Following on from my last post, today I’ve been thinking about productivity but from a slightly different angle. As well as being a tangential thinker, I’m also a bit of a procrastisaurus rex. The two probably complement each other!

Today was my penultimate day in my clinical health psychology specialist placement providing psychology input in clinical genetics and oncology. I couldn’t understand how I still had so many ends to tie up when I had begun winding down my work back in June before I took a month off to finish writing up my doctoral thesis and then go on a long-awaited holiday. I thought I was being extremely organised planning ahead to the end of my placement, but I still feel really busy.

Then I realised that no matter how long or short a time I have, I always seem to get what needs doing done in the end. I think I work better with the pressure of a looming deadline or some cutoff, because what seems to have happened is that I probably haven’t used this extra time efficiently and have ended up just taking on more demands to fill the space! It’s like my natural state is to be busy and stressed and if I’m not, I feel out of equilibrium so I somehow bring myself back to that!

Anyway, what I’ve realised is, and I’m sure other people are the same, is that cutting it fine actually seems to work for me and I will squeeze everything in and get it done in the end. I am fully aware that this isn’t the best strategy for productivity and makes things get a bit hairy towards the end, but I’ve decided that it seems to work for me for now and I’ve fought it for decades and ended up beating myself up about it.

So I’m going to carry on squeezing and just do what I can and try not to stress about it. I’ll let you know how I get on!