Workshop on Mental Health and Time Management
Project summary
The project initiated by our Leadership-Academy alumni Manuela Schütze and Marcel S. Pawlowski offers a full-day workshop to PhD students and postdocs, providing exercises and tools to monitor and manage their mental health and time. Both topics complement each other because poor time management can lead to stress and anxiety, which can consequently lead to mental health issues ranging from poor concentration and sleep disturbances to depression and burn-out. A recent report (“BARMER Arztreport”, Feb 2018) showed that over 500,000 students in Germany sought help from their family physicians for mental health problems related to pressure of time and pressure to perform. We consider it to be of particular importance to raise awareness for mental health issues in an academic context among postdocs. Offering a workshop focused on mental health and time management is timely and necessary.
The workshop took place 26 October 2019, shortly after the beginning of the winter term 2019. The location of the workshop was the Bildungsforum in the city centre of Potsdam, an easily accessible location that hosts many science education events.
The schedule
- 9am – 9:30am: organizers greeting the attendees and introducing the trainers.
- 9:30am – 12:30pm: Irene Ossa, a certified mindfulness
coach and systemic business coach, will teach attendees to recognize their individual symptoms of stress and how to manage them early on to improve resilience, confidence and mental well-being. - 12:30pm – 1:30pm: buffet lunch, networking opportunity.
- 1:30pm – 4:30pm: Dr. Naima Ruether, a systemic business and
personal coach, will talk about optimal time management solutions and will offer exercises that allow participants to focus on their individual time concerns. - 4:30pm – 5pm: feedback and providing an e-mail list for further networking.
