Get it done – How to organize yourself during stressful times

Finally back, I am sorry that I wasn’t able to write something during the last months but the reason is that the last months were full of work for me. As we are getting to christmas finally everything gets a bit more silent and relaxing (especially in that year) so there is finally more time to work on this blog which is a work I like a lot. And what better topic I could write about than how to organize yourself in stressful times as I experienced one in the last months.

In one of my first blog posts I was writing about things that you can do during a lockdown situation as we have that again right now (https://www.styriandev.at/styriandevblog/index.php/2020/03/18/how-to-make-the-best-out-of-the-corona-crisis/). Maybe you found some new activities to do and you would like to keep working on them, so it seems that you need some extra time during your daily routine. The same situation occurs when you get new tasks in your job, maybe you worked well and you proved yourself as ready for the next stage within the company. You might be ready for being team lead or just having more responsability in the company. That means that you need to organize yourself because it will be more work to do in the same time. Not only that, often you also need to educate yourself to meet the requirements of your new role. Such a situation occured to me as I got more responsability in the company I work now.

First things first, it is important to know that you cannot do everything at once. Therefore, one of the most important things is to say “No” to things that you cannot work on. I know, this seems obvious, but haven’t you been in a situation where your boss came to you and needed something you were more or less forced to say yes even thought you knew that finishing that task needed extra time in the evening? I was in such a situation too often as saying “No” seemed to be difficult to me. For me the reason for that was that often I didn’t know why I can say no because I didn’t know what was left to do – so not being organized that well. Often I was working on something that I didn’t know exactly how long that task would take and for getting a clue on how much time I need to finish I always thought in the best case szenario which especially in software engineering is a thing that never gets achieved, is it? So what I started doing was to write down the tasks that I want to finish during the day, and the thing here is to really write it down. You could of do that on paper, I am preferring it in the digital way to have it everywhere. With that list it is easy to decide whether or not a task can be completed and also this list can help to argue why it is possible to say no.

To-do lists can be very easy but of course they can also be very complex. For me the best way is a very easy list. I am using the most easy tool to work on them, which is for me a single Notepad++ document which I am using to write down tasks and when I am finishing them I am deleting the lines. I am using the simple technique as a more complex creation of tasks for me often leads to actually not doing it because administrative work is nothing that we like to do.

For more complex works like my bachelor’s thesis which I could finish during the summer I prefer using some kind of Kanban board. For me the most important part is having a tool which is pretty flexible in the stages that it has as every work has different stages. This is important because whatever task you are working on that can be pretty different, some examples are the following: For software developement you would have something like “NEW”, “Technical Specification/Analysis”, “Development”, “Testing”, “Finished” for academic papers I was having “Not Done”, “Finding literature”, “Literature summarizing”, “Writing”, “Re-read”, “Finish”. Some tools that I like to use for Kanban boards are Trello (https://trello.com/de) or the Planner app in Teams.

Another important thing in getting something done is having an idea when it is done. This simple line is summarizing one topic that many people forget having which is specifying goals. I prefer having short time and long time goals. It is important to have some strategy and vision, something like “In 5 years I would like to have my Master’s degree or something like “Next year my thesis should be completed”. But this long time goals will not help you a lot. Our brain’s are programmed in a way that they can work on things that seem to be achievable soon or seem to be very tangible. For instance if I specify that I would like to finish my thesis within a year it is difficult to motivate myself as I do not know how the hell I should finish all of that work. It is easier for me to motivate myself if I work on something like finishing a concrete topic. This is also the reason why so many people are having good intentions for the new year but never achieve them.
As you might already saw from my examples the timespan of such goals can be very different. To know if you are specifying short time goals or long time goals it is often enought to think if you would work on that immediatly. If yes that is normally a short time goal. So my suggestion is creating long term goals but also creating some short-time goals that you can achieve. This suggestion is not only for tasks but also for your life in general, with goals you know what you are working on and what you want to do with your life. By doing so you are going to be more motivated and more organized as well.

Another point that will help you which is also needing some kind of goals is having a plan for the next day/week/month. It helped me a lot when I started creating weekly plans. Those plans are not including a detailed plan for every hour of every day but they are including a general goal on what I want to achieve on the different days of the week. Formulating such goals will need some ideas on what you need to do at the specific days and therefore you will have an idea on what this week will bring to you. I prefer doing that type of task at Sunday evening when I have some minutes and I note those goals down on a paper which I stick onto a wall where I can see it. I also use that technique to note down things that I do for myself during the week, when I would like to work out or when I will meet my girlfriend. Having things that you look forward to is important to stay motivated.

My last suggestion is including how you organize your day. Especially now, when we are doing home office, you need to keep track on which activities you do in which order. The point I am trying to make is that if you are doing things you are pleased to do before you are doing things you do not like it is very likeable that you will not finish the second one as you might not be able to motivate yourself to do it. This is some error that I used to make a lot when I was spending time on YouTube before doing the actual work. The reason for that is your brain which gets a reward for wathing YouTube but not for a task that it needs to do. Therefore it is better to first work on the things you need to do and then reward yourself at the end of the day.

I hope I was able to give you some ideas how you can achieve what you want to achieve. Having goals, daily plans or just To-Do lists are some examples which will help you getting your things done.

Do you also experience a stressful time during this special year? What are you doing to get things done?