maybe this is how you lock-in

| epiphanies on time management & being the main character

I just finished watching this movie, called “A beautiful mind” (2001), and I can’t even begin to describe how it changed my brain chemistry, especially as a college student who’s majoring in economics and someone who stresses out about almost everything. If I really had to give you a brief essence of the movie, then I would like to hint that it’s “Dead Poets Society” & “Awakenings” combined. My economics professor recommended us this movie, as we were studying about the Nash Equilibrium as a part of the Oligopoly unit in Microeconomics, which if you couldn’t guess yet, was given by the American mathematician John Nash, aka the protagonist on which the movie’s based. I think some of the epiphanies I had while watching this are worth sharing.

Just like other college students, I tend to stress-out a lot about time management, I think its fair to say that I have gotten better at it ever since I heard about the concept back in 2nd grade, I used to plan things down to the minutes, not considering whether I would even have the physical energy & mental capacity to actually follow that schedule. It all got better as I entered High-school, having certain commitments that you had to engage in, no-matter what was certainly helpful, be it school for 7 hours, coaching classes for 3.5 hours and then back to home for some more self-studying, just enough breaks for recreation and dinner. Although it’s a great way to go about life considering the time has already been ‘managed for you’, it’s definitely not sustainable at college.

Time management at college or pretty much any institution, as an adult, is tricky. We have infinite possibilities and opportunities to engage in and the daily-limit of 24 hours. It’s genuinely impossible to fit-in all that I wanna do into a google calendar schedule, and I think that’s what makes prioritising the things, activities and people that are near & dear to us, even more precious. Like imagine meeting up with a friend at your favourite cafe, this person actually considers you precious enough, for spending the time just chatting about life & your cute lil interests out of all the 276363728 other things they might be doing, and you too, thought of the time spent with them, more precious than all the 276363728 other things you might’ve been doing.

I also realised that, time management at a certain level is good and a highly achievable task, that does not require being a rocket scientist, but in the long run, if you genuinely wanna sustain your hobbies, your studies, your assignments and all the other commitments or interests you might have? You have to start doing things, just taking the first step, just starting yk? because if we just keep getting consumed, by the burden of trying to fit it all in a schedule and not just the google calendar but also the schedule of your energy levels then bbg, we are just gonna spiral into the deep dark abyss.

So one hypothesis am gonna be experimenting with, and would advise you to do the same, just for a week, is that, I’ll be doing the things that I wanna get done, be it studying, writing an article, journaling, working on a research project, editing, etc. with the mindset that I just need to do the barest minimum and that it won’t take up much time, for example, sitting down to revise just one sub-topic that was taught in the class today, writing just one paragraph, googling about just one parameter for your research project or reading just one research paper. I think this switch, in perception of the amount of time & energy required to get a task done, can do wonders, as a lot of us just suffer from analysis paralysis especially us students, we fail to understand which subject deserves our attention the most at the moment, and just assuming that “oh no this is gonna take me atleast 2 hours” will just make you dread the task even more, instead, maybe just think of it as a 10-20 minute thing, this will atleast help you get started and also stops your brain from constantly negotiating yourself out of getting a task done (aka procrastination). I’ll be updating y’all with the findings after a week, by testing out this lil hypothesis of mine hehe.

A lesson that life has been teaching me right now, in the final year of my bachelor’s degree, is that you are the one controlling how you perceive your life. It doesn’t matter what that one group of people in your class thinks of you, or what that one neighbour sees you like, or how that one friend that watches all your instagram stories but never reaches out or congratulates on your wins, perceives you. What does matter is how YOU feel about your life. You wanna live like a main character in a movie? Then act like one. Notice the little puddles of water that form after the rains, reflecting the sunlight, the clouds, the trees. Notice those little details about the people that spark your interest, I’ve always loved complimenting people especially for the mundane things that probably go unnoticed by many, for example, today I complimented a girl’s natural curls, they were genuinely so pretty, and you know what I love to see the most? It’s that genuine smile that appears on their faces when they hear me appreciate something about them.

Observe your surroundings, listen to the birds chirp, do a silly dance to your current fav song, while getting ready for the day. Whisper wishes into your coffee or matcha. Think about the three things that you’re grateful for today. Listen and like REALLY listen to the music, feel the lyrics in your bones & the rhythm in your veins. Enjoy & really appreciate every bite of the food you eat. Notice what sparks your interest and write it down in a commonplace notebook that you can carry everywhere with you, capture your thoughts, your curiosities. Write poetry about the shadow of a tree. Just don’t let, the whimsy in your being die.

My current fav song is Lover Girl by Laufey and i just LOVE the way this song just brings out the silly whimsical lover girl in me, despite not having a lover.

Thank you sm for reading loves, eternally grateful for 50K subs <33

remember you’re always loved

xoxo

Shreya