My graduate study journey started last fall at University of Toronto. After 6 months of exploration and relaxation, it was quite exciting to move back north and start another adventure. So far, my biggest accomplishment is finding out that my work from 3 years ago was cited by a famous professor and then cited by another famous professor.
I am studying information with a concentration in user experience design. Information can be a broad umbrella term that means many things, but I am the most fascinated by how human perceive, interact with, and produce information, in both ancient and modern settings.
The first-half of the semester was online lectures, and every week it felt like an additional 3-hour meeting after a long work day. The silver lining I fully embraced was that there was no need to travel to campus during rush hours. Occasionally lectures were accompanied by assorted snacks and yoga break, while most of the time it was a full on, intensive note taking session.
In-person workshops resumed in October. The sun set around 6pm approaching a longer winter, and I didn’t get a view of the Bissell building under the daylight until the second semester when the school fully returned to in-person learning in early spring. It was fun and exciting to pack up and leave for class, for the first time in four years.
Group projects, seminars, libraries - just as how I remembered it. However, one thing was different from four years ago. This time I have a full-time job, where I would constantly be challenged by new things. On top of all that, I volunteered my time at Master of Information Student Council (MISC) as a co-chair of the Professional Development Committee and we organized and hosted a month-long career panel conversations.
Things started to get overwhelming real quick.
Make Time
I read Jake and John’s book Make Time (here’s proof) a while back, and didn’t take it too literally. This phrase popped into my head again along with a reality check when my responsibilities around school grew so much larger that, in order to have time to eat and sleep, I would need to “manage my time”.
The term “Time Management” is associated with painful nostalgia from undergrad. Even though the only management required was to make sure that the written-at-the-gym-with-the-other-500-students finals don’t overlap, I felt like juggling 5 balls on a unicycle. Luckily by the time at grad school I was over 25 and my prefrontal cortex had developed enough for me to understand that I’ll need to make time for things that matter.
I’d need to manage my time, cool. I’d start drinking coffee in the shower since all the productivity gurus do it this way. Before jumping into that rabbit hole I was able to vaguely recall what Jake and John talked about productivity and effectiveness.
Although making time is not entirely about prioritization, deciding on the one thing to focus on for each day is the start of getting things done. My decision making process was based on impact and urgency, very creative. Even so, I found it scary to say no to working on a 5000-word essay and solely focus on a design project. My slight alteration to the highlighting technique, is to have a BEAR, or bare-minimum effect accepting rep, the one highlight that I absolutely need to focus on, and a couple of DOGs, do-it only-if-i-feel good, important and urgent tasks that are nice to be out of the way but can be scheduled for another day.
Showing up consistently is the other part of making time and it works both ways. On one hand, studying an hour every evening might not feel like a lot (I used to study 10 hours per day) but cumulatively it turned out to be a full semester worth of thinking and creating. On the other hand, I have successfully tricked myself into hour-long study sessions by thinking I’d only need to show up for 5 minutes and see how I feel. I almost always felt in the zone after the initial 5 minutes.
For 8 months, after dinner, I’d sit by my desk (or in the library, or on the floor), open up the files, and stare into the screen. The best part of this is that it’s guaranteed something will come out of the session, even if it’s 5 minutes worth of staring into the screen.
“Make time” became a mantra for me - I’ll make time for important things.
Do less and Surrender
From time to time, life in grad school feels like exploring in an amusement park - there are so many things to try and every ride gets recommended. I hopped onto numerous rides, having my eyes on the next ones on the list.
I thought I was immune from the struggle porn happening in tech (never have I ever purchased a mug that says “HUSTLE” on it), but it appeared I was dragged into struggle porn 2.0 grad school mod as I started every group project meeting with “I am so tired.”. A friend looked right through me and said I didn’t need to do something only because I could. That was exactly what I was doing - I did things only because I was capable to. I had extra time, so I filled it with extra task; I could make the document look better, so there went another 3 hours; I wanted the proposal to be as perfect as the final essay, so I worked out most parts of the essay and then wrote the proposal. This is not the best use of my time.
Part of that was for validation, and the other part was for a lack of clear targets. Nate Soares had a great article on half-asking everything, and one of the main takeaway is knowing where the target is. Additionally Sun Tzu in the Art of War explained where you aim is not what you’ll get. So factor in the gap between expectation and actual goal.
If I could, I would love things to be easier: I would love to have proper time off when I needed to travel, I would love to space out assignment due dates, I would only have readings around my area of interests, I would love things to go as planed. However, none of those was within my control.
In the past I was used to working against imperfect arrangements. When I was faced with more stressed than I ever have, there was no choice but to face the challenges properly. All the internalizations from reading bestsellers paid off - I was able to surrender to what happened for me. The plane was delayed? Good, that means more focus time at the airport to finish up readings. I needed to spend 1-2 hours per work day to catch up with work? Good, that means less time is wasted on deciding what to do each evening. The panelist cancelled last minutes? Good, that means the conversation can do deeper with the remaining panelists.
The obstacle did become the way.
