What's Your Pacing Style?
You have to give an important presentation next week, but haven’t done any prep yet. You:
wait until a day or two before the presentation, pull an all-nighter to get it done, and collapse once it’s over.
start the week fired up to get it all done, then lose motivation toward the end.
schedule daily blocks to work on it, but keep spacing out and have to force yourself through each session.
work on the presentation a little bit each day, whenever you're feeling focused. You finish just under the wire.
make a daily work plan, which goes by the wayside when your friend calls with a crisis.
A mentor asks how you see your career and life unfolding over the next five years. You:
tell her it's tough to give a clear answer, since your plans depend on what others need from you at any given time.
find yourself at a loss for words. Your focus is mainly on getting through each day, which doesn’t leave much time for long-term planning.
talk through a detailed five-year timeline, while knowing you probably won’t follow through.
tell her you put together a plan, but it’s gone by the wayside since you haven’t recovered from the last time you hit burnout.
talk about the possibilities you’ve considered, but stress that as your goals evolve, you’ll adapt your long-term plan to match.
When you were in high school or college, your pacing approach was:
going through the motions. You went to all your classes and did all your assigned work, but didn’t feel that enthusiastic about any of it.
communal—you liked to study with others, though you spent more time explaining things to them than you did on your own work.
energetic early in the semester, then slowing to a crawl because your classes no longer felt as exciting.
boom-bust. You'd wait until the last minute to get things done, then did what you had to do to finish — even if that meant crashing out afterward.
foundational: You put a lot of thought into your class schedule, figuring that the most engaging classes would seem less like work.
You want to achieve an important goal within the next six months. You:
make bursts of real progress along the way, offset by fatigue and apathy that make it hard to stay motivated.
start out ahead of the game, but find your focus fading as the months go by.
methodically check off each step toward your goal, even though you're losing sight of why you chose it in the first place.
plunge enthusiastically into your goal pursuit, but find that volunteer and meeting commitments make it hard to stay on course.
decide on a waypoint you want to hit each month to ensure you won’t be scrambling toward the end.
The Simpsons character you most identify with is:
Homer. You plunge into most any activity with gusto, but tend to get distracted over time.
Ned Flanders. You're so dedicated to serving others that your personal boundaries are almost nonexistent.
Marge. You do what society expects of you, whether or not it's what you'd choose on your own.
Lisa. You gravitate toward the pursuits you naturally find engaging, but also understand how to cut loose when you need to.
Barney Gumble. You tend to go to extremes and then crash out — a cycle that frequently repeats itself.
You're feeling overwhelmed by all the problems in the world. You:
Ruminate about one issue, then another, until you hit a breaking point and disengage from the news.
Identify specific ways you can help and act on them as you have the capacity.
Mostly disengage from it all, but donate or help when someone approaches you to ask.
Create a plan to make a difference, then lose your resolve to carry it out.
Volunteer to help those in trouble, but find yourself overwhelmed by their problems as well.
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