I’m about halfway through my last quarter and it’s getting busy! This upcoming week my team has to submit all of the work we have done, along with installation and instructional information on how to actually run our neural network (at least what is completed so far). We also have to make our own demonstration videos. Along with this, I have a midterm and a project due for my other class, CS 475 (Parallel Programming). With all of these big deadlines within a couple days of each other it’s safe to say that I won’t be getting much sleep this weekend.

Since my personal theme for this week seems to be managing stress, I want to give some tips on effective ways I’ve found to do so.

1. Plan ahead

• There will be weeks that aren’t too heavy and it’s important to keep working at a normal pace throughout that time. By planning ahead, you can see if there is going to be a gap followed by a million deadlines. I like to keep a calendar on the wall next to my desk so the deadlines are obvious and I can anticipate the busyness.

2. Overestimate the length of tasks

• Coding is easiest when you’re not in a rush. So if you think that a particular task might take about two hours, then give yourself a three hour block to work on it. This way, if a task takes longer than you initially thought then the buffer helps you stay on schedule. And if you get it done in a shorter amount of time then you’re ahead of schedule! This is probably good advice even outside of coding, however since there will be random bugs that can arise during programming, I would always recommend overestimating your time.

3. Do something else

• This may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes if you’re stuck on a problem the best thing to do is leave and come back with a fresh mind. It’s easy when you’re coding to get stuck on one method of doing something and keep trying to tweak it until it works. But sometimes, you just need to start over. I find that if I get up and go for a walk around the block (which my puppy Bowen is always thrilled about) then when I come back my brain is clearer and I lose the tunnel vision that I had before. One caveat with this is to not do anything TOO interesting during your break. For example, if I go on TikTok for a couple minutes then it’s going to be hard to go back to schoolwork.

I hope these tips help someone because they have helped me massively throughout my degree.