www.fastcompany.com: If you feel like you’re constantly flying by the seat of your pants, perhaps one (or more) of the following habits is the cause. If these sound familiar, don’t worry—I have some suggestions for how you can get back on track and breathe a little easier.
22 comments:
I really like the idea this article has about crisis management and how the person can only truly affect themselves. I love how this article talks about preparing more and how to combat procrastination as well as the idea of waking up earlier. Overall, I think this article brings up a lot of great concepts, generally. One problem that I find with this article is how to handle a crisis mode amount of work when you can’t stop it. At school or some points in a production where you can’t take a day off or where no amount of planning will help with combating crisis mode. I understand that this article is about staying out of crisis mode and not about how to get out of crisis mode or how to handle crisis mode but I feel like this is something that the article should touch upon. Lastly, nowhere did this article talk about taking time for yourself and how rest will help with being productive. Staying out of crisis mode does involve this self-care and I personally think is the most important thing to do to stay out of crisis mode.
This article pointed out some common bad habits that many people have. Personally, I find the last point to be true to my habits. The fourth point of the article suggested to wake up earlier to have extra time to get read in the morning. I have gotten into the habit of waking up late and having to rush through my morning to get to class. While I enjoy having an extra half an hour of sleep because I need it, I do see why having extra time would start of my day more pleasant. Sometimes, if something goes wrong in the morning, like forgetting something, can really have a big impact on how you go through the rest of the day. That “today is not my day” is the worst thing because then you’ll go through the day having your mind set on making it bad. While being able to work under high stress is important, always making situations stressful for yourself when unnecessary is unhealthy.However, I think this article’s general points and suggestions are generic, like other ones that supposedly give tips on how to improve your life style.
This article is very applicable to all of our lives. As a freshman DP, it’s crazy how many people come by 33 and ask us to take on more tasks. We have numerous amounts of projects from all of our classes like basic design and drafting, as well as all of the things that we like to do on our own. It often gets overwhelming to juggle all of the tasks in all of our lives, but I think this article offers some really good suggestions. I find that when you start and finish a project early, it often takes a lot of weight off of your shoulders and opens up opportunities to complete more stuff on your own that you may not have had time for before. Learning to say no and take more time for yourself is also extremely important. It is important when to know to take a step back and take some time for yourself in the form of a break. It will make you more productive in the long run.
I am a big fan of this article. It is no shocker that many first year students struggle with overloading their schedules with classes and extracurriculars, and that does not exclude the school of drama in any sense. If anything, the school of drama is comprised of all the pople that try to take on as many things as possible. With Playground coming up, I know some people who are working on at least 6 shows as of Tuesday and who knows how many they’ll add by Friday. Saying no is one of the hardest things to do, but it is such a valuable skill that we all need to acquire. I have really bad anxiety when it comes to showing up to things, such as class, late. Every morning I am somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes in studio before the first class of the day. Yes that time could be spent sleeping, but it also acts as a buffer. If I need time in the morning to go and grab a coffee or bagel, I can, and I can sit and eat it in studio while listening to a podcast. I have learned my limits as to what I have time to do and where I can prioritize my time. Of course there are some days where I slip up a little bit and I am up until 1am writing an interp paper and these comments, but there are other days where I leave class at 4:30 and I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. The later is more typically the case. I think this is a very helpful and awakening article that everyone should read.
Personally, I feel like this article is full of common sense and redundancy. I understand that crisis mode is something that everyone struggles with and sometimes needs guidance on. For me, I just find this article to be bland. I do resonate with the third point of taking on too much. I do that a lot and therefore find my time being managed very finely in order to get everything I need to do get done. I found some of point two true for me too. I don't usually play on my phone or anything, but I do find myself zoning out during lectures or presentations. I found the suggestion of a fidget to be helpful. Note taking always leads to me doodling. This article is also more directed at people who have jobs, and less towards students. But I believe students can take a lot away from this article. I do agree with Alexander that there should have been more conversation about taking time for yourself and having time for self-care in addition to completing projects. Self-care is important for college students, especially in this program, as sometimes crisis mode can become overwhelming.
This article makes a lot of great points that are relevant to my life right now. A lot of these problems were ones that I've been fully aware of the solutions for (and have blissfully ignored), like waiting until the last minute to do things. Like, obviously the answer is to stop procrastinating and blocking off specific time to get my work done. Have I done that? No. But I'm trying to work on it and have been doing much better.
