This morning, I woke up around 10am on the weekend from an anxiety dream.
It’s not a nightmare… It’s just this gnawing sense of stress and discomfort I have when I’m asleep. I fear that I’m sleeping in over something important, that I’m going to forget something, that I’m going to let someone down.
As a student at the University of Oregon, this always happens to me during the term.
I start getting burned out; along with regular homework, the term-long projects start coming due. My sleep schedule is so wrecked, I forget what day it is. The motivation, enthusiasm, and love for work wanes. All I want to do is lay in bed; my term-long goal of going to every class seems much less illustrious now.
My passion projects begin to stall. I start to get anxious, stressed out.
And then I start to fear that I will, or already have overlooked something important.
I must admit, I don’t really know how to work around this. The work piles on, and I struggle underneath the load.
I work very well under pressure; sometimes, I have to have to give myself a deadline to complete something. I’m a chronic procrastinator, and when it’s the night before the assignment is due, I surge forward in an impressive display or creativity and work ethic.
But this experience is always married to stress… stress and anxiety.
This can’t be good for my health.
Here is a phenomenal article that talks about stress, why it happens, and how to “win the war inside your brain.”
You can try to fight it back. You can buy a daily planner and a to-do list application for your phone. You can write yourself notes and fill out schedules. You can become a productivity junkie surrounded by instruments to make life more efficient, but these tools alone will not help, because the problem isn’t you are a bad manager of your time – you are a bad tactician in the war inside your brain.
neilkirkpatrick.wordpress.com 
