Managing your mental health during deadline season

Worried about deadlines and assignments? Feeling pressured? Don’t panic!!! Let’s take a look here and I am pretty much confident it will blow some of your mental loads off to some extent.

Do you know when you are stressed and under pressure, your brain shrinks and we bend towards making mistakes? Yes, it is true. So first of all you have to be relaxed and take a deep breath before you proceed to your work. It naturally seems the pressure is on when the deadline of your assignment is so close and you’ve got to start working on it.

Here are some tips to help:

1. Start your morning with a fresh tea or coffee or some drinks (even water); it hydrates your body and helps your mind turn on.
2. Prepare a daily-basis routine with a time table which will help you organise yourself to complete your work in time. Make sure you adjust the routine in such way that gives a hope to sort your assignment before one day of your submission. This acts as a backup even if you are unable to follow the routine thoroughly, you will still get some time to finalize your work.
3. When you start following your routine, stress will automatically start to calm down and your confidence will rise up; your mental health will hopefully improve even when under pressure.
4. Healthy diets are necessary for healthy mental state. So have healthy food fairly regularly.
5. During your work don’t forget to take several breaks with short period which are necessary to relax your mind to give extra boost which will help you to think critically and analytically. Meditation is always helpful also. Having a tour around your university campus, walking along Brayford pool in the morning may be quite calming and comforting. Making your favourite food, playing music, quick chat with friends, calling your family back in your country and so on are some ideas to keep stress and frustration away.       
6. Most importantly you have to sleep properly and in time if you want your work done effectively. Doing assignments burning up lamp-oil does not work well rather it makes your mental-being strained and you become stressed. Sleeping at least 8 hours during night is a must!

After all, we all face deadlines in our life, be it related to our work or something else. The success rate of our work always depends on how we deal with that and the mindset we bear, neither on the deadline nor on its difficulty level. In summary, it is more necessary to keep mental health balanced and well, more likely when one has a deadline to submit a piece of work. I really hope these tips work effectively to fight against your assignment stress and anxiety.    

If you need more support to help you through deadline season, contact student wellbeing through their website.