One problem this article has brought to my attention, a more recent development in my life that I've sort of begun to face the repercussions for, is:
4. YOU’RE RUSHING INTO YOUR DAY
Every morning, you roll out of bed, throw on clothes, gurgle some mouthwash—no time for actually brushing!—and stumble out the door. You’re still getting to the office on time, so what’s the big deal?
Boy, oh boy. If this isn't me the past few weeks! Sure, I make it to Studiocraft at 8:30 (sometimes on the dot) every day, but rushing to get ready and scaling the whole freaking building of Purnell in one minute and running to 33 out of breath is not a fun start to my day. I really need to work on sleeping earlier and waking up earlier which is, in fact, a hard truth this article has given me a wake up call (no pun intended) for.
This article has some pretty good stuff in it, but most of it is a lot easier said than done. I kind of feel this way right now in my life and I know I do most of the things they point out, but they are hard to fix. I have tried to get up earlier to get to school, but I just can not seem to do it. Not procrastinating work is always a challenge for me, and it sounds nice to think about blocking out time for checkups and brainstorms and things like that, but my brain and workflow just do not work well in that way. It is so hard for me to get a jump on projects that are due a long ways off, and maybe that is just something I need to learn how to do, but when you are constantly putting out the fires you already started and just struggling to keep your head above the water right now, it is even harder to look ahead and start working on the projects that are coming up in the future. Good advice, but hard for people who struggle with this to implement.
This article is very helpful in naming many very common reasons why many people may be constantly freaking out and in "crisis mode" when it comes to any work whether in school or in the workplace. I feel like the descriptions of the "problems" people might be dealing with are specific enough for people to recognize the issue being talked about, but vague enough for a fair amount of people to be able to relate to it. I do think that it should be pointed out more obviously, that the issues and solutions named in the article won't work for everybody. Everyone is different and everybody works differently in different environments. One piece of advice might work magic for one person but not help at all of someone else. I also feel like it should be pointed out that the biggest factor in reducing your stress levels is having the right mentality to go about that. People need to have the ability to change their mentality when it comes to procrastination or attentiveness. If you don't want to do the work to improve your work habits, they're simply not going to improve.
This article was too accurate to my regular work flow. I have sadly put myself in crisis mode a lot in my school career. Early on in school I often found myself in the first instance giving myself little to no time to get things done not allowing myself to finish it to the best ability to do great work. I also struggled with the important information portion especially when it pertains to audible information on things. I still find myself time to time losing important information if I’m not clearly paying attention. I also find it hard not to rush and not to take on to much as their is so much always coming at me in the school of Drama there are so many different things that are constantly up in the air and things that I have to control and balance in order to be successful in the program.
Sometimes, I feel like I operate better in crisis mode. I manage my time better when I’m juggling 20 balls at once, and my crisis mode puts me into a state of hyper focus, nearing tunnel vision, on whatever needs to get done. It feels really nice to have things done ahead of time, but I feel like I do better work when I put myself on a time crunch, as it forces me to get creative with my methods and implementation, especially with a design or art project. However, maybe I just have a different definition of crisis mode than this article does. The type of crisis mode outlined in the article never lasts very long for me, because it quickly and inevitably leads to burnout. I seem to live in a hyper-controlled crisis state, planned to within an inch of its life, but still veering on the edge of breakdown. Maybe that’s something I should work on, but it’s worked for me so far.
Wow, okay read me. This is something I struggle with a lot. I specifically struggle with the second point. My mind is constantly racing thinking of things I need to do, so I miss a lot of things people tell me. It doesn’t matter if it’s in classes or in meetings; I just can’t remember what is being said. I have struggled with that for as long as I can remember that one of my strategies is to have a partner with me in meetings so they can also be listening. Immediately following the meeting, I will sometimes turn to them and give them my take away from it, and ask them to do the same for me to make sure I got all the information I needed.
Another point in here is the fourth one. I am trying now to wake up earlier and get my day started slowly. It truly does make the difference in clearing my mind and keeping me in a calm mood throughout the day (though I do get sleepy by 9pm!)
