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My Goals for 2020

I have mentioned in previous blog posts that I don’t set resolutions for the new year but I do set goals instead. I’ve written about the importance of setting SMART goals (which you can read about in a separate blog post!). With goal setting, I am able to divide them by categories, such as personal, academic, social media related, etc. and I’ve been able to achieve them since I started in 2017. 2019 was a wonderful year for me, it definitely topped 2018! It was the best for so many reasons because I was able to mature and achieved a lot of personal growth, as well as achieved some success, especially in personal relationships. 

Here’s what I was able to accomplish in 2019: 

GOALS FOR 2020

I’m so excited for the next decade! I have a wonderful support system who is encouraging me to continue learning and growing. I’m going to start a new minor for my masters program in March, which will integrate science and business, I will also be writing a literature thesis and starting my 2nd internship this upcoming year too and although I might not be able to graduate in two years, I am still going to try my best! 

My goals for 2020:

I also have smaller goals that I would like to achieve this year in regards to  my Instagram page but they’re more personal! In 2020 I really want to be more present while experiencing things, as well as focus on taking better care of myself and improving my routines! I let self-care slip this year and I’m surprised that I managed to avoid burnout. I picked “PRESENT” to be my new word for the upcoming year because I want to be more present in my life. Although I’m constantly putting effort in my work, I need to remember to take care of myself. I want to be able to celebrate big or small wins and learn to live and enjoy the moment. I’m never happy with the work that I produce because I’m a perfectionist and I usually don’t allow myself to celebrate my achievements because I just don’t know how to do it. That takes away the pleasure that I should feel for accomplishing something, such as completing yearly goals, etc. I also don’t allow myself to live in the moment because I’m always focusing on the future and looking forward to the next thing I will be able to do. I only enjoy experiences when I reflect back on them, rather then while being in the moment and I’d like to get excitement back into my life! I want to celebrate life!

I hope you have enjoyed reading and following my blog this year! I appreciate you being here! 

Happy New Year!

Planning a Digital Detox

As this decade and year are coming to an end and I'm finishing my goals, one of which was to write 20 blog posts, I wanted to write about how I'm preparing to take a break from social media for a month! I've been blogging and creating digital content on here and Instagram since 2016 and although I really enjoy it, I've been thinking about taking a break from social media to recharge. 

2019 was a great year for me! I experienced A LOT of stress because I have been working hard on accomplishing all of my goals. I'm currently an overworked masters student who is finally having a two month break from school, as I will only have to return for a new minor that I'm starting at the end of February. So I'm going backpacking for a month to South East Asia with my boyfriend and it's the perfect opportunity for me to have a digital detox!

I have favourable circumstances to take a proper break from social media while traveling because I won't have consistent wi-fi or sometimes even electricity. We're going to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and although we have a list of things we'd like to see/do this trip is not planned in detail. We have a general idea to visit these three countries in one month and also do some island hopping while fully enjoying the adventure. One of my goals for next year is to be more present and enjoy experiencing things as they are happening, so this is a big challenge for me to undertake. 

I'm setting some rules because I will not be pre-scheduling content and publishing regularly on Instagram. I'm only bringing my phone on the trip; therefore, I will be deleting all of my social media apps. I will not be deleting WhatsApp because I will have to send travel updates to our moms (to show that we're alive and well) but the rest of the group chats will be muted. I will also delete my e-mail app and will set-up an automatic "out of office" message as a response to all incoming mail. 

As for other types of phone use, I will be using it to check time, read the e-books that I have downloaded while on the go (even though I'm also taking physical books) and taking pictures! I love taking photos and will definitely want to record these memories, all of which I will be able to share once I'm back. I've been thinking about taking a break for a while now even though I love social media and think that it's going to be good not only to clear headspace but also for personal creativity. 

I'm starting my detox on January 9th and until then I will still be active on my Instagram. I'm counting down the days to my holidays with excitement! I will definitely share with you my experience once I return!

Wishing you a wonderful beginning of the new year! See you in 2020!

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve

My Career Coaching Experience

At the beginning of this year I decided to set a word that would describe my attitude and what I wanted to accomplish. That word was "focus". I chose it because when I started my masters degree I was extremely lost and confused. I had achieved my biggest life goal yet, which was getting into a research masters program in Neuroscience. But after moving to Amsterdam and starting this program I needed to figure out my research interests, what I would like to get out of my education and what I could/should do next. I needed guidance and decided to sign up for free career coaching sessions provided by my masters program. 

It ended up being one of the most valuable experiences yet! I was asked to fill out a questionnaire about why I am interested in receiving coaching and what was the question that I wanted to answer/topics I wanted to talk about. My question was "To PhD or not to PhD" because I was thinking about whether I would want to/should do a PhD after my studies. My coach was an alumni from my masters program who was still working in academia/the field of Neuroscience. We had 5 sessions in total, the first one being an introduction session and the last one an evaluation. 

