I have a LOT going on this quarter in grad school*—and, ya know, there’s a ton going on in the world that can make it hard to focus. I spent a long time my first week this quarter looking for a project management software system that would help me stay on top of things. (*And I saw my first client last week!!! I’m happy to report we both survived.)

This may be a random post, but I love productivity hacks and seeing other people’s systems of how they get shit done, so here’s how I’m doing it right now.

Rocketbook

I’m a writer. I LOVE me a good notebook. I also live in a one-bedroom apartment, and I am beginning to have notebooks piling up, so my organization quest started with looking for a solution to this. But also, I am super old-school and I retain information way better when I physically write, so I was hoping for some sort of solution that involved some kind of writing magic.

I asked on Twitter, and a TON of people suggested Rocketbook. It’s a notebook that uses erasable pens with paper you can wipe down. Once you are done with your notes, you scan the QR code on the page with your phone and it automatically sends it to places including Evernote, email, etc. I am generally really liking it—except, I am left-handed, so the left-hand side of the page gets a little smudgy, but not so much so that I can’t read my notes. You win some, you lose some?

Evernote

I tried out a few different project management software thingers, but integrating with the Rocketbook was pretty important to me. The two other features most important to me were: a place to store class/training documents (notes, syllabi, etc.) and a way to see all of my tasks at a glance on a calendar. Unfortunately, the calendar part wasn’t an option in Evernote, but the rest of it seemed easy enough. I used to use Asana when I was at my last job, and I looked pretty closely at it this time, but there was no direct integration with Rocketbook. (I could have emailed to myself and then put in Asana, but I’m trying to streamline things as much as possible, not add steps, sooo.) But if you’re looking for a project management software that can hold all your to-dos AND files for projects, I think it’s a pretty damn good one.

Here’s a screenshot of my Evernote with a Rocketbook note so you can see how it all works together. As you can see, I have a LOT of notebooks because there’s a lot of stuff I’m juggling this quarter. (And then a few personal ones, and the Daily Burn one because I just couldn’t bear to delete it :)) Under Training and Workshops, you can see that there’s other notebooks—this is called stacking notebooks in Evernote, and once I’m done with this quarter, I’ll move it all into a Winter 2021 “stack.”

Todoist

I wanted some kind of task manager where I could also set up projects for each class so I could see at a glance what was coming up and what was due. I put every single reading, e-mail, assignment, etc in here so that I don’t miss anything. I had really wanted a way to see a month’s calendar at a glance, and it doesn’t do that, which is kind of annoying.

But it does also sync with Google Cal, so I can at least see there if I have any huge due dates coming up if I am trying to schedule some kind of appointment.

There’s also an app, so I can get notifications.

Focus To-Do

The last piece in my productivity puzzle is Focus To-Do. The Pomodoro technique (25 minutes of focused work, 5 minutes off) is kind of the only way I can focus these days. Most of the time, I can work for twenty-five minutes if I know I get a five-minute break (or I take ten, sometimes) where I can check email/Twitter/etc. There’s also a feature for you to use it as a time-tracker, which I sometimes use to see how long a project is taking me. (Especially my paid writing work.)

Not many people read this blog any more, but I still wanted to use whatever small platform I have over here to talk just a little bit about current events and say that I, 1 million percent, condemn the white supremacist domestic terrorism attempt to overthrow an election/an entire branch of our government, incited by the president.

Also, I’d be remiss to say all of that and not mention Martin Luther King Jr. Day. May we one day see the justice he dreamed of—we have a long way to go. As a white person, I’m continuing to reflect on my role in society for this work beyond posting stuff online. In school, I am going deep on learning my role in white supremacy and how to be a culturally humble therapist. (As I’ve said before, a POC in a place to choose probably wouldn’t choose a white therapist like me, and I understand that!!! For those who can’t choose, I want to be there as best I can.) A cause important, related to that, is access to therapy—which is…not a good situation. I donate monthly to the Loveland Foundation, which provides scholarships for therapy to Black women and girls.

I don’t know how to end this now…so, be kind, rewind, and take care of yourself. Talk to me about social justice? or project management software? or tacos?

I’ve really felt more of a draw to write lately. I can admit that a little bit of it is fueled by envy—which is leading to a why not me? Some of it is realizing that my words and I do matter, and some of it is just becoming more authentic and less afraid to be myself. And I miss having this kind of record of my life. Maybe I won’t feel this way forever, but I still do right now.

I’m listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic (a pep talk of a book about living a creative life) right now, and one line made me literally take pause, coming to a halt while walking Lucy.

You are allowed to be here, and you are allowed to have a story.

She also talks about not writing for the sole purpose of helping others and the joy that can take out of it for both the reader and the writer. I can vouch for feeling that way, and also for how much I despise attempts to help others that feel fully pedantic.

I can write because if feels good, because keeping the words inside feels like ants in my pants. Because writing is part of my identity, part of my soul, part of what makes me whole.

“What do you want your clients to feel from you when they’re in the [zoom] room with you?” my therapist asked me yesterday. I started my internship this week and will probably start seeing clients within the next week or two (!?!?!) (If you’re new here, I’m in school to become a therapist.)

“Comfort, understanding and like they’re less alone in the world,” I said. Maybe I’m projecting my own wants and needs, but they’re pretty universal ones.

And although I am nervous about how I might handle tough situations/clients/cases, I am pretty confident in my ability to create a warm space, and the relationship is the foundation of the therapy. (The foundation—you still need the skills.) In fact, research shows that a stronger therapeutic alliance is typically correlated with better results in therapy.

