Today is the day before may. May is the final stretch to my senior thesis, the gallery installation that I have been working on for months and the graduation that has been 5 years in the making. I can’t even begin to go into how much I still have to do…how unprepared I am for this, and yet I am so very distracted. I wish I was one of those people who can blindly devote themselves to the task at hand regardless of the level of their interest. Rather, I find myself constantly drifting, thinking about life after, all the things I will have time to do, all the things I want to do, all the things I want to explore. I am shaking with anticipation and yet increasingly worried that I will allow myself to endure a completely avoidable failure because I wouldn’t stop daydreaming…and procrastinating. I like to tell myself that I’m not lazy or stupid, that I just know what I am interested in and what I am not interested in and after years of blood, sweat, tears and anxiety from the emotional, psychological and intellectual culling, engaging with the same obsessive, naked devotion seems naive, not to mention needlessly extravagant considering I’m not interested in being an artist.

So I’m trying to walk this thin line between getting my project done well and allowing myself to detach and see life beyond college. Quite honestly, so far I feel that I’m doing alright at this, that both fronts are progressing well and psychologically I’m pretty balanced and happy considering the circumstances. However, the big fear is the involuntary blindness to “reality.” Am I extremely far behind and heading for a massive train wreck of a failure? Will they have to close the door to my exhibition space? Am I going to be able to show with my class? Or am I doing just fine? The problem is that I have no idea what the reality IS. I have never done this before, constructed an installation, showed in a gallery. I have no idea what to expect or plan for or whether I’m behind schedule or ahead of it and so it is to be expected that I will lack the foresight to prepare for certain setbacks. But am I ruining my chances by allowing an additional blind spot with the daydreaming? I really don’t know and that is perhaps the worst thing about this experience. I am refusing to completely engage with this experience for the sake of self preservation, but what I can’t tell is if that is okay in “reality,” if this leisurely, safe pace will still take me where I need to go.

The best thing I can do to calm myself at this point really is to engage, in a practical sense: to not consider whether it will be good or bad or what people will think, but to figure out what needs to be done to complete the project and do it, quickly, efficiently and without emotional baggage. Obviously this is always easier said than done. Life would be so much easier if it didn’t involve emotions, but yea yea, then it would be boring and empty. Besides, having to push myself to just go through the motions and do this will make me that much more appreciative of the enjoyable nature of the processes I go through when doing the things that I am truly interested in.

So there it is. Read. Realize. Rinse. Repeat.

Ms. Urban should brush her teeth every night instead of eating candy in bed and falling asleep with her computer on her lap. This would greatly increase the chances that her teeth will still be in her head at 40, which would encourage her continuing overall attractiveness. Additionally, I believe Ms. Urban’s financial assistant would back me up on this, new teeth are a massive cost that she would do best to avoid.

One of the founding principles of organization is list making, and with good reason. The human brain can only remember 7 things at once and we have long since past the days when this was enough ram for all our to dos. These days we have hundreds of little projects, broken down into thousands of things to do. The only way to handle these things is will fast, efficient and reliable list making. I happen to be a believer in GTD, so this is the system that I will encourage Ms. Urban to adopt.

As with any organizational system, the most important thing to do is be consistent. The number one reason why these systems fail, is that we fail to use them consistently enough, which only creates more work for ourselves when we end up straddling three or five half working systems all tied together with our frazzled, overstretched mind that wants to be thinking about other things to begin with. The whole point of being organized is to enable you to STOP thinking about things. So the more work you put in up front in making sure your system is comprehensive, the sooner you’ll be able to spend a fraction of what you currently spending thinking about things you don’t want to be thinking about.

So here is my suggestion based on a system that has worked quite nicely in the past. Gubb is a fantastic online list making software that is free to use. It’s the single best organization software I have found. It is simple and flexible, yet not so flexible that you lose organization focus and go nuts.

So here is what we do. Like David Allan suggests, we create one monster list of everything that you can possible think of that needs doing. If it has a due date, add it. If it has a context (store, phone, computer, etc.) add that in parenthesis. Once you’re finished, group the to dos into projects. For each project, create a new list and make it purple. For the leftovers, turn the list green. This is your queue. Then create a yellow list. This is for everything that you are waiting on. Then create a red list. This is everything that must be done today. Every next action gets a star. As you choose what to do the next day, add items to the red list. And that’s it!

When you’re young and don’t have much money, sometimes it can feel like you’d rather ignore your living space than try to engage with it. But ignoring your apartment’s aesthetics, however tacky or dull, doesn’t make them go away, which is why I’ve suggested to Ms. Urban that she embrace them. In the first photo, Ms. Urban pays no attention to what she is wearing, the lighting, or what we can see of her apartment in the background. This omission of the character of the apartment, and missed opportunities in lighting and wardrobe make this photo a dud.