What I really liked about my coaching experience was that my coach made me think about what and why I was struggling the most with in academia. I was uncertain about wanting to do a PhD next, and although I now often answer that I don't want to do it, there are still days when I think that I should consider it as an option. I also needed to figure out why I wasn't enjoying my internship or the lifestyle of a researcher as much as I thought that I would. I think that once again I definitely had glamorised work in academia in my head and the reality of doing research at my internship was very different. Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot during my internship and I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity and recognise my privilege. However, at the same time, I felt like something was missing. I wasn't that happy with my work and I didn't know what was wrong. 

Having a career coach who I could openly talk to about my struggles was extremely useful! They made me think and question things and that's how I personally grow the most. I ended up focusing on figuring out what I liked/didn't like about academia and my internship, so I would journal about certain elements, most of which came from my own personal observations of research lab environment and work dynamics. It turned out that work environment was something I continuously thought and talked about, as it is extremely important to me. I had to identify what I like/don't like in my current work environment, as well as imagine what my ideal work environment should look like. I also thought about my ideal self and how I can start manifesting living as my ideal self right now (being more in the present).  

Although I still struggle with not knowing what I will be doing next, my sessions with a career coach where very valuable to my educational experience. It allowed me to switch perspective on my degree, so that I can maximise what I personally want to get out of it. I also realised that there's not one perfect career path and I'm starting to be ok with it. I even wrote a separate blog post on my thoughts about dream careers while I was going through this coaching process, which you can read HERE. I also wrote a blog post about how you can start figuring out your career path, click HERE to read it!

If you're curious about my first research internship, read my blog posts about:

I would definitely consider coaching sessions in the future, especially as I am still figuring out my career and learning more about what I would want it to be and I would recommend this to anyone if this opportunity is ever available to you! 

If you would like to read more from me, click HERE to see other blog posts! You can also follow my studygram HERE for some inspiration! 

2020 Reading Goals

Can you believe it’s already time for setting new goals for another decade?!😨

In my previous post, I reflected on my reading experience for 2019, so if you’re curious about it, you can read it HERE. Time to set new reading goals for 2020!

BE REALISTIC 

While setting your yearly goals, whether they’re related to reading or not. I could lie to myself by thinking that I can manage to read 50 books next year but that just isn’t true. Between my masters studies and having to do a lot of article readings, as well as my part-time job and trying to have work/life balance I don’t have that much time for reading. Although this activity gives my mind a break and I really enjoy it, I don’t always make it a priority anymore and that’s ok. So I’m being realistic by setting my book goal to 12 next year (at least 1 book per month). We’ll see how much I actually read!

ENJOY IT 

This year I’m not going to set specific other specific reading goals because I don’t want to feel the pressure to have to track them. If I can, I will participate in some reading challenges, most likely Non-Fiction November again because I LOVE reading non-fiction. Other than that, I want to read books that are on my TBR, which you can find on my GoodReads page. Or books that I come across that spark my interest. That’s it. I really enjoyed my reading experience this year because I felt a lot less pressure about it, which I’ve set myself (I know!). So this upcoming year I want to follow that mentality because everyone should always enjoy reading! If you’re looking for tips how to read more, check out THIS post!

So here’s a re-cap of my reading goals for 2020:

I hope you enjoyed reading this, even though it’s a short update! I’m still working on my personal goals for 2020 (currently in the middle of a journaling process about it!), so stay tuned for a follow up! If you’re interested in my books recommendations, I have made a couple of lists for:

If you would like to read more from me, click HERE to see other blog posts! You can also follow my studygram HERE for some inspiration! 

My Reading Year Review 2019

I wrote my first reading review in 2018, which you can find HERE, because I had achieved a big reading goal and had some thoughts about how my reading habits have changed. I lost pleasure in my reading experience that year and in 2019 my goal was to read less but have more quality reading sessions. And I am glad to report that this switch in attitude towards reading helped me enjoy the process so much more, as well as achieve my reading goals! 

THIS is the post where you can find my reading goals for 2019! Basically, my number one priority was to read less and enjoy the books that I read. 

I set my reading goal to only 20 books on Goodreads and although there were months were I was too busy to read and ended up being behind my reading progress, I managed to catch up and complete my reading challenge for the year. 

I also read more books by female authors, as more than half of the books that I read this year were written by female authors. If you would like recommendations for books for women written by women I have a wonderful list HERE. I also have a lists with book recommendations for neuroscience HERE and psychology HERE. I love reading non-fiction and this year I managed to achieve another goal by reading more than 10 non-fiction books (I think I read 13 in total). 

