I pride myself in my productivity and efficient time management. Sure, I still cram every now and then, miss my personal deadlines (not real ones), and spend a huge chunk of my time in bed during my bad days, but I always rally. I fear that if I let one thing slide, it will lead to another, and then another, until the half-assed work and unprofessionalism becomes a habit.

I still believe that how you do anything is how you do everything, so yes, I make self-care a priority, but I never let it get in the way of quality work.

There’s a lot of backlogs getting in the way of “right now” tasks, and I find myself neck-deep in tasks, I’m barely keeping my head up. Despite that, I manage to tick some tasks here and there when the deadlines are already knocking at my door.

Given the deadlines, I know I can perform. I also know that I plan well. So what was my problem?

I have this Notion tab always opened as soon as I turn on my computer – my Weekly Plan page which has a tile for each day of the week. Every time I check an item on the checklist, I’ll inevitably see the backlogs from the day before, or even 3 days before, and that affects how I perform at that time on that day. I always had this feeling of “not doing enough.”

Also, with grad school, art, writing, and life pulling me from all sides, I barely have time to change hats before moving on to a task that needs a completely different mindset — sometimes a completely different Maia — to get done.

Changing hats in the middle of the day takes time. It’s difficult to be writing my thesis about probiotic bacteria metabolites that can possibly inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria using molecular docking studies and then write a short story about ants the next hour, or an article for a vegan company, or dabble on an artwork.

If I use up all my time changing hats within the day, I will barely have enough time to do the actual tasks at hand.

I don’t know if this counts as a resolution, but I plan to limit planning only during Sunday evenings. The rest of the things I think about in the middle of the week will go the the “Inbox” tab first and will be sorted out on the next Sunday. Also, I’ll try to limit changing my hat to twice a day only. That means I can work on a project only 3-4 times a week instead of everyday, but hey, if that will help me to stay sane and be on top of my weekly tasks, I’m down with that.