How I Make Worklife Easier – The Islander Girl

Although my work as a marine scientist sounds fun (and it is!), it’s not always sea and sunshine. There are corals to identify, data analysis to be done, and reports to write and edit. It’s definitely stressful at times but luckily, I have my personal not-so-secret weapons in the fight against worklife stress:

1. A good cup of coffee. Strange as it may sound, coffee relaxes me and gives me that extra kick to start the day. Nothing gets done before my first cup of coffee. Even just making a cup of coffee helps. Whenever I hit a wall while working, I leave my desk and fix a cup of coffee. The ritual of boiling water, scooping grounds into a press, pouring water, and waiting helps clear my head so that I can focus on the task at hand.

This morning cup of coffee is Ginhawa Craft Studio Cafe in UP Los Banos 🙂

2. Pilates. If you told me a year ago that I’d list exercise as a way of destressing from work, I’d have laughed in your face and called you crazy. These days though, Pilates (and yoga! but mostly Pilates) is my go-to activity when I need to recenter myself and stop worrying about work. There’s something about the combination of quiet and hard work (I sweat buckets in that one-hour class) that makes me forget my troubles. Less stress + a stronger body = a double win for me.

My regular haunts are White Space in Katipunan and Barre 3 in Trinoma. Enroll in KFit using the promo code ZO2UX and get a discount on your Fitness Pass! 😀

And last but not least…

3. Get organized. I make good use of the paper monthly calendar on my desk and home office, my paper planner, Post-Its, plus my standard suite of apps: Evernote, Google Drive, Docs, and Calendar, and Dropbox. While some people prefer to keep everything online, I find that having a paper copy of my schedule and tasklists makes them more concrete somehow. That and I take great joy in making to-do lists and crossing stuff out.

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