Student years often come to young people with a sweet flavour of freedom mingled with awakening responsibility for your own future. We realize that a good rest is as important as good studies, but to have enough time for it without compromising your studies, you should manage your time in the right way.
The major key to doing it most effectively is increasing your productivity. The proper balance of rest, socializing, and studies will guarantee you the best grades.
You can approach your efficiency from various points of view, that’s why you should not only know the practical tricks to make the progress in your studies hassle-free, but also be aware of certain psychological techniques, which will help you get into the frame of mind necessary for gaining success. Let’s see into some of them in more detail.
1. Take care of your working environment.
You should have comfortable furniture: a chair, which will not make you back ache and a desk having enough space for all your studying materials and stationery, by the way, buy good stationery and you’ll add up pleasure to your educational process. Keep your working space organized and tidy, your thoughts will also be then better organized.
2. Get rid of distractions.
No matter if you live at home or on campus, tell your immediate ones that you need some peace and quiet while working on the educational tasks you’ve got. Lock yourself away with a door and ask your family or fellow students to minimize noise.
Classical music may serve you a shield from the surrounding world, besides, it’s believed to increase productivity, they say Mozart can even make you smarter. Stay away from social networks and switch off your phone. The temptation to check both your phone and your social accounts will be great, especially when you just start the attempts to discipline yourself in the fight for higher productivity.
3. Get organized.
Every student has a busy schedule, to make the most of it and to keep track of all your assignments and their deadlines, get a to-do list for yourself. Avoid ambiguity, your tasks should be specific, accurate and properly worded. You can choose whatever form is convenient for you: a whiteboard, some app, a planner, whatever.
Nevertheless, make sure your deadlines and plans are realistic. Distribute your tasks in advance and try to make your working load reasonable every day. It makes sense to concentrate on the difficult time-consuming tasks in the first turn. Fulfill them in your personal golden hours, when you have the most energy and can concentrate best.
Later you will be able to quickly cope with smaller and easier assignments. You should also remember that multitasking brings your productivity down, so having some serious task, you should concentrate on it and do your best to cope with it in a session or two. I guess, the best thing in having a to-do list is the possibility to tick off the points fulfilled and get the incomparable feeling of satisfaction with it.
4. Manage your time.
Time management can by right be called the major aspect of productivity increase. Master the skills of effective time management and you half of the way to success. Set a studying schedule for yourself and stick as closer to it as possible.
Don’t overload yourself with complicated and time-consuming tasks, break the tasks into smaller chunks. It will be easier to cope with them stage by stage. You should not devote more than two hours to any task you have, that’s why you should split them. Keep in mind that breaks are important, plan them as well.
Say no to procrastinating, it’s not easy, but for your own sake learn to cope with your assignments according to a plan made in advance and a bit earlier than the deadline. In such a way you’ll allow some additional time for the unexpected delays in your work and will have some extra time for papers revision.
5. Adopt healthy habits.
The secret of good productivity is not only proper time management and planning but a healthy lifestyle as well. Physiological basics of high productivity should not be underestimated. Your nutrition should be healthy and providing you with a proper amount of energy throughout a day.
Porridge for breakfast, fresh or dried fruit as snacks, vegetables for dinner and fresh juice along with super-foods for your brain, like blueberries or fish, will make you cheerful and full of energy for your studies.
Keep in mind that crisps, chocolate, and coffee are not good snacks, in the long run, they have only short-term energizing effect, damaging your health more than supporting it. Remember about the necessity to drink enough water, in such a way you will avoid headaches and sluggish states.
Maybe you do not need 8 hours of sleep sharp, but make sure you sleep enough, get rid of the habit to study late hours and give enough rest to your body and mind.
Devote some time daily to physical activity, exercising supplies your brain with oxygen, releases endorphins and get your heart pumping. 20 minutes a day can be enough to boost your productivity and to keep shape, one hour will even be better, find the best option for you personally and take this time from your busy schedule for your perfect results in sports, healthy lifestyle and studies.
6. Psychological tricks.
The last, but not the least point to be mentioned is the psychological aspect of improving productivity. Adopt positive attitude to life and studies, in particular, taking a genuine interest in what you are studying along with the expectation of favourable outcomes from your work, will help you to stay motivated most of the time.
Study when you should study, exercise when you have scheduled to, rest when you have to rest and stick to the routine, it will help your brain adapt to a set regime and increase your productivity at certain hours.
Thus you will become more productive and able to study with less effort, getting into the right frame of mind at the hours presupposed for studies. Arrange research sessions with your fellow students, it will decrease each one’s personal burden allowing to study from one another, share and compare notes, and stay motivated.
Do not forget to reward yourself, it may be simply a glass or fresh or a nut snack at the end of the chapter, nevertheless, it will make you expect something pleasant and preserve positive attitude towards the whole process of studies.
We do hope that our advice will be useful to you as a young student and will help you to enhance your productivity by adopting healthy habits, positive mental attitude, and right time management skills. In return, you will be rewarded not only with excellent grades but with a good health and enough time for rest, entertainment and personal life.