This past week has been one hell of an emotional roller-coaster for me. All the emotions under the sun, I have experienced. Elation, frustration, stress, sadness…

In the midst of the madness, I’ve found that I need to work on pulling up and discerning what situations are worth fretting over and which are just unnecessary stressors that affect my quality of life and health.

My job often has hard deadlines and client deliverables to be met. I worked really long hours on Monday and Tuesday this week, and I suffered a terrible migraine with aura that left me debilitated.

I know that my migraine was absolutely unnecessary and could have been prevented by my managing my stress better. I’ve been thinking about how to deal with it  and I think that these 3 questions help:

1. Can this be done tomorrow?
2. Why am I really feeling stressed? Am I diminishing my abilities to deal with the situation at hand?
3. Will it be the end of the world if I don’t meet this deadline?

Oftentimes, the answers to the above questions are:

1. Yes. If the deadline is not that night, it can absolutely be picked up tomorrow morning. Productivity is marginal when my brain is tired
2. I’m not confident that I can deliver and thus downplaying my ability to totally crush this piece of work
3. No. We often catastrophise situations, but honestly, very rarely is a situation a train smash; certainly not on my current project

Realising this has taught me that I need to know when not to give Fs in life, and this includes work. I’m very cognizant of the fact that one simply cannot just give no Fs. However, it is important for me to learn and continue to develop the skill of knowing when they should and shouldn’t be given. A huge part of this is developing the skill of good prioritisation, but the other equally important part is really managing one’s own emotions, feelings, and mental state.

This blog post was brought to you by a migraine of aura. 

Have a great weekend friends!