4 quick ways to improve your productivity

1. Eat the frog!

 

 

This is based on something that Mark twain once said  – if you eat a frog first thing in the morning then nothing worse will hapenn for the rest of the day!

 

What you should take from this is DO THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FIRST.

 

Stop letting it fester in your mind, dominating your other activities and thoughts during the day. And there’s little doubt that it will!

 

Procrastinating on that one thing you have to do will eat away at you. The benefits are double once you get it done, or at least started. Not only will you have stopped the procrastination, but you will actually feel good about it.

 

Procrastapain! When we continuously put something off we actually feel the pain of doing so. Getting it and out of the way allows the “feel good” chemicals to flow and it’s something removed from the dreaded “to do list”. Double win.

 

2. Reduce Digital Distractions

 

 

Not another person telling me to put away the phone …. well maybe just reduce the time you spend on it and give more purpose and meaning to the time you do actually find yourself looking at the screen.

 

Platforms like youtube and google can be incredibly useful in answering certain questions we may have and aiding our understanding of a topic. They can really make the difference between grasping a concept or struggling to comprehend the material so use them wisely.

 

There are some strategies that students and parents have fed back to me that have worked very well:

 

• allocate specific time to social media – for examply 4.30-5.00pm and 8.30-9.00pm. That’s an hour a day and it may not sound like a lot. I know that it goes really quickly but maybe it’s only then that you realise just HOW MUCH TIME we waste every single day. Those 2 x 30 minutes fly by and you may not feel like it’s enough or even fair, but if you can get into the habit of defining your “down time” it’s something you may look forward to.

 

• no phones after 9pm. This allows your brain to relax a little before heading to bed and WILL make you more likely to drift off to sleep more quickly and in a deeper fashion

 

• let your friends know that you’re not on your phone during certain hours e.g. between 5pm and 8pm, so don’t expect an answer to a text etc. Disciplining yourself to do this will help you get into something called “Deep Work” – undistracted, focused, productive times of study.

 

 

3. Your day starts the night before

 

 

 

Those who plan the following days activities usually get more of the things done that they want to do. Planning your day the evening or night before provides many benefits:

 

• you can get up with a sense of purpose and focus, thus reducing the chances of rolling over and going back to sleep for “just 5 more minutes”

 

• just getting started in the morning is often easier when you know exactly what to do

 

• momentum can be built from getting some important things done early in the day, using that feeling of positivity and achievement to fuel further activity

 

 

4. The magic sauce? SLEEP

 

 

 

Every time I give a seminar with parents, students, teachers, guidance counsellors or school principals I speak about the importance of sleep.

 

It is one of our 3 fundamentals that allows for consistency in our work, as a student or in general day-to-day living – the other two being movement/exercise and nutrition/diet.

 

You know how you feel when you don’t get enough sleep – groggy, unmotivated, tired, unfocused and less productive than you can be.

 

In addiiton to helping rectify all the above, good quality and sufficient levels of sleep can help boost creativity, elevate your mood and help that vital area of learning, MEMORY!

 

A few quick things to help you get a better night’s rest:

 

i) avoid caffeine after about 2pm – this gives enough time for most of the caffeine to be out of your system by the time you go to bed (for most people this is between 9.30pm and 11.30pm).

 

ii) try to have your bedroom just under room temperature (17-19 degrees celsius) – we sleep better and get to sleep quicker when our body temperature is not elevated

 

iii) avoid strenuous exercise in the couple of hours before bedtime. Not only is your brain stimulated post workout, but your body temp can often be elevated for 2-4 hours after vigerous exercise.

 

iv) screentime – Put. The. Phone. Away. You don’t need it. Being on your phone awakens your neural activity and makes it tougher to get to sleep.. Even when you do actually get to sleep, you are much less likely to get into the deep and regnerative sleep that we need on a nightly basis to:

 

*  rid our brain ot toxins

 

*  strengthen our understanding of the material we’ve been trying to figure out during the day

 

*  help build our memory

 

 

Incorporating some/all of these activities can help you build a more effective and efficient system to allow you be more productive throughout your day, week, month and year.

 

Of coures there are additional ways to further your abiilty to improve your output but for now, give these a go and build your productivity skillset.