In the following photo, Ms. Urban wears a shirt that compliments the decor of her apartment. She also engages with the couch and faces the lighting so as to flatter the angles of her face. In this photo, the aesthetic of her wardrobe ties in to the aesthetic of her surroundings and says: I’m young and I’ve got tacky furniture and a cool, relaxed wardrobe and the result is “incredibly hip without even trying.”

Ms. Urban appears to be in a daze today. Unable to complete sentences, she often gives up midway through looks hopefully at the recipient and smilies weakly. She says she has been sleeping restlessly and that she has become dependent on her boyfriend for emotional support that he is reluctant to provide. She is frustrated by this, but says she can appreciate his perspective. She says she is beginning to feel desperate, which is of concern. She is clearly standing before a major psychological hurdle that she needs to overcome, quickly.

On her schedule for today, she has work all day, after which she is meeting with a friend about electronics for her thesis work, after which she is to meet with friends for dinner and trashy TV. While normally I would suggest that she refrain from socializing and work, she seems to have been in a major rut lately and my hope in encouraging her to have a social flurry tonight is that this will kick her out of it.

Additionally, her boyfriend has placed pressure on her due to family engagements this weekend that were revealed only yesterday and will undoubtedly take up the entire weekend. She has mentioned that she is feeling slighting defeated by this as she fears that she will get nothing done if she attends, but also nothing done if she doesn’t attend and goes into an emotional coma spending by Sunday by herself. She feels embarrassed by such an admittance of perceived weakness.

In regards to her excessive thinking and the resulting emotional paralysis, Ms. Urban has been advised by a colleague at work to: “Just shut it down. Stop thinking. It’s illogical.” She mentioned that she didn’t understand what he mean by “illogical,” but that perhaps he is right. I conclude from my interactions with her she would be well served by this colleague’s advice.

Scheduling inevitably falls apart. Especially if it involves getting up early. I am so a night person. So not a morning person.

Quickly running out of ways to avoid doing my work. Stress out of no where. Adult life is insane. Just, boring ass insane.

I’ve got a fake tiger head hanging on my wall. Things like that keep me sane.

It will make the kitchen feel much cleaner instantly. It’s the old 80/20 rule. 20 percent effort will bring you 80 percent satisfaction.

Like so many clients I see, Ms. Urban has a problem with procrastination. She’s not lazy, though she may think that’s the problem. Rather, she does not schedule her day, and having so much to do in such a variety or areas, she quickly either becomes overwhelmed, or loses the ability to prioritize. As such, long term projects of medium importance, like a personal website for pr and career purposes, take priority over short term, essential projects, like the incremental experiments that will enable her to finish her thesis, and graduate. Likewise, smaller things like thank you cards for Christmas gifts fall by the wayside in the face of large, looming deadlines, like thesis, or even the daily work grind. Ms. Urban needs to do a much better job of prioritizing her life. But today, as a small, incremental step, we will begin chopping the swamp by scheduling her day. This will help her to make sure that she can tackle all the projects, large and small in her life, on time and with minimal stress.

Additionally, sticking to a schedule will allow Ms. Urban, not only to do more with her time, but also to integrate some of her personal goals like working out and shopping for groceries regularly. This will help her not only to feel better both physically and mentally, but also to build a healthier lifestyle and make better choices.

To start her off, I have devised a simple schedule that I must ask her to follow to a tee. Though only the essentials will be minimal, she must follow them in order to learn the habit of doing what is required (by her own standards), not what is fun (at least not always).

6:30 AM – Wake up/ Shower/ Get dressed
7:05 AM – Leave for work
7:30 AM – Arrive at work

4:00 PM – Leave for home
4:30 PM – Arrive at home

9:00 PM – Take vitamins/ Read
10:00 PM – Lights out

Busy student and young professional seeks professional help in attaining proficiency in life. Requires assistants from a variety of fields to aid in upkeep and improvement of daily life. Assistants should be experts in their respective fields and be prepared to provide the proverbial fish, as well as to mentor the client in the acquisition of fish.

If you feel that you are qualified for any of the following positions, please send a resume and cover letter to Ms. Urban.

The assistants in perceived order of urgency:

Personal Assistant
Maid
Organizational Guru
Personal Trainer
Stylist/ Image Consultant
Life Coach
Interior Designer
Nutritionist/ Chef
Publicist
Culture Warrior