This article is totally calling me out for my bad habits. And I’m glad that they’ve helped me pinpoint them. I always tend to take on too much, because I want to be a part of every opportunity that could help me launch my career forward. I am scared of missing out on things, so I always say yes—yes to make a good impression, yes to get experience. But sometimes I find myself feeling so busy that I don’t let myself eat lunch or spend some time outside on a beautiful day, and prioritizing will help me keep myself sane. Being honest with a “boss” or professor in my case about feeling overworked is a good reminder, because hopefully no boss figure would want an employee to feel that way, especially if it’s going to impact their productivity and quality of work. The concept of rushing into your day is a good reminder, especially since I wake up and give myself 10 mins to get to drafting on Monday mornings. I watched a video of a commencement speech once where the speaker said every day you should wake up and make your bed, and give yourself enough time to do so, because achieving that task begins your day with already having something done, and it will make you feel even better when you get home at the end of a long day.
The Yerkes-Dodson Law (a bell curve where the x-axis is level of arousal and the y-axis is quality of performance) states moderate arousal produces peak performance. If there is too little arousal, then there is no motivation to perform well; if there is too much arousal, then there is excess pressure that distorts performance. Crisis mode falls into the latter category. I like to think I do well in high-pressure situations, but the truth is I really don't and I fumble often. I like to think I am productive in low-pressure situations, but the truth is I also don't and I just laze. What's great about this article is it promotes habits that encourage action before crisis mode hits but not in a no-pressure situation. I myself would do well to take some of these suggestions into account, not just for better performance, but probably for a healthier lifestyle as well.
Hahaha my whole life is a crisis. I love this article. It really gets me. I think this author gives beautiful advice, and they do so in a way that easily presents itself to someone who impulsively labels any minor inconvenience as a crisis. I love how they literally read my life, point out all of the problems I've experienced, and make a detailed list of how I can avoid those problems. I will say that some of these explanations are easier said than done, i.e. "pay attention in meetings! don't zone out!". Obviously that's always the goal when I walk into class, but sometimes it's difficult to stay engaged. But I digress. I really like the idea of setting a block of time to plan AND prioritize. I often do the first part, planning, but that usually just adds more stress. I don't limit the overwhelming amount of things on my plate, I just rearrange them. It may be hard to admit, but some of the things that I'm devoting my time to aren't actually that important. It is important to analyze which priorities actually make your life better, and which ones may actually be unnecessary.
This article is very enlightening on the negative habits or behaviors that I have and cause me to be in a state of crisis constantly. I identify with the first behavior that was mentioned which is waiting until the last minute to do things, this is also called procrastinating. One of the major reasons I do this is because I still get stuff done and I have the thought at the back of mind that says it will get done, no matter what. I hate the amount of stress and fatigue that I experience when I do things at the last minute so I wonder why I have not changed this habit of mine. At the beginning of the school year, I came to a decision where I will do things earlier but I did not break down how to achieve that so it did not work for me. The idea of training oneself to create deadlines and stick to it to make things done on time sounds great and I plan to start doing that so I can reduce my level of stress and fatigue.
Nothing the author said was terribly surprising, but it certainly made a lot of sense. Here at CMU, we all have fast-paced busy lives, which is both a blessing and a curse. The point about procrastination is very real. Saying “I’ll do it later” so that you can do what you want is a very real problem, especially after having just turned in the previous project that was due. After turning something in you feel like you have all the time in the world, and the next due-date is creeping up on you. I also agreed with the point about not paying attention. We have very short attention spans in this day and age, and even though I don’t just whip out my phone every time I have down-time or am bored, I sometimes tend to daydream and come up with ideas. All fun and games, but I sometimes miss critical pieces of information. I find my attention span is getting shorter and shorter, and I’m sure I’m not the only one with that problem. I like the suggestion of turning off notifications, but sometimes they can be a nice break from whatever I’m working on.
One of my all time phrases is, “not everything is a 10”, and I say it a lot to people I am more casual around when I feel like they are flipping out, but like I really want to scream it at the people who are causing the whole room to panic because they have wound themselves up so aggressively that they cannot see the simple solution. People do not spend enough time considering how their reaction will affect others. A lot of this article is honestly just common sense. The more you have in the air, the more likely you are to panic if one thing feels a little bit out of control, simply because you don’t have the energy or the capacity to handle something going wrong if you are already stretched too thin. This is a really common thing to occur in people who are unprepared or out of their element, and it can be accommodated and understood, as we know that people have to learn and gain experience somehow, but my biggest pet peeve is when people do not notice that they are doing this and won’t accept help bringing things back under control. I think the concept of not everything being a 10 is important for all of us to keep in the back of our heads just to force ourselves to be aware of the energies we are setting off, especially as we all spend so much time together and feed off of one another so aggressively.
