some seasons, i have to work a little harder to keep my head above water. in case you're having an overwhelming season yourself, here are three (easy-ish!!) things you can try, today, with no extra equipment or software. get into it!
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Just in case you've been feeling as overwhelmed and underwater. As I have been lately, I'm here to share three things that have been helping me on this week's episode of.
📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar.
And in season three, I'm demystifying some of the most important, but often invisible parts of grad school that learning about might just make your life a little bit easier. And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for my working more intentionally tool kit. Which is available for you totally for free. Now let's get into it
Life can get on top of even the best of us. And if you're having a fall it's anything like mine. Maybe you are working a little bit harder to keep your head above water than you might normally. I know that I've certainly been feeling moments of overwhelm and I'm here this week to share three things that have been really helping me when I feel like I just don't have the time, the energy.
Or the motivation to really do my full, complete systems. So the first thing that I do. Is I call it the three things system. lots of people have used variations of this. This is mine. I pick the most important three things to do that day. And then everything else is a bonus. Sometimes I don't even pick the three most important things. I just pick three things, three things that are going to move me forward.
So it might be, uh, unload the dishwasher. I respond to that email and open up my dissertation document. It might be a finished grading for that class, make my bed and take a shower. Your three things are going to be really individual to you. But for me, it's about saying yes, I know that I have 3 million things to do today.
But let's focus on these three things first. It doesn't mean that I don't pay attention to the other stuff I do. And the secret is that if I tell myself I only have to do three things, it makes it easier to get started. And more often than not. I continue on and I maybe do four, five, sometimes even six things that day.
If you are feeling underwater by the weight of your to-do list, if you just keep adding and adding, adding things, then I suggest that you give the three things, method, a try, it doesn't fix everything and it certainly doesn't make it so that you only have three things to do every day for the rest of time, but it does help with that feeling of, I am so underwater and I don't know where to start.
Because you pick, even if it's an arbitrary place, you pick a place to start.
The second thing that really helps me when I am feeling underwater is actually writing things down on a post-it note. I really like task management software. , I've used all sorts of different ones. And sometimes I go back to the basics because my task management system is built for the optimal version of myself. It has recurring tasks. It has things that gets populated. And the calendar repeat system doesn't necessarily remember that I am a human with fluctuating needs and a chronic illness.
And sometimes I just don't have the space and capacity for things. So it's actually one of the first. First signs of my particular flavor of overwhelm that I stopped paying attention to my task manager system, but it often means that important stuff falls through the cracks. I might forget to do something I might forget to send that email or do that chore. And I find that post-it notes or any other piece of scrap paper that you might have laying around actually helps to fill the gap for me when I'm too overwhelmed to use my full task management system.
But I still want a. A little bit of support. You can actually couple this with the first strategy that we talked about, the three things strategy. And put those three things on a post-it note and then cross them off. I know people who make a sequence of post-it notes and they kind of try and unlock them during the day, you know, finish the first one, get the second one.
I know people who use their best and happiest pieces of paper for this. Use your great pen. But there's something really satisfying and the tactile act of crossing things off.
I know that when I'm at my most overwhelmed, I'm also not at my most clear headed. I usually have a little bit of brain fog. It could have some pain happening. It could have some executive function things going on. And a post-it note backup system just helps give me a concrete reminder that there's things that I wanted to do today.
And I don't have to go into a task management system or my crowded brain to remember what they were.
So strategy number three is one that might sound a little bit counterintuitive to you, especially if you like me have a script that goes in your brain that says, oh, I don't deserve to take care of myself for
all of that stuff has a secondary priority. After getting my work done. And this strategy is actually called very simply taking care of your body stuff first. Now. I am a lifelong Dave Otay. Of soft pants. I love going to work in my pajamas. I will often try my best to put on a respectable shirt, but more often than not, I find that it's easiest for me to roll out of bed.
Roll into my pantry, get some breakfast, brush my teeth and then a roll upstairs to my desk. I don't like taking a shower first thing in the morning. I certainly don't like putting on anything with a waistband before noon. But I find that. On the mornings, when I'm feeling the most overwhelmed, it's really easy for me to fall into a pattern of being like, oh, I'll take a shower. As soon as these important things are done or, oh, I'll go for a walk as soon as I'm done with this important stuff. And because I'm feeling so overwhelmed, that important stuff,
which is almost always code for work. It doesn't necessarily flow right out of me. It might take me three or four hours to do something that normally would take me one. And I am feeling. Ickier and stickier. Minutes go by. So on my most overwhelming days, I like to flip the script. And take care of my body stuff first. I'll have my breakfast. I'll take a shower. I'll put on clothes that make me feel a little bit more put together. I'm not going to really stretch the boundaries and put on, you know, something with a waistband, but something that I didn't sleep in the night before is great. I often try to take a walk around the block just to feel some fresh air and not just look at the same three walls every day.
And then I get started. I find that getting my body taken care of first, whatever that looks like for you. It actually gives me more energy, which makes it a little bit easier to focus and sure. Coffee will do that. Or red bull do that. There's all sorts of ways to get that energy. But the buzz that I get from feeling clean, feeling put together feeling like at least if nothing else happens that day, I took a shower, helps me really feel like nothing's wasted yet.
I've hit the baseline I'm doing okay. And it lets me start that day with a little bit of a win.
It's so easy to put off all of those things that start to make us feel better and make us feel a little bit more in control until after we get the work done, like, oh, of course I'll feel ready to work out and go to yoga as soon as I'm done with my to-do list. But if you're feeling really overwhelmed,
The chances that you're going to finish that whole to-do list and finish it in time to go to yoga at five o'clock or pretty slim. So this gives you a chance to take care of yourself. Maybe get a natural energy burst and start the day feeling a little bit more confident, or at least a little bit more clean.
If all of this sounds really rudimentary to you feel free. To carry on with your life. But if you have ever been in one of those sticky, tough spots where everything feels like it's on top of you, I hope that a couple of these strategies give you a little bit of hope or at the very least normalize the idea that some of us really do have to during certain seasons of our life.
Make an effort to give ourselves low effort structures that help us feel a little bit more in control. Some things come easy to me in certain seasons of my life. And then there are some times when it really is a struggle to get that shower in. So if you've been feeling like that, I hope that this gave you a little bit of hope and a feeling that you were a little bit less alone.
See you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!