Ep 1: How to actually be productive

This podcast episode is about how to be productive. The host gives tips on tracking your energy levels and matching tasks to your energy levels. She also emphasizes the importance of tackling the hardest tasks first and taking breaks when needed. She advises against studying with friends as it can lead to distractions. The host suggests creating a productive environment and finding a study buddy for accountability. She also recommends using the five-minute trick to get started on tasks. The key message is to work smarter, not harder, and find what works best for you. Hi there! Welcome to Unlocking Your Potential. I'm your host, Nancy, and this is a podcast for high school students to upgrade in life and become the best version of themselves. So, today for Episode 1, we are going to talk about how to actually be productive. As the New Year's rolling in, I'm sure many of us have resolutions to get that A, maintain your high GPA, do well in your classes, but then we spend a lot of time on our work, but we still have a lot of work left, right? So, in this episode, we're going to talk about how to make you more productive, so you can follow my motto, work hard, play hard. Alright, let's dive right in. So, first off, you're going to try to track your energy, okay? So, everyone in their days has moments of high energy and low energy. A really common thing for people is to have an afternoon slump, and so what I want you to do is to try to follow your body signs. If you have high energy, focus on harder tasks during that time, so it's easier for you to get them over with, and when you have low energy, do the easier ones that don't require you to think as much, like if you have just some paperwork for an easy class or just some errands to run, etc. And so, for me, I have really high energy in the mornings and really late at night, so like the two extremes, but I have low energy during the afternoon, so I like to get up in the morning early to get some studying, some homework due that day or previewing my classes done, and then at night, just whatever homework I have left. And then during the afternoon, when I come home from school, I like to kind of just relax. Sometimes I take a nap. I watch perhaps a few episodes of my favorite TV show, just work out, all of that. So, try doing this for the next few weeks and just discover what your body likes best, because there's no use trying to fight against your body. It won't work. Alright, so, like we talked about, when you have high energy, focus on harder tasks. So, the next one is to get the hard tasks done first. So, once you know your body's rhythm, as soon as you reach your first wave of high energy, you want to get that hardest task out of the way, okay? It's tempting to do smaller tasks to make you feel more productive, you know, as you're just getting started, but trust me on this, get the hardest one out of the way. It will feel like a pain when you're doing it, but you will thank your past self so much. And always remember that productivity isn't based on the pure number of tasks you're doing, but the quality of those tasks. Alright, the third point is to listen to your body when you're working, okay? When your brain starts to feel fuzzy, it's fine to take a break. Try pushing yourself for a few more minutes, and if it's still not working, your body's just telling you to stop, okay? So, I know during our break, sometimes we like to scroll on social media, text our friends, great, keep in touch with your friends. However, social media, it's just a quick hit of dopamine, which is the hormone that makes you feel happy. And it doesn't actually give your brain a break, it's just giving your brain so much information all at once that it can't think. So, instead, try to go outside, or even look outside, eat a snack, talk to your family, all of that. And just try not to go on devices so much, because you've been studying and probably using your devices for so long already. A favorite exercise of mine when I'm feeling really tired is I just lie on the ground and close my eyes for a good five minutes, and it just makes your brain feel so much more refreshed and ready to start working. And speaking of breaks and study times, there are a lot of study methods out there, like 25-5, where you study for 25 minutes, you work, and then you break for five minutes, or 50-10. People like different things, so just try to figure out what you like. It doesn't have to be the trendiest method out there. All right, fourth point, what I live by is work hard, play hard, okay? So, something I learned the hard way is don't study with your best friends, because what's going to happen is you start studying, and then someone brings up one topic, and then before you know it, it's just everyone gossiping together, or even just chatting. It doesn't even have to be gossip. But with your friends, because you're so comfortable around them, and you can just really say whatever, it's so easy to start conversations. And that's not great when you're trying to focus on a topic. What I like to do is be laser-focused when you're studying, get everything done and out of the way, and then go hang out with your friends. And something I like to do as well is I like waking up early, like I said before, and I get all my stuff done in the mornings, so in the afternoons, I can go hang out with my friends, just like on weekends. And so when you're hanging out with them, you're not feeling guilty about it, because you've got all of your work done, and you can just truly enjoy yourself. And even if you don't have enough time to study and hang out with friends, you can honestly just alternate. It doesn't have to be like, oh, I need to get all my work done before hanging out with friends. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. It's not that deep. Don't worry about it. One day of not studying will be fine as well. All right, point number five, okay, is to have a good environment. And what I mean by that, first of all, is obviously your physical environment, right? They say environment is a reflection of your mind. So obviously, you want your workspace to be clean. You don't want that many distractions. I recommend putting your phone out of sight, so it's out of mind, and you don't feel tempted to check it. And yeah, just make sure your environment doesn't make you easily distracted, right? So like you don't want, I don't know, the news right next to you, or a TV, or a puzzle you haven't finished. You get what I mean. And also, with your environment, you can try switching it up if you feel that you're getting tired, like mentally tired, right? So either just switching to a different side of the desk, or switching a room altogether, like just going down to the living room, or going to a library, to cafes. It truly just gives you more energy, and it's like a clean slate. And then, besides your physical environment, it's also about the people you surround yourself with. So tying back to the point with friends, make sure that you're not around a lot of people who are constantly distracting you when you're trying to study, and really focus on the work hard, play hard sort of thing. So you really get the best of both worlds. You get to be super productive when you're studying, and you get to truly enjoy yourself when you're with your friends. All right, point number six. So this kