Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing well and if not I hope you’re taking care of yourself.

So I went back to some mentoring that I am entitled to through the disability support I recieve but had not yet used and the external committment as well as outside view has been really helpful. We first developed a plan to get me on track to finish at my deadline and now i’m focusing on the more difficult parts, like managing the avodance statergies I was doing and working trying to work through the day.

Some of the hardest issues I have with my learning difficulties is that I find it challenging to write, especially when things are up in the air which much of research is – even when writing up its common for not everything to be done, and this combined with the fact that I cannot concentrate as long as i’d like does not make for a great pairing. 

So now that I have a working plan for getting my chapters done I thought why not do a challenge during the week to beat my afternoon slump and inability to concentrate? The first suggestion I had was split days, working in the mornings and evenings and then getting life stuff done in the afternoon when my brain isnt as able to focus. 

Despite not being a morning person at all (chronic fatigue is wild) my brain for some reason works best then. To avoid exhaustion, over work and burnout I am resistant to the idea of split days (its too much back and fourth) and I work some afternoons and evenings for my paid employment now, so I have to be careful here. However despite all of this I do have a car and staff parking. So I decided instead to try one wake of extra early starts to see if I can get what i’d like done for the day entirely before the afternoon. Yes I dived head first into the dreaded 5am morning routine.

I ended up going to the 24 hour libraries on campus for safety reasons and this worked completely fine. It makes sense to make use of the resources available to you. On a good day i’d get in for 6am and work from then until about 8:45am before driving over to my office to work on coding for my PhD research.

This didn’t work all the time though as though I sleep well I struggle to get-to-sleep. Part of preserving my mental health has always been giving myself leisure time, and the idea of going home, prepping lunch and dinner for the next day before crawling into bed is a bleak one to me, so I do like to play video games or watch TV or socalise until quite late much to the hatrid of myself the next morning. 

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Amongst all of this I found this website that great visual and realistic tutorials on many different ways to study. Give it a look:
https://learningwithangie.com/how-to-wake-up-at-5am-to-study-tips-from-a-former-night-owl/

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Day 1: The first day wen’t upsettingly well. I was able to get to the library and be working by 6:30am, and on top of that it was a lovely view. Not only was I able to write a fair amount in my thesis/paper, but I was also able to do research from 9am-1pm in the office without too much resistane. The caveat here is that though I didn’t get a lot of sleep I was well rested due to the bank holiday. I also took a higher dosage of my medication (don’t do this) which I cannot afford to do every day, so tomorrow will be the real test. On this day I will be working in the evening in my paid employmeant and would also like to get some big house stuff done during the day, so let’s see if I can squeeze a nap in and see how it all goes.

Day 2: A bit of back and fourth on this day was annoying, but I was able to get a lot or work done in the morning before going home in the early afternoon for some lunch, house stuff and then a desperately needed nap before my late evening shift.

Day 3: It didn’t make sense for me to go back home this day. Was simply able to get a whole days PhD work done before working my paid job in the afternoon.

Day 4: The final day (long weekends are lovely)

I had my supervisory meetings on this day so I decided not to go too crazy. Just went in for 9am and worked in the morning and early afternoon. Was a bit of a struggle with the late evening shift but finished it none the less.

Overall thoughts:
Unfortunately this has worked extremely well for me. Not the biggest fan of this fact considering if you leave me to my own devices I am not a morning person. It is extremely nice in this weather being able to simply work until the early afternoon and be done with my day by 1pm so I can enjoy the sun, but it does mean early nights which isn’t ideal when sunset is rapidly approaching 10pm.

I think the main takeaway here is that working with my rhythms is best on the day I really need to get work done. My PhD time is limited and I’ve got to get work done, so on the days I don’t have my paid employment work, i’ll defo be using this to get a boost and be able to churn out what needs to be done, but otherwise i’ll not go too mad to first avoid burnout and then to keep my health well.

In solidarity – Karel (on behalf of the POC² team)

Discoveries ✨

📺 – Queen Charlotte: A Brigerton Story (on netflix). After the hype of the original Brigerton, which I dipped in and out of, this mini-series had me hooked since the trailer dropped half a year ago. Happy to report it did not disappoint. I enjoyed it heaps more than the original series on Netflix and it had so much unexpected depth, warmth, diversity and heart-wrenching, joyous moments. Would seriously recommend giving it a watch.

📺 – Netflix Party (on YouTube). Great fun YouTube channel. She just watches and reviews things and it’s so entertaining. Would recommend ✊🏿

The POC² newsletter, The POC² Post 💌, is written by Karel Green. Find her published work + guest appearances on BBC radio here or follow her on Twitter @thisismeonline

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash