Tips to increase your productivity while studying

Have you ever asked yourself, Was your successful, highly productive friend born this way? Certainly not, as they are skills that every individual learns through experiences or through his will to develop himself, to achieve many, many things.

When it comes to wanting to be more productive, it is very easy as there are many plans and strategies to do so.

But what is more important than this is you, as you must start taking your first step towards your goal. In this article, we will help you in your first steps with a number of tips that will help you increase your productivity during study.

Time management and increased productivity

Time management and increasing productivity are two things that are inseparable from each other. If there is good time management, you will find an increase in productivity, and if there is good productivity, it is preceded by good time management.

Time management is the method taken by every person who wants to complete a large number of tasks or complete his tasks faster. Organizing your time and distributing it among the tasks required of you is considered time management.

But do you always see good productivity results?

If your answer is yes, then you are on the right path. If the answer is no, this means that you have not yet learned how to manage your time properly to perform your required tasks.

Don’t mutter to yourself that you tried but couldn’t and that your colleagues can manage their time better than you.

No one was born good at managing time and doing a large number of tasks. Rather, they all went through the same path as you. They tried to manage their time, failed once, tried again, and so on until they reached their goal.

You only see the results and you have not seen the entire journey. Do not frustrate yourself and try more than once to change your plans and strategies until you find what suits you.

Always remember that the most and best thing you have is time, and only you can determine how it can be used in the right way. Now let’s learn the skills that will help you manage your time.

 

 

Learn time management skills

There are a number of skills that will help you learn to manage your time. It will be difficult at first, but with the application of the skills and making them a daily habit for you, it will wait and see if you have learned to manage your time and become more productive than before.

Here are the most important skills to learn time management:

Turn your daily routine into habits

Making daily tasks into habits will make them easier to perform than just required tasks. Create a long-term schedule, including all the tasks you do frequently as well as less frequent tasks.

Keep doing these tasks as the schedule requires, and after a while you will find that they become habits that you complete faster than usual.

Do not give up if you do not improve quickly, as it will take you a lot of time, according to a study published in a European psychology journal.

 

You will need more than two months for your behavior to change to what you want.

 

Get rid of bad habits

We all have bad habits that differ from one person to another. For example, there are those who are good at procrastinating time and wasting it on nothing.

Getting rid of your bad habit while you learn to manage your time will greatly help you reach your goal quickly.

All you have to do is identify that bad habit that you have, and make a plan to reduce it little by little until it disappears and ends.

Create your own calendar

Creating your own calendar will greatly help you know the importance of your time and take responsibility for managing it properly.

You are the one who knows best what tasks you must complete, so do not waste your time and limit yourself to wasting time to do those tasks.

Don’t wait to achieve perfection

One of the biggest mistakes that many people who learn time management make is waiting for perfection and idealism, such as when they set a schedule and want the success rate of this schedule or plan to be 100%.

It is natural that you do not get that percentage from the beginning, because you basically do not have management skills, so how will you succeed with that percentage from the beginning?

If you know how to manage your time well, then why make plans and learn skills?

So you should not wait for the results too much, and do not let them be a reason for your frustration. All you have to do is try and there will certainly be satisfactory results in the end, but not ideal.

Stay away from multitasking

Many students think that multitasking is necessary and that it means increased productivity, but this is very wrong thinking.

Since multitasking has a significant negative impact on an individual’s productivity, this does not mean that you will not be able to perform a large number of tasks.

Not at all, but doing a lot of tasks at the same time and waiting for your productivity to increase is impossible.

I’m not telling you not to do an important task or two!

Just choose the tasks according to priority, and do not think about any of the other tasks until you finish the time you have specified to complete the required work.

This will ensure that you stay focused, do not get distracted, and will finish your task with greater quality.

We will mention to you the negative impact of multitasking in the following lines.

The effect of multitasking on productivity

Firstly, what does the term multitasking mean?

Multitasking is doing more than one task at a time, thinking that this will increase your productivity and complete tasks more and faster.

The truth is that multitasking has a significant negative impact on productivity, as the human mind is unable to perform a large number of tasks at the same time, not to mention the human mind, as there are many bad consequences that result from multitasking.

