72 credits. 1.5 years. Full time job. Full time MBA schedule. 2 amazing but extremely active German shepherds. 3 hours of sleep every night.
This was my life for the last year and half. As I was reminiscing on what I learnt from the experience, I figured I should capture it to sort my thoughts out, and learn and share my experience.
(image credit: https://www.cartoonstock.com/)
The first question, obviously, is why did I do it? Normal (heck, abnormal crazy people who try to tackle a full-time MBA load while working full-time don’t do it in less than 2 years, which is a feat in itself.) I didn’t start the next leg of my educational journey with this goal in mind, I just wanted to survive.
Anyone who has tried to do accounting or create pro-formas for homework after a 12 hour work day will know that it is really just about survival.
2019 was a year in flux for me, and I felt a little lost, professionally, and personally. I had lost my puppy (literally, she was lost) , I was dealing with the aftermath of that, and 8 months after it happened, I was no closer to coming to terms with my grief.
I figured, if I had no time to think about her, I’d be in a better place, and that’s how it all began. I created a BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) for myself, and wanted to hit 60 credits (that is the requirement to complete the MBA from Columbia Business School) by the end of 2019. This automatically meant that every part of my calendar was blocked with either school, or work, or homework, or case studies or exams. Suffice to say, by the end of March 2019, I felt like I was training for a marathon. Long hours of work, long hours of study and the pace was just relentless. Funny thing - I noticed my endurance stretching like a rubber band. This, frankly, piqued my curiosity and terrified me at the same time. Would I snap? Would I burn out? What would happen?
Well, nothing bad happened! But I made several sacrifices, the biggest one being, sleep.
My biggest learnings and productivity hacks are below:
Sleep: Learning to sleep deeply and well. 3-4 hours of deep sleep can be extremely restful if it is of extremely high quality. I have personally found that a hard workout before sleeping will knock me right out.
Pets: I owe my accelerated MBA pace to my 2 amazing German Shepherds - they were absolutely crucial stress relievers. I would throw a ball around with them, or go on a short run with them, or train them for 15 mins at a time when my own brain resembled and felt like a fried egg. I credit them with my mental well-being, without a doubt.
Visualization: When it gets tough, visualize the outcome exactly as you want it. I used this technique extensively to get through back to back exams after back to back meetings. Also - this is my #1 hack to context-switch like a boss.
Never Multi-task: One thing at a time, and one perfect thing at a time. Multi-tasking exhausts the brain, and increases your error rate, making you feel like a failure. Never multi-task.
Just say No: Prioritize relentlessly. I assigned a cost to every activity - a cost to me, an ROI on the task and calculated my toil budget on everything from cooking, groceries, commute times, learning..you name it, I wrote it down and identified the amount of time I spent on each, and the impact of each activity on my life.. which leads me to the next thing..
Measure EVERYTHING: I do mean, everything. Right from the time it takes to brush your teeth, get ready, order groceries - whatever. If it’s a task that consumes your time, measure it. Then assign the cost, prioritize and eliminate or automate. Groceries was a simple one, automated the hell out of this, as I did other mundane household tasks that we all need to do to survive.
Meditate: Meditation keeps me sane, my thoughts grounded and my knee-jerk reactions to a lot of things in check.
Track your time for a week: I spent one week relentlessly tracking my time, right down to the last second, and identified areas where there were dead mental zones, my best and worst times to get work done (eg: after work was a terrible time for me to get any homework done, I noticed a severe productivity drop - but I could do an after work class if the class matched my interest). The goal of time-tracking is to increase your productivity.
For instance, I noticed that, after pounding down 5 espressos, if I still cannot concentrate, I just need to catch some shut-eye. Tracking helped me to identify my own patterns, and helped me find surprising high-productivity time blocks (eg: right after I walk my dogs - I was usually in a fantastic state of mind and got a lot of work done in 45 minutes flat.)
Find One thing that makes you Happy: Or 2..or 3. I didn’t realize this until June 2019, I was putting my work first, and myself last. I flipped that on its head, and dedicated at least a few hours a week towards the things that made me feel happy - which mostly consisted of flying trapeze and spinning @ Peloton.
Learn Selective Deafness:
Lastly, don’t listen to the nay-sayers. I had a lot of people tell me I was:
(A) Crazy
(B) I will burn out
© I deserved to burn out
(D) Stupid
It went on and on. I learnt how to become selectively deaf. If it was negative, I automatically ignored it. Eventually, I didn’t even hear it.
I ended up at 72 credits, blazing past my goal by 12 credits, an extremely valuable education with world-class professors from a world class institution, and I would not trade it for anything else in the world.
If you have a big hairy audacious goal - whatever it is, go for it and don’t look back.