7 Ways to Increase Your Productivity as a Student

so this is something that i've been a bit obsessed  with over the last few weeks so i'm in lockdown  

right now the whole city is because of kobe the  number of cases here just keep going up it's not  

looking good but in this lockdown i've had a lot  of time to really reflect on productivity i've  

been working from home the last couple of weeks  but i've been really working on kind of maximizing  

my productivity by not necessarily working more  hours but rather working fewer hours but getting  

more done in those hours so basically working  smarter rather than harder right and speaking  

of working smarter rather than harder i've just  launched my first skillshare course it's called  

study smarter not how to decrease your study time  by 50 and it basically goes through step by step  

how you can simultaneously decrease the number of  hours that you study while achieving higher grades  

you don't need to be studying 10 11 12 hours  a day there are far easier and more effective  

strategies than that the course explains it all  and best of all for the next couple of weeks is  

absolutely free i'm gonna give you it away for  free so there's a link in the description so check  

it out i think it's gonna provide massive value  but enough of that i'm gonna go through seven  

of maybe the most effective things that i do to  really maximize my productivity throughout the day  

parkinson's law so parkinson's law states that  work expands so as to fill the available time  

for its completion so let's say you give yourself  an entire week to write a 5 000 word assignment  

it would probably take you that full week to  write it right but if you gave yourself just  

one day you'd probably be ultra productive and  efficient with your studying and you'd get it done  

within that day so it's often why i know a lot of  students leave their exam revision until the night  

before the exam or they'll leave their assignment  until the day before the deadline because  

then they have the pressure of a deadline keeping  them motivated and that's parkinson's law in  

action so if you give yourself an artificial  deadline to finish your work by you'll be more  

productive and get your work done faster and you  can even sweeten the deal by giving yourself some  

kind of reward if you reach the deadline and  one mistake that i made at university is that  

i would study eight hours a day which is great but  i wouldn't necessarily be studying as efficiently  

as i could but i knew i had eight hours to study  so i wouldn't necessarily have deadlines for each  

task so i would kind of like take my time with my  work so right now when i'm working i've learned  

from that and now i make sure that i have  deadlines throughout the day so i have like three  

or four main tasks that i need to complete before  the end of the day so not just working x number of  

hours and that way it kind of puts more pressure  on me to keep working with a sense of urgency  

take a nap taking a nap is often something that  is a bit stigmatized i think many of us think of  

taking a nap as something i don't know lazy people  do but i don't think that's necessarily true  

so we all know the feeling that we have when our  energy drops right and we're feeling tight and for  

me it's usually in the early afternoon usually  just after lunch so instead of having to fight  

it because that really can be quite difficult just  fighting through that feeling of being extremely  

lethargic instead of just fighting it i take a nap  for 20 or 30 minutes so for a maximum of an hour  

then after i wake up i'm feeling so much more  energized and i'm feeling so much more productive  

and i really like this idea of swimming with the  tide rather than against it so instead of having  

to kind of push yourself and force yourself to  be productive instead if you're feeling tired  

just kind of go with the flow take a break take  a nap wake up you'll feel a lot better and that  

way you kind of you're kind of swimming with  the tide rather than against it and i like that  

minimum viable action if you're really struggling  with procrastination and your productivity is  

taking a massive hit then that's when the concept  of minimal viable action can help you out so if  

we know that we need to study but just the kind of  idea of it is intimidating that obviously can lead  

to procrastination so the idea here is that you  just do the absolute minimum so you tell yourself  

okay i'm just going to study for five minutes and  then you go and study for five minutes and it's  

very likely that after that five minutes you'll  be in the mood and you'll be able to continue  

studying and often just the idea of studying we  can kind of blow it up in our mind and convince  

ourselves that it's going to be like this horrible  experience and it's going to sap all our energy  

and it's just going to be awful but that's almost  always not the case often the idea of studying  

can be far worse than actually studying  right anyway i won't talk too much about  

the minimum viable action because i made  a video just last week i think on it and i  

talked about it quite a lot there the video is  called how i beat procrastination the easy way  

you can click on the pop-up banner right here  to watch it imagine you're in a movie so this  

is a bit of an unconventional method to help  maximize productivity and i'll be honest with  

you i personally haven't tried it before but  i've not mentioned it before on this channel  

and it's quite interesting so i'm going to talk  about it anyway so everyone loves movies right  

and a lot of people wish their lives was just  like one but really you are the main character  

in your own movie you're filming your story right  now and with the right mindset you can use that  

philosophy to tackle whatever scene comes your  way the main characters in movies usually have  

extraordinarily interesting lives they encounter  odds that are completely stacked against them yet  

they always somehow manage to emerge victorious  but you'll have your own struggles maybe it's  

with procrastination or maybe it's with money or  maybe it's with relationships or something else  

and you've probably encountered your fair share of  plot twists too a good movie is unpredictable just  

like your life so tell yourself that your story  is important and that no matter how bad things get  

