I am using the GIBBS reflection model for this post (cited in The University of Edinburgh 2023) which you can learn more about here. This post focuses on the tasks of week 5 and the week as a whole.
For specific reflection on the rapid ideation sprint: here for thoughts on ideation and here for thoughts on paper prototyping. Click here for my take on this week’s reflection.
This week required juggling of many activities – I was heading away for a long weekend too so my time management skills had to step up so as not to fall behind in my tasks.
The challenge, once started, proved useful and I was able to complete it without too much difficulty. The concepts were new and I left a few days between learning them and putting them into practice. This wasn’t intentional but it helped in letting the information sink into my brain and meant that when I started the challenge I could do it smoothly. The SMART goals that came out of it helped me stay on track for the rest of the week as I created a project timeline to handle RI1 and not let my emotions rule my energy distribution so much. The reflective writing takes longer than I would like it too and isn’t yet very natural so I put this activity on days where I had more flexibility in letting the work take time which ensured that I didn’t get worried about activities infringing on each other’s time.
The extra research this week also felt more focused, though as a result was less wide. Being able to concentrate my learning in this way though meant that I juggled my tasks better and didn’t feel like I fell behind. Not falling into the research-wormhole was something I had set out to master and this week I won the tug of war. It was still however exhausting as I crammed a lot of reading into one day. I asked Carlos for some feedback on my CRJ up until week 4 and he told me that I was definitely hitting the depth and breadth mark up to now.
I am noticing that until I have completed the weekly content I cannot relax into the sprint work, they are of equal important to the course so I felt comfortable in prioritising how I saw fit.
Something of note this week was that due to some personal reasons I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep at night, the tiredness affected my ability to work as quickly or as effectively.
Overall I feel quite pleased with how this week was handled, I was able to stay on track with my schedule which is something I had been trying to get more of a handle of in the past few weeks.
When it came to starting the challenge I was a bit daunted as it seemed to be very complex and I was getting a bit worried about the workload. Once started though it was absolutely fine and quite helpful.
The SMART goal of creating a project timeline initially made me nervous. Stopping once my days activities were done and not pushing through all the way until the job was done made me worry that I would fall behind. However I do know from experience that this is a one way ticket to exhaustion, and the work often suffers too. In the end I am reassured that this was the right thing to do, as I was able to complete all my tasks.
I am still a bit worried about the research side of the module. The choice to focus the research by reading some of the set texts meant I had more time left over for the rest of the work, but now I am nervous about not digging deeply enough. Carlos’ email did reassure me but also made me worry about the level at which I will need to maintain this work.
The lack of sleep also affected my mood and made just about everything more of a challenge, I was able to push through but it’s good to learn once again that we must take care of our physical bodies – our brains are part of our body too after all. I felt more anxious and would criticise my own ideas more readily in this mood, when I was rested and able to return to the same ideas they didn’t seem as bad as I remembered them.
What went well above all was my self-discipline this week. I pushed through even though I was tired and was able to create and follow the timeline I set out for myself. This trickled down into everything else, ensuring that I stayed on top of my tasks. I also believe that containing the research to one day helped tremendously in my time and energy management.
What didn’t go so well was how busy and condensed the week ended up being. Because I had travel over the weekend I had to push myself to keep working later than usual so that I wouldn’t have to take too much work with me which then only fed into the vicious cycle of tiredness leading to everything taking longer to complete.