if you are living on your own, do you have a specific routine you follow? if not, what other strategies help you organize your daily life?
i recently had to come to the realisation that i do not function as well as an independent adult as i would like to. i used to live by a strict routine and a schedule in which i would meticulously plan every single day for years, but at some point i felt a need to get rid of this restricitve pattern because it was getting ridiculous and also bordering on severe ocd. first of all i spent a lot of time on thinking about the mathematically most efficient way to organize my time and writing it down to not forget a thing, which is a bit ironic to say the least, and secondly a lot of aspects of my life simply arent predictable and i figured that freaking out internally just because something takes an hour longer than expected or all the washing machines are occupied at laundry time probably isnt a very healthy way to deal with that fact.
the first few weeks without a routine and a keeping a notebook full of timetables went surprisingly well, but it seems that as soon as i am immersed in a specific thing, be it related to my job or something else that caught my attention and i truly want to look into, things get pretty messy very fast. at the moment im focused on a particular research project on which i work a lot, and this is causing me to lose track of nearly everything else. my place is completely chaotic, i literally forget to eat, i havent been able to get a document from my insurance or call back a friend for over a week now although im aware of the fact that this is important, i didnt have any fresh clothes left twice this month and i sleep about 3-5 hours a day because i work late in the night and when im finally home i just want to listen to music and do nothing else except maybe read something.
this does not mean that i feel like things are getting too much for me or that i can not handle stress, i love my job and i wouldnt want to have it any other way. nevertheless it is obvious that focusing on one thing makes me incredibly inattentive towards the most basic tasks and i really hate being so disorganized. therefor id be curious if anyone on here ever faced or currently faces similar problems and how you deal with it.
15 Dec 2012, 2:07 pm
