The Darkest Night

I had quite a stressful workday as I expected but I wanted to jot down a couple of reflections today:

1. Reminding myself of my boundaries (time, respect, honesty, empathy, and possibility) really helped
2. It also helped to note down what I cannot control before every major meeting (usually something related to how someone felt about me)
3. I noticed that keeping pace with my todo list was helpful:
   1. Keep all tasks that come to mind in my todo list (use it as a mental trashcan to throw all my worries)
   2. Reorder todo list to whatever I am working on right now (move something to the top if I am currently working on it)
   3. Do tasks immediately if they are low-effort
   4. Do sweeps (try to do everything on the todo list)
4. Focus also helped
   1. Close as many tabs as possible
   2. Focus on one thing at a time

I was thinking about how to transition from work to Valorant more effectively since I usually start to feel dead and I end up watching youtube and ordering food and that kind of makes it hard for me to stay sharp when gaming and I end up feeling even more stressed and awful.

I think cleaning is a really good transition point. Cleaning reduces stress and is a great way to transition slowly…if I’m worried that there will still be a call coming in and I might have to go back to work, cleaning makes it easy to go back to work without feeling like I am not ready to transition to the next thing. In fact, if I clean, even if I go back to work, I will still be more ready to game after the work is done because my space is now clean.

I also like the idea of a mental dump to write down everything you are thinking about at the end of the day so that you can pick it up at any point today or tomorrow or the day after.

Finally, I like to look at the schedule for the next day and mentally prepare for it to know what you can do today to give you a lot of spaciousness tomorrow.