Do the hardest thing first

I am such a crazy night owl. I am preparing myself for a nice long night ahead. Here’s the plan so I can be more efficient:

-no more surfing the web for shoes or hairstyles for the end of the year party… :)
-no more talking on the phone
-no more than two quick emails allowed
-go through paper making revisions in order
-then write the other sections
-data is already done, so that much is good!

“Expectations are a picture of how you think things should be. If you have an expectation, anything less than that becomes frustrating or disappointing. But even when the picture is fulfilled in exactly the way you want it, it won’t satisfy the need you have inside. Even if you meet one expectation, you will just create higher ones, and thus never have a sense of satisfaction. This is a recipe for frustration: under every demand is a need which wasn’t met at a past significant time in your life. In an attempt to make up for these needs, you form expectations. But even when these expectations are fulfilled to the letter, they cannot fulfil your old need“ because that is in the past. So when someone demands something of you, you will either refuse to do it because it is a demand, or you will do it out of a feeling of sacrifice or duress. And when you make a demand of someone, even if they do what you want, the good feeling of both receiving and giving is lost, because there is no contact between you. A person who has some kind of expectation will hear themselves using the following words: should, have to, got to, need to, ought to, or must“ all of which lead to perfectionism (when anything less than perfect is considered failure). This is a trap the ego uses to destroy any accomplishments that we make. It would have us feel we’re not good enough, and whatever we do isn’t good enough, increasing our fear and sense of inadequacy.”

my estimate was WAY off. I wanted to have that dumb thing done by 5pm… I didn’t finish until 11. And I could STILL tweak it (if I wasn’t ready to burn it by now.) Now I lost the whole evening for working on my other assignment, so I will now be up all night. Can you tell I’m feeling cheerful? Tomorrow I get to revise my thesis. Yippee! :(

(this sucks)

The application I talked about on this thread was accepted! The work paid off and I got a super cool fieldwork site for pediatrics. Yea!

Two discharge summaries done and submitted by email by 5:00. The rest of the evening will be spent on the third discharge summary.

Seriously… I need to get over this paralyzing procrastination. I am going to write an outline for my big paper tonight. I need a little direction and concrete goals so I can finish this pain-in-the-butt project! By 1am I will have a nice outline of what I need to write about.

It pays to set little goals. I got the fieldwork data sheet done about a month early! Way to go, me!

Do fieldwork data sheet tomorrow!!

I had my venti latte when I got home from campus at 9:30pm, had my refresher break, and it’s definitely time to get down to business. (didn’t even have dinner tonight—healthy lifestyle, huh?) Here are the goals:
1) Work on research project by getting caught up on videos
2) Create a data analysis method
3) Be relieved that the whole research project just got easier and the time requirements are less (whew)
4) Give sub-q fluids to my cat
5) If there is time, organize my paperwork
6) Write to a guy I’m interested in ;) Always make time for the important stuff, right?
7) Go to bed by 2 am (this is my reality lately)

Well, I have to admit, I still wasn’t done with my paper by 6. Life intervened. What can I say… I had to work on goal #9, and that is much more fun than writing a paper anyway. Sometimes you just gotta have fun instead! ;) I’ll finish it tomorrow.