As college ramps up and midterms season becomes the trendiest season at Connecticut College, we students try to find ways to cope with the stress and stay sane in hopes of surviving until Fall Break. Some resort to copious amounts of coffee, others to procrastination station, while some call their mom in a panic (guilty as charged). Ever since junior year of high school, when homework really started to pile up on top of studying for the SATs and ACTs, I began to not only write my homework in my agenda boo, but also make mini to-do lists on the sticky notes feature on my laptop. I wrote out all my tasks I wanted to achieve that day, in the order which I would complete them. With a zealous sense of satisfaction,n I crossed off each task from my agenda and deleted each line from the sticky note. This sense of satisfaction made me believe that my process of keeping track of my tasks was helpful towards reducing my stress.
However, when I arrived at Connecticut College a year ago, I was overwhelmed with the various ways students kept track of their homework and activities. I jumped from a basic agenda book, to Google calendar, to insanity. Finally, after talking with my cousin, who is currently a graduate student, she gave me the life-changing advice of using a notebook with blank paper to write down my schedule, homework, and thoughts throughout the day. I pulled out an old notebook from my desk drawer – a faux leather bound white and blue notebook from Anthropologie – and began a new chapter in my life. I wrote down reminders, due dates, and social events. The lines which once restricted me where now longer and I felt free as a bee (pardon the cliche expression). In fact, I love blank notebooks so much that I repurchased the same style notebook I mentioned earlier and plan to use blank notebooks for all of my classes next semester.
In addition to my “agenda,” I have gone back to using digital sticky notes to keep track of my work on a second platform. By taking five classes this semester, it is necessary to have a second means of tracking my homework. While I routinely make to-do lists each day and write down weekly events, the lists sometimes reach overwhelming lengths which increases rather than decreases stress. Even rattling over my lists of things to do over conversation, text, or email reminds me of the shear amount of tasks I need to complete before I snuggle into bed at night.
So, I wonder whether the act of composing detailed to-do lists actually help students, or anyone for that matter, lower their stress or does the act of doing so further their stress level. This query is mentioned in the article “To-do lists can be stress busters – if you can master them” published by The Guardian April 21st 2015, by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman interviews David Allen, author of the book Getting Things done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, who believes that “much of our stress comes not from having too much to do, but from trying to keep track of it all.” Thus, he suggests taking two minutes to write down everything you have to do and every commitment you have made. However, he suggests that you should have a specific system for this process, whether that being taking pen to paper, creating a Word document, or using an app on your phone. Without knowing, I have been following Allen’s advice for years now and I have to agree that writing out my schedule helps relieve some stress.
In contrast, Shaun Dreisbach’s article “Your To-Do List May Be Stressing Yout. Here Here’s to Stop That” published on March 22, 2016 by Glamour, she argues that to-do-lists themselves, if not done right, can actually increase a woman’s stress level. According to Nancy Molitor, Ph.D., an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, “at least half of a woman’s overall stress is directly tied to her to-do lists, both the sheer number of things she has to accomplish and the actual list itself.” Furthermore, Dreisbach suggests three steps to improve your to-do list: write, reorganize, and re-prioritize. Perhaps, if I adopt these steps, my stress associated with to-do lists will diminish . On the other hand, the sheer editing of these lists as Dreisbach describes is another thing for me to cross off my list…
I was curious to find out how my peers felt about to-do lists, so I posted a poll on my Instagram story asking if to-do lists helped lower their stress levels or increased their stress. 85% percent answered that to-do lists helped, while 15% said this act stressed them further. Although the pool for this poll was small, and only targeted towards college students, the results are still suggest the timeless act of making to-do lists is still relevant to post-millenials.
Looks like I can cross off writing this article from my to-do list.