Focus and do all the work on time!

You know when sometimes you feel that you had bitten more than you could chew? That's exactly how I felt in this first MBA semester. Going back nine months, I finished a cycling ultramarathon in Brazil and proposed to my wife at the finish line, got married three months later, a couple of months later I moved to the UK, started co-developing a company and started an MBA course. Phew! In such a short period, I put myself in a position completely out of the comfort zone.

I could finally put into practice a dream that I had planned more than ten years ago. Luckily enough, I had a good partner by my side which has been extremely supportive in the tough moments. But, let's discuss the difficulties faced during the first three months in the MBA and how I structured my routine to address all the new challenges.

In the UK, as an international student under the Tier 4, you are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week during classes and full time on vacation. So, I had to plan, implement and manage a business working 20 hours per week. That's tough! Plus, I had classes twice a week in Cambridge but I was living in Peterborough. Roughly, I was spending about 7 hours per week commuting. It is not the most logical logistics, but as I was living at my brother's home, there is no argument with free staying, right? In addition, I had to finish 4 assignments (2 individual and 2 in a group) and as a rule of thumb, as an MBA student, I was expected to have at least 28 hours of self-study per week. Moreover, I had always a dream to start my own consultancy business and whenever possible I am studying things related to that. To conclude, English is not my first language and that's perhaps my biggest concern.

In the first couple of weeks, the information I should assimilate overwhelmed me: reading lists, assignments, rules & responsibilities, timetables, deadlines, complementary courses, Harvard referencing, among other examples. I was literally re-learning all the things I have learnt so far on my Bacharel and Postgraduate studies in Brazil. But, even though I had been busy, I wanted to experiment everything the University had to offer and enrolled in all the things possible. So far, I had three main priorities: my #family, my #business and my #studies which broking down had one, two and four subtopics, respectively.

For my family, I needed to take care of my wife and ensure that she had adapted well to the new life. For my business, I was working hard to have everything implemented and in parallel, I was studying about consultancy, and for the studies, I had four 3-thousand words assignments. It looks like a substantial amount of things but there were still more to come.

In the first couple of weeks, I was talking to a friend of mine when she told me how students at The University of Cambridge had ambitious goals in life. She told me that she went to a seminar there and that the Lecturer asked the students what they wanted to do after finishing the MBA. They were all categorical saying: "I want to change the world", "I want to revolutionize the way we farm", "I want to cure cancer". That made me think for quite a while. I had such a small goal compared to these guys. I started to try to figure out what these guys had that I didn't. What was impeding me to think big? What was holding me back? Why was I afraid of having such a wonderful goal of making something better? That made me think for some days and after a while, the answer hit me like a thunder.

Every day on my commute to Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge there were quite a lot of drink cans on the streets. It had passed unnoticed so far until I kicked one of them. I got curious about why they were not collecting all that material and started to research. I found out that in the UK they recycle only 52% of all the aluminium can they produce. Then I thought, "maybe that's the THING I've been looking for". Coincidently one week later I saw a banner announcing a business competition called "The Big Pitch" in the University. Eureka! Suddenly, I had the stick and the carrot and could finally dream big.

But, how could I start something else if I was already very busy?

During the business competition one of the coaches told me:

"You are in an envied position. Surrounded by people from all around the world and opportunities will come now more than ever before and they will be gone faster than a blink of an eye. You should put all the efforts and try to do and enjoy as much as you can".

Now I had one more project in my hands to conciliate with the study’s priorities and this is how I structured it.

I always loved to create methods for everything and experiment new ways of doing things whenever possible. As long as I recall, I've been always surrounded by the term multitasking and wanted to give it a try. During the first four weeks of the course, I was experimenting to study all the modules books and assignments in parallel. On my way to the University, I was reading about Strategy and on my way back, Entrepreneurship & Innovation and sometimes about Marketing or Finance. If that train could see, it would probably think that I was crazy. Those were the most unproductive weeks of my life! With all this unproductive time I spent, I decided to read about how many subjects an average individual could assimilate in one day of studies, and how to structure our thoughts to make it more productive. I found out that multitasking doesn't work for me (1). Besides the articles I read that defend this idea, I did a simple test which turned out that I was 40% less productive when multitasking (2) than when focusing on one activity, and so I decided to change the non-productive method and experiment Lean thinking starting one assignment flow.

Surely it would be easier if it was only individual projects, but with group assignments, I had to conciliate the groups' schedule availability with my own. It was necessary to involve all the participants of both two groups to decide the activities' chronogram. By doing so, it was possible to focus on the individual assignments and finish them during the Easter break. Alongside, I had also to conciliate with the Big Pitch deadlines (video upload, boot camp, semi-final and final), preparing addend material for each one of the steps as the idea changed every step along the way. Due to the planning, I could focus 100% on the business when at the office, on the reading, on writing the assignments and to research the idea development for the Big Pitch, each activity at its respective week. Following this method, I finished the individual assignments 43 and 36 days before the deadline and the group assignments one day before. Surprisingly enough, I could even read four books that were not on the reading list and that was related to the consultancy project.

In summary:

1. Everything I focused relates to only three main priorities: #Family, #Business and #Studies - Breaking down each priority, there were other activities and each one had an overall weight;
2. I declined everything that was not related to the main priorities. And believe me, it was a lot of "NOs";
3. Multitasking on activities that demand cognitive energy won't work (at least did not work for me). Actually, if you are multitasking it may feel that you are being more productive as you are doing more work at the same time, but it will demand much more energy, time and will result in countless rework (reviewing and re-reading the working in process assignment);
4. Put everybody involved on the same page and align expectations. Constantly talk to them and ask for or offer help as needed. Group work and understanding is essential;
5. As I was focusing on one assignment at a time, I recorded the audio of every single lecture and seminar to listen later. It helped to review the content before starting working on a new assignment;
6. As I lived in a distant city, my colleagues and I were using facetime and calls to develop the work;

Following these steps demanded a great deal of self-study as I had to work on subjects and tools not yet explained in class. Roughly, I was dedicating an average of 75 hours per week on self-study and spent only two days on rest from January to May. It may be considered unhealthy, but sometimes we should go beyond of what we think as our limits in order to reach our goals. As result, I won a prize from the #BigPitch2018 pot and I am continuing the studies about how to implement the #Social #Recycling business idea with the minimum resources as possible.

This post talks in general about the prioritization of tasks on the studies and how it help me to conciliate all the activities I had to manage. It is neither exhaustive nor comprehensive and states only the experience of this individual in the first semester of studies in another country. I deliberately opted to not talk about other difficulties (culture, finance, weather, and so on) as I want to make more experiments in the coming semesters and surely will also share the upcoming. Please, comment below on what you think. Share your experience on how you plan your assignments, what type of difficulties you face and what you usually do to overcome them. Should you want to discuss and understand in depth any specific point, please, feel free to direct message me.

1: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21825137>

2: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCeGKxz3Q8Q>