With exam season quickly coming to a close, I know we're all thinking about just one thing—summer! And with summer, for me at least, comes lazy days on the beach or in a hammock reading books or binge-watching Netflix. While it's always wonderful and relaxing, summer always feels somewhat wasted if that's all I'm doing. This summer, however, while I will be doing my fair share of loafing around, I will also be striving to be productive.
Here are some of the things I plan to start doing and hopefully carry into my fall semester to make it my most productive yet.
Try the 10-3-2-1-0 rule.
This tip from The Muse has too many numbers, I know. But the breakdown is simple: 10 hours before bed, stop drinking caffeine. Three hours before bed, stop eating and consuming alcohol. Two hours before bed, stop working. One hour before bed, stop looking at digital screens. As a result, you will eventually hit the snooze button zero times each morning.
Not only will this method increase your productivity while you're awake, it will help you sleep better, increasing your productivity while asleep as well. If you're a procrastinator and can't stop working that soon before sleeping, leave your nonscreen work until last. I also like to leave my easy homework until last so that I don't need to use as much brainpower to get it done in a timely manner.
Put your phone down in the morning—or don't even pick it up in the first place.
This is a hard one for a lot of people because they use their phones as their alarms, but you can turn your alarm off without unlocking your phone—just press the power button. I stopped picking up my phone first thing in the morning a few months ago, and it's unbelievable how much faster I get things done in the morning. I don't always succeed—"good morning" texts are my weakness—but I make sure to at least not check Facebook before I've left for class because if I do, I add a good five minutes to my morning routine.
Don't multitask more than you have to.
This one might sound counterproductive, but plenty of studies have proven that very few people are actually good at multitasking, if that's even what they're doing. By trying to multitask, you're actually being less productive than you could be because you're completing each task at a slower pace and likely making more mistakes as you go along.
Instead of multitasking, work on each of your tasks in 50-minute intervals to maximize your focus. If you feel you absolutely have to multitask, do so with easy, simple tasks that don't require a lot of concentration in the first place.
Work according to your circadian clock.
This is probably going to be the hardest one for me to do because I am quite the night owl, but according to this article I read from The Muse, it has been scientifically proven that we do our best work in the first few hours of being awake because of our natural body clocks responding to light signals.
While it will be harder for me to go to bed earlier, so I can get up and be productive first thing in the morning, according to the typical circadian clock, a lull in productivity occurs in the early afternoon, which would be the perfect time to take a nap.
Just the idea of summer makes me relax and imagine the feeling of sunshine on my skin, but who says I can't enjoy those types of things and be productive at the same time? It's all about a balance between free time and work time. Join me this summer in ceasing to mix the two and maximizing productivity.