Obviously there is a lot of good advice in this article, and anyone who does not follow it is probably going to have a hard time. However, I think there is something missing here about how you can be in work crisis mode, but it can be neither your fault nor someone else’s. Sometimes things are just hard. Sometimes you stretch yourself, and I think you probably should stretch yourself every so often. I do not think anyone can grow if they always just do the same thing over and over. Finally, something that is rarely acknowledged, sometimes (maybe frequently) people are not anxious because they have not tried hard enough; they are anxious because they are anxious. Anxiety is a thing in itself, and it is both a cause and a result, and people can be anxious without being in work crisis mode. I would have liked to see an acknowledgement of that in this article, and generally speaking, I would have liked to see a mention of how to stay out of work crisis mode if you are anxious about work.
I think the most important way to stop operating in crisis mode is to learn yourself and to learn how to manage yourself. All of the points in this article are valid and true, but they all lead back to personal management. With school, we tend to to look at the bigger picture and think that we have a lot time to incorporate in many thing. But we don't properly budget our times and realize that we are taking on too much. Or we don't factor in the fact that we will probably be stepping away for moments, taking breaks or just simple socializing. So things often get "pushed back" which ultimately leads to them to being done very last minute. I have realized that what works for me is to get into a routine and fully understand how much I can get done within a given time frame. This takes time and a lot of self analysis, as well as being honest with yourself and not being overambitious. Yes, it is good to push yourself and be optimistic. But you have to look back at your patterns and see how things have gone in your past, especially on your worst days, and plan accordingly. You also have to be willing to set a schedule for yourself and absolutely stick to it. Otherwise, it is crisis-management mode and nothing else.
While I think that this article made a lot of good points and had a fair bit of useful advise about how to avoid and prevent crisis mode, I do think it is worth recognizing that sometimes there is no avoiding it, no mater what you do. I almost think there should be a sequel or follow-up to this article something along the lines of "So your prevention methods failed, now what?" to help you get out of crisis mode when you inevitable end up there. I think the point that resonated the most with me was the point about taking on too much. It is especially difficult in school when you often have very few ways to lighten the load, because all of the work for all of your classes does have to get done, and there is only so much flexibility with deadlines and content with the way out timelines are structured. I also think a lot of this depends on one's ability to operate independently and have control over what gets done when, which becomes infinitely harder in group work settings, which so much of theatre is.
While I do appreciate this article, the disclaimer at the very beginning about not applying to managers (as that is what many of us who are reading this are or will be doing for the foreseeable future) did make me feel like I was about to waste my time in reading it. Ah well. That aside, I think that the writer here brings up a lot of good points. A lot of the time, the crises you encounter can be made easier or avoided completely by how you've prepared and set yourself up for success. We do this all the time as managers: you look at every possible outcome, try and think of all of the paths this project can take, and then brainstorm to have contingencies in place to accommodate the various scenarios. However, what I think the writer misses here are the unforeseen situations, problems, and crises that will inevitably arise. Some of these may even prohibit you from taking the helpful steps mentioned above: what if you have tech meetings that last an hour after tech, followed by personal conversations the Director needs to have with you? Honestly, I am going to wake up 15 minutes before I need to leave the house those next mornings. It may make me a little behind throughout the day, but at least I will have tried to get myself the rest I needed. I think tips on how to process and handle the challenges you encounter, even though you have done everything in your power to avoid them, would be beneficial. Then these situations get diffused from "crises" to simply moments of collaboration and learning.
As someone who is quickly beginning to find this article more and more relevant as we progress further into the semester, I think it is important for anyone to read this and understand what measures they can take to either prevent or help curb this crisis mode. One of the things I like to do that's on this list is waking up earlier to prevent the feeling of rushing into the day. It's very easy to get ready quickly but then feel like there's been a lot of expended energy already at the beginning of very long days. I appreciate the other suggestions in this article as well, and I think the one about procrastination is one that should be taken seriously as well. It is very easy to put things off until a later date, but when those later dates are filled with more assignments or crew calls, it becomes very apparent that putting things off until then was a poor decision.
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