How to stay Productive.
Well guys winter break started almost everywhere I think so it’s time to give you my experience on how I stay productive during such a busy period with so many things to do and so much place to go.
What does staying productive means?
Productivity comes in so many forms, it can be just planning the week, organising all the school materials or changing the study place and try to go to the library.
For me staying productive means organising all the study material and start to at least read them and take some superficial notes. I do also listen the lectures and type them down not all of them but the ones I missed during the semester.
How can I manage to stay productive?
We all know that staying productive means a lot of concentration and dedication because keep studying after the school/uni finish is something that every student dislike. Personally I find myself more motivated to stay productive if I can do something even just reading some slides during those dead moments between festivities.
I obviously take a break between the last day of the semester and the “study hard” time. For example this Year I will start to study from the 26th to the 30th morning and afternoon, no evening, and then from the 3rd to the 7th I do just afternoons and evening.
How I organise?
Print a calendar or use a digital calendar on your phone! I can’t stress enough how this is so important. This gives you a visual timeline and how many days are left for real studying and where your deadlines are.
What I use:
@emmastudies monthly calendar printable and time work log/ pomodoro printable
Filofax / Tempo personal daily
Count Only
Iphone/Mac Digital Calender/ Outlook / google they work all fine
Temup
Gather all your material. Another important thing is to group all the material in one place. I like using binder because I can hold textbooks, slides and my notes all together, if they are digital I still print them out and place them in the binder.
Take a calculator and a sheet of paper. You might think why these materials.. Well I tend to divide the work evenly between the days so let’s say I have 3 Groups of Slides (30 pg each) 2 textbook chapters (around 70 pg) and 35 exercises/mock questions and four days. I know that I can do around 15 pg per hour including summarising each paragraph in a small sentence on the margin and Highlighting. I have totally 160 pg so I divide that number for 15, 10h 15min of study excluding the exercise. Once I calculated that I write it down on the piece of paper and start to see when I can do those 10H session between those four days.
Take again the calendar. Once you repeat the step above with all your material start to plan achievable goals for each day in your calendar. That means that if I know that I have to go out with some friends in the afternoon I won’t cram 5h of study that morning, I would probably do three hours in the morning and when I would come back if I feel I would see the plan and check if I was behind on something and manage it.
Tips and Tricks I learned during the way.
I always have been one of those content procrastinator, I would come home and watch Netflix, Youtube videos and tried to stayed out all day to not study. I started to change when I started University this year after changing my major, I was so motivated to start with a good step and I brought home some really good results. Here few tips and tricks.
The smaller the task the better. This seems something really strange for a productivity tips but it’s so true. If you set mini goals it’s easier to get through.
instead of writing
Chemistry chapter 3 pages 74-113
write
Chemistry:
3.1- 3.4 pg 74-82
3.5 - 3.8 pg 83-100
3.9 -3.11 pg 101 - 112
excercises pg 116-120
Don’t cram your days. Planning unachievable study goals or too much task for a day is a common thing when you start planning. I start to break down my big task and saw that most of the time I wasn’t completing them just because I was setting too big goals both with study and in general.
Use a productivity app or make two accounts on the laptop.. Most of the students tend to get distracted when studying both with the phone and the laptop.
Productivity app: This is really good for two aspects: It blocks you from using certain sites or apps and it tracks the time you really study. Sometimes we really think that we study 4/5 hours but the time we spend really on the books is maybe 1-1 and 1/2 hours.
Forest, Momentum and
Two accounts on the laptop: I have in my laptop two accounts one with games/apps and social sites unblocked and the other where I have all the study/university related things with most of the social not logged in and with those sites blocked.
Boost your energy with breaks and food. Another things students tend to avoid because you “loose time” but the brain need to pause and get back on track as our focus decrease after 50 minutes. Don’t cram study sessions try to do like 50 min, 10 min, 50 min, 10 min and after three times a 20 min break instead of 10. Don’t absolutely skip meals, it’s something that is not good first for you health and second for the brain, you’ll deconcentrate easily as the brain doesn't have enough sugar to work.
Keep track of exams, mock and don’t stay too much time without reading a subject. This might sound strange but a way to stay productive is keep pushing ourselves to do better, but how can we do it? well keeping track of everything we can so scores, percentage of an essay, errors we do in mocks and exams is a great way to boost yourself because if you see you are going better is the way to go, if not it’s time to change something. Another way to boost your productivity is to make an habit out of it, so don’t abandon a subject more than 4 days in a row!
Hope this long post will help some of you guys to have an idea of what I do during my breaks and how I manage to stay productive in general. Please bare in mind that this is my own experience, this might not work for everybody and most important of all, we are humans not robot.. it’s normal to have to change plans due to something that happens.