I will be 38 next month, and the magnitude of starting an entirely new career hit me HARD the other day—ALSO while walking Lucy. Apologies to the small shih tzu at the end of the Lilly leash for abrupt stops when I make realizations. When I realized this the other day, it felt really depressing and daunting to feel like I was starting all over again, but right now it’s feeling really exciting to think about how I want this future career to look.

I am feeling a weird sense of calm right now so I thought it should be documented. And I wanted to also document a little check in as I embark on my second half of grad school.

Last quarter was really hard for me. It went from early October to right before Christmas, so that means it included the election, the difficult holiday season, days getting shorter, and the pandemic getting worse. Additionally, the classes I took were: Assessment and Treatment of Addictive Disorders; Human Sexuality; Trauma, Its Effects and Recovery; and Pharmacology. A kind of heavy courseload emotionally? I was genuinely interested in every single one of these classes, but I also felt a sense of apathy and lack of motivation that was kind of hard to shake, just feeling like I was going through the motions. My advisor said that pandemic/election aside, this is actually a pretty normal feeling at this point in the program—you’re in it, but you haven’t started seeing clients yet, so it just feels like a slog.

I’m psyched and nervous for this quarter. The workload has felt intense the entire time, and every single week, I freak out and am convinced I won’t be able to finish it all. “Has that happened at all yet, Theodora?” my therapist asks. “Well, um…no.” Fine, lady.

But this quarter! I will be seeing anywhere from five to ten clients and having five to seven additional hours of training/supervision each week, on top of the rest of the schoolwork. I’m pretty nervous about the time management aspect of all of this, but I know I will figure it out. The benefit to this being online is that I won’t also be losing commuting hours for my internship/classes, and, uh, that there’s also nothing else to do right now.

A quick note on the classes I’m taking, more for future me than you, but maybe you care? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Personality Theories II: Comparative Contemporary Theories: I took Personality I in my first quarter last year, and it was a lot of learning about Freud and his contemporaries who were the foundation of this field. Personality II looks at more contemporary theories, such as humanistic, experiential, cognitive, behavioral, narrative (I’m particularly excited to learn about this one!!), feminist, multicultural, etc. I don’t have a particular theoretical orientation I’m really learning towards yet, so I’m really interested in this class and learning a lot more.

I’ve done a lot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) myself. It’s pretty common because it’s very evidence-backed and, in some ways, can help you feel better pretty quickly—but it can also feel a little too simple, reductive and formulaic to me sometimes. In treatment, we didn’t follow a full formal Dialectical Behavioral Therapy program, but we used a lot of their tools/worksheets, and it is excellent in crisis/severe situations. For me, I have found a combination of CBT techniques (like learning tools and coping skills) and a deeper psychodynamic exploration of underlying causes.

I’m in a cohort, and we typically take all of our classes together, but I’m breaking out of the cohort for this one to take with an instructor I really like. I’m really bummed to be missing out on his IRL energy. Talk about feeling comforted and understood—this guy is a giant, brilliant teddy bear, and I know he must be an amazing therapist.

Family Systems II: I took Family I last year, and hooooo boy did it bring up a lot of stuff. We had to do journaling exercises and write a short reflection paper nearly every week for that class, and while that part was really emotionally difficult, I learned so much.

I don’t foresee myself doing family therapy down the line (other than in training)—but we all come from families, so it’s important for me to learn and understand more about these dynamics.

Research for Mental Health Professionals: Y’all, I am a nerd and super excited about this one. “We, uh, don’t get that a lot,” my advisor said, when I told him that. Essentially this class is learning how to read/evaluate/explain studies, which is something I’ve been doing in my professional writing for a long time. Most of what I know about this is self-taught, so I am interested to learn even more about how to critically evaluate studies. The class culminates in a lit review on a psychology topic of our choice, and Y’ALL. I love me a lit review.

I am taking this research class instead of a class on domestic violence that the rest of the cohort is taking, because we registered when I was feeling really burnt out and the thought of adding a class on DV when I was feeling burnt out felt incredibly heavy.

I’m also taking three one-credit workshops instead of fourth class here.

Dynamics and Treatment of Eating Disorders: Obviously, writing in this space for a long time, I’ve interacted with a lot of people with current or past eating disorders—or, at least, disordered/unhealthy habits. (I include myself in this, too—I’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder but I can also recognize some past habits of mine that were extreme.) I want to primarily work with women in the future, so it is really important to me to learn more about eating disorders. I know they are not just a female thing, and certainly not just a thin white female thing, even if the media portrays them that way.

Therapy As a Career: My long-term goal is to split my time between working in private practice, doing some kind of work that helps those who typically can’t access therapy, and writing. This is a second career for me, and I won’t become fully licensed until I am at least 40, so I want to hit the ground running and do as much career development as I can now and learn about all the options out there.

Compassion Fatigue: Taking Care While Taking Care: Coming into this with my own mental health issues and a history of poor boundaries around work after a decade of working in social media, I know how important self-care is. The true self-care—knowing when to say no, etc—not Instagram bullshit self care. Plus, I know that this is a career that is subject to burnout, so I want to be as cognizant of that upfront as possible and have the tools to recognize and deal with that when it comes up.

So…yeah. This quarter is going to be pretty intense, but good intense.

If you want to catch up from last year, I wrote about my first week last year and also a check-in after the second quarter, halfway through the year.