It’s time for another classically late blog from Adit. I suppose this isn’t a great omen for a blog where the prompt is how do I manage my time.

At my internship, time management isn’t a huge issue as I don’t juggle multiple tasks. I’m essentially given tasks in a stream: one by one as I finish each task. Once I finish a task, I let my supervisor know. Then, she along with another employee review my work, make edits, and return the document or visual to me so I can make their edits following my own vision. Eventually after a few rounds of edits both supervisors approve my work. After that, the document is sent off to other departments for them to add links, refine visuals, and eventually send out via email, post to Instagram, or upload to the website.

Here’s a picture of a main Madrid street the night of Real Madrid winning the Champions League. Truly a once in a lifetime experience.

There is a big picture that my supervisor shared with me. On a google sheet is the timeframe for Smile and Learn’s summer and back to school campaigns laid out from June to September. The sheet is color-coded into blocks with each block spanning roughly a month, adding up to four blocks. Within each block is two blog posts, an Instagram post and story for each blog, and a newsletter at the end of the block summarizing the information on the two blogs.

The exception is the first block, for June, which I am currently working on. That block has a newsletter at the beginning and end of each block. The only finished project I have thus far is the initial newsletter. Technically it’s semi-finished as I’m waiting on other departments to contribute their part of the newsletter so I can combine the images and template after I wrote the text and designed a header in Canva.

Although I’ve yet to have a project sent out to the general public, working through a task looks like finishing a draft so I can send it to my supervisors for review. While my supervisors edit, I begin work on another part of the block, such as writing for a blog or playing with a template on Canva.

Here’s a picture of my program mates and I on a viewpoint in Cuenca.

For me, task management doesn’t look like deciding which task to work on, but rather to work as efficiently as possible so I can work through as many tasks as I can before the end of the day. To work as efficiently as possible I must maintain a high level of productivity, and therefore concentration for the entire day. This is difficult as my work day lasts between five to eight hours a day, forty hours a week.

To maintain my focus I rely on three pillars: lots of coffee, lots of sleep, and lots of breaks. The first two are fairly self-explanatory. I imagine it’s becoming a running joke among my colleagues that the first thing I do when I arrive to work is run to the coffee machine and shortly after run to the bathroom. I drink between two to four cups of coffee a day to stay buz-I mean focused. Side anecdote, it was quite embarrassing when another employee showed me how to refill the machine with water after I tried to pour where the coffee beans go.

To get lots of sleep I employ the traditional meaning of time management, by which I mean blocking out my time, scheduling tasks, and choosing what to prioritize. I’ve had a harder time getting over jetlag than my peers and thus waking up in the middle of the night for hours. This means needing more time during the day to get the sleep back which in turn means I need to further plan my day. To find time for everything, I set out an hour after returning from work to sleep or sunbathe at the apartment pool, a couple hours to work out, and a couple hours in the early evening to see my friends in the program or get work done.

Here’s a picture from a suspension bridge of the beautiful Cuencan buildings on the cliffside.

The last pillar, taking lots of breaks, can mean anything from texting friends, getting coffee, to working on my homework for Pitt, to scrolling the internet. As long as I’m not writing, designing, or discussing work with an employee, it’s a break. I follow a modified pomodoro method when breaking up my time. I work for twenty-five minutes, rest for five minutes, and rest for twenty minutes every two hours. With this method along with a big lunch I can keep my energy high.

I’m happy to say that the magic of Madrid has yet to wear off. I’m even more happy to say that my internship has yet to stop being fulfilling. I truly feel that my work with Smile and Learn makes a difference for the company. My free time is equally stimulating. I spend it seeing Madrid and the rest of Spain, (hence all the pictures from this week’s trip to Cuenca), going out with friends, and refilling on all the sunshine I missed out on in Pittsburgh.