulates to 65,520 hours from today until I die
• Which means I will have spent 2,730 days or 7.48 years either on the computer or on the phone
• And that's on a budget.

Riddle me that.

http://beerbatteredramen.blogspot.com/

Trichotillo-what?!

When dealing with stress, I find that I have coping mechanisms similar to the ones people use when dealing with death. Except I'm perpetually stuck in the "denial" stage.

So instead of dealing with things that stress me out, I kinda just close my eyes, tap my ruby shoes three times, and hope that I wake up in Kansas again. Which never works and essentially leads to other ridiculous habits, like cracking my jaw or incessantly playing with my hair.

I hadn't thought much about it, even when I noticed that my hair slightly starting thinning in one particular spot. I figured it was just the stress, so I put in a deep conditioner and soon enough it was back to normal.

Then today, I find this article on my newsfeed.

I don't believe it ever got to this extreme, but with midterm season here, it's definitely a must-read.

Stress management is probably as important as time management, especially for those (like me) that have no sense of the latter. 18 credits, an internship, work, living with my parents, a relationship, and friends to make time for is incredibly difficult.

...

I'll let you know how this story ends, hopefully there's a lesson to be learned here soon.

http://beerbatteredramen.blogspot.com/