your life will at least be interesting and just  like the hero in a movie you fight against the  

odds and you overcome the obstacles and you  emerge victorious you'd be surprised just how much  

productive you can be when you simply just believe  that you have a story to tell dynamic studying  

so dynamic studying is instead of deep diving  into one subject and focusing all your intention  

in that one subject for the entire day you  instead study multiple subjects that day  

so at university in an eight hour study session i  could even study eight different subjects in that  

eight hours so one hour per subject and it can  significantly improve your productivity because  

your brain is not going to burn out as fast  because you're constantly switching things up by  

changing the subject that you study there's also  this concept of cognitive load and cognitive load  

is when it becomes difficult to manage and learn  new material due to the amount of mental effort  

that is being used it's the workload that your  brain is taking on and you need to be mindful  

of this so just learning small bits of subject  per day and later integrating that information  

into your mind slowly bit by bit each day can be  far less mentally taxing so i use dynamic studying  

a lot at university and i think for me it was  mainly to take advantage of the spacing effects  

it's a really time effective way of studying  because by spreading out my learning my brain had  

more time to process the information so there was  no overloading of information going on but instead  

i kind of have time to soak it in so if you're  having problems with focusing on your studying  

after an hour or so or you're having problems  forgetting the information that you're learning  

then give dynamic studying a go you might  be surprised just how effective it can be  

one clear goal this is really important as the  saying goes if you chase two rabbits you'll end  

up catching none right so throughout your  education you're going to be pulled in many  

different directions you have your studying  then maybe you have a part-time job you have  

your friends to go out with maybe you have i don't  know extra curriculum activities to spend time on  

but you need to have just one clear goal to  really prioritize that above everything else so  

let me give you an example my goal at university  was to achieve a 4.0 gpa i prioritized it  

above everything almost everything my health  always came first and it always should  

but just after that was to achieve a 4.0 gpa  and i mean i was absolutely laser focused on  

achieving it i would study however long it needed  to if i needed to study 12 hours a day then so be  

it if i needed to start revising for an exam two  months ahead of time then so be it you see when  

i was at university it was relatively easy to see  the students that prioritized their studying and  

were getting decent grades and those that didn't  prioritize their studying and weren't getting  

good grades so for example i had classmates that  would go to a party the night before an exam even  

though they hadn't prepared for their exam and of  course as a result they didn't do very well in the  

exam now that's fine if that's what they want  to do i'm not judging them but i'm assuming if  

you're watching this video then you are striving  to achieve relatively good grades so i guess  

it really boils down to how much do you really  want it how much do you really want to achieve  

incredible grades and are you willing to pay the  price because honestly a lot of people just aren't  

the white flag sometimes if my day just doesn't  go as planned for whatever reason i might have  

been feeling tired there might be a lot of things  come up that distracted me so if i have a really  

unproductive day by the time it comes to late  afternoon or early evening and i still haven't got  

anything done then sometimes i'll just write the  whole day off i surrender to the procrastination  

and essentially fly my white flag which is kind  of a strange concept that i'm talking about  

in a video on productivity to just kind of give  up if you're having an unproductive day but let me  

explain so these we'll call them white flag days  they're actually factored into my monthly schedule  

so at university i studied seven days a week  that was eight hours every day from one day to  

saturday and on sunday i would study four hours a  day but at the same time i told you that i treated  

university like a nine-to-five job but even a  nine-to-five job you don't have to work seven days  

a week right usually you'd work monday to friday  and then have the weekend off and that's the way  

society has kind of trained us into living  it's how school is structured we go to class  

from monday to friday then we don't have to attend  classes on the weekend right but i do things a bit  

differently and this kind of this works for me in  fact it really really works for me so it's because  

i don't have a set day off from work so i don't  plan to have a day off every saturday and sunday  

like a lot of people do but instead i just kind of  go with the flow and if i feel like having a day  

off during the week because i'm being particularly  unproductive that day then i will do at the same  

time though it's important that if you live your  life this way that you don't take advantage of the  

fact that you are able to just write the whole day  off when you're feeling tired i mean i write the  

entire day off maybe once or twice a month if that  maybe even just once a month it's not often at all  

and i only do it when i'm having a seriously  unproductive day and it's one of those days  

where you just can't drag yourself to the desk but  you're literally too tired or there are just so  

many distractions being thrown at you and it's  3pm in the afternoon and you still haven't got  

anything done so don't be scared to write the day  off every now and then but do make sure number one  

that you don't do it too often and number two you  learn what it is that's making you unproductive  

and you don't allow it to happen the next day and  if you're still struggling with being productive  

then i have a video called stop wasting time on  youtube i know it's ironic right i'm telling you  

to start watching youtube while simultaneously  recommending you to watch another youtube video  

but trust me it's a really good video it's one  of my fastest growing videos and i have another  

video on how i stay productive when i'm feeling  unmotivated both really good videos that will  

help you massively with your productivity and  whichever one you choose i'll see you over there