Negative consequences of multitasking on productivity:

 

Increased dispersion rate

Remember that time you tried to push yourself harder and try to do more than one task at a time, and then you felt distracted and didn’t finish a single one of those tasks.

The tasks I completed were not of the required quality, and had many errors.

Try to focus on one work only, finish it, then move on to another work, and so on, so that you can avoid distraction and focus well.

Multitasking slows down your speed

More precisely, multitasking slows you down significantly. Just imagine, you have approximately 5 tasks that you want to do at the same time. You try a lot, but your focus is divided between those tasks.

Will your productivity remain high? Of course not. Distraction is followed by a lack of focus that slows down your speed and accomplishment of what is required of you.

Impaired cerebral executive function

Multitasking leads to impairment of the brain’s executive function. Distraction and inattention result in a significant decrease in productivity and task completion due to a defect in the brain’s executive functions.

Switching between tasks a lot makes the brain unable to decide to do one action, so focus on only one action so that you are not exposed to this.

High error rate

Multitasking often leads to a large percentage of errors, and this is also due to the distraction that results from multiple tasks and lack of focus on one task.

You may find yourself confusing two things, or making a large number of mistakes in a number of tasks.

So why put yourself under all this pressure?

Stop exhausting your mind and body, as this leads to what you do not want, which is reduced productivity.

Tips to increase your productivity while studying

In addition to the skills we mentioned to learn time management and other things that you should stop doing when multitasking, because it has a negative impact on productivity.

There are some other tips that will help you increase your productivity during study, which are as follows:

Determine your goals and priorities

Defining your academic goals and priorities will make arranging assignments very easy, so the more important work you accomplish, the more accomplished you will feel and the more productive you will be.

Create a daily plan

The daily plan, or daily schedule, helps you arrange the day’s tasks and end the day with much of the required work accomplished. The plan for the day must include all daily tasks in addition to rest or exit times, and not just study.

Start your day early

Starting the day early will allow you to have more time to accomplish what is required of you. Also, make sure to do the big and important tasks at the beginning of the day.

Your mind will be more active and responsive, and you will feel comfortable for the rest of the day after completing those big tasks.

Find your biological peak times and take advantage of them

Every person has a certain time when they are highly productive and highly focused, but how do you know your biological peak times?

There is a method you can follow consciously as follows:

Divide your day into a number of time periods ranging from 3 to 5 time periods throughout the day. Make sure to follow yourself for a certain period, say a week.

Then measure the periods in which you were most active and productive, and based on that, you can use those times to your advantage in the next table that you will create.

Use the Swiss cheese method

The Swiss Cheese Method by the scientist Alan Lekin, which he developed specifically for those who feel extremely exhausted and then end up procrastinating, wasting time, and not completing tasks.

This method consists of dividing large tasks into a number of small tasks, and doing them one task after another in a time of 15 minutes for each task.

Use the Pomodoro method

It belongs to the scientist Francesco Cirillo, who invented it to help focus and complete tasks faster.

You can apply the Pomodoro technique as follows:

Choose the task you want to accomplish.
Set your watch for 25 minutes, and focus on that task only.
After finishing, take a break for 5 minutes, do not think about anything.
Repeat the 25 four times in a row.
After completing the four times, take a rest of 20 to 30 minutes.

In this way, you will find yourself spending two hours of time, without feeling tired or exhausted, and you have accomplished your task well.

Use distraction-blocking apps

Of course, the sources of distraction are many and endless, and your phone is one of those sources, so you can use some of the applications specifically made to prevent you from wasting your time switching between programs on your phone.

These apps will help you greatly.

Examples of distraction-blocking applications:

Freedom app
SelfControl app
Use time management apps

Sometimes at the beginning of your path to learning time management to increase your productivity, you will need some help, and there are a large number of time management applications that will help you organize and manage your time well.

These applications are such as:

Clockify app
Toggl Track app
Time Doctor app

There are many things that you can do to manage your time and increase your productivity. You will discover them on your journey to learn time management and increase productivity. All you have to do is try many strategies and methods and choose from them what suits you and increases your productivity.