Because of graduate school, completing an internship and writing a thesis I only had time for reading research articles. I didn’t have time to worry about reading for pleasure and having a lower reading goal ensured that the book that I was picking up to read actually interested me. I read a lot less books that were hyped this year and I’m very grateful for the goals that I have set and that I managed to achieve them, as well as had a more positive reading experience overall. 

I dare you to try this in 2020. If you’re a reader, set less pressure on yourself and make sure that you’re only reading books that you enjoy. Don’t be scared of not finishing a book. And if you would like to get into reading next year or are looking for tips on how to read more when you’re busy, then check out THIS post for my tips! 

If you would like to read more from me, click HERE to see other blog posts! You can also follow my studygram HERE for some inspiration! You can also follow me on Goodreads!

I really wanted to come back on Tumblr and post more frequently but the comments that I receive from bot accounts on my posts are just 🤢🤮

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve​

Digital Minimalism Journey

I’ve started my digital minimalism journey over a year ago now. I’ve written about wanting to switch to digital planning, as well as how I organise my digital life at university and favourite apps/websites, so I highly recommend you take a look at those posts too. 

I stumbled across a video by Kraig Adams on YouTube, which you can watch HERE and it inspired me to clean up my own files and organise everything. I wanted to simplify my file storage, so that I would have everything in one place, find the best planning system and organise my e-mails. 

E-MAILS

I started by organising my e-mail inboxes and deleting accounts. I used to have 7 active accounts! I know! I don’t know how it happened but with old university inbox, new grad school inbox, two spam e-mail accounts and personal and blog inboxes, I ended up with 7 e-mail accounts. I started with deleting e-mails from my spam accounts, which I used to use for signing up for websites. I made a list of the most important accounts to change the e-mail addresses to and deleted the backlog of all of the e-mails. It’s a mundane task that feels really good to do! I closed my Yahoo e-mail account because they’re known for selling their users e-mail addresses to different companies, so that they could make money, while you receive weird spam e-mails and switched to GMail. Currently, I only have 3 GMail accounts (personal, university and business) and one account for iCloud and spam mails from different websites that I’m registered at. 

I’m making sure that they’re not cluttered with old e-mails that I don’t need. After reading a new e-mail, I think about whether I will need the information to refer back to and if the answer is no, I archive the e-mail. My inbox then works like a to-do list, only keeping the e-mails that I know I will have to look at again. This is a great system for decluttering your inboxes and keeping only the most important information.

DOCUMENTS AND COMPUTER FILES

Besides e-mails, I also organised all of my digital documents and computer files and am now using Google Drive as the primary cloud system. I currently back all of my photos and most important documents on a USB drive; however, I need to invest on an external drive to back up all of my documents. I always have a lot of articles and lecture notes scattered around on my desktop, as I also treat it like a to-do list and once I don’t need it anymore, I delete them to save space and keep my laptop clutter free. Can’t wait to be done with my internship, so that I can clear everything out! 

DIGITAL PLANNING TOOLS

It’s the best way to keep everything in one place, paper free but this could also apply to those of you who would like to have an efficient digital planning system, while still using a paper planner. Personally, I still use both, but I don’t always have the time to fill out my paper planner weekly. 

My to-do lists live on Trello! I love how convenient it is to make to-do lists and categorise items according to importance, as well as mark if they’re complete or not. I always go to Trello first before writing down events/things I need to do in my planner. You can create boards for different areas in your life, for example, I have one for daily tasks, my blog and university. Within those boards you can create to-do lists and I follow a simple layout of having separate lists for “To-Do”, “Doing” and “Done”, as well as “Random” for interesting things to research/or important things that will take longer to complete. Meanwhile, my university board consists of lists according to the courses that I’m currently taking and my thesis research project. 

I also use iCalendar for lectures, assignments/deadlines, work and social events. This is where I plan my time and can see what I am supposed to do/be that day. What I love about iCalendar is that it is synced with my phone/macbook, as well as my Google Calendar and I can easily import calendars if I need to track them. I usually view it in the weekly layout, so that I know what to anticipate that week. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Digital planning tools are extremely efficient and relatively easy to maintain. As I’ve mentioned earlier, although I keep a physical planner, I don’t always have time to write down to-do lists or reflect on my weeks worth of activities. Having this digital planning system is great because I can access it on the go, as well as quickly add items as they come up!

So this is how I’ve been organising my life in a minimal way for the past year. It’s efficient and has been working well for me. I hope there are more digital minimalists out there or maybe this post inspired you to organise your digital files!

Here’s a list of videos for digital minimalism:

If you would like to read more from me, click HERE to see other blog posts! You can also follow my studygram HERE for some inspiration! 

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve​

Original post + caption can be found HERE.

Credit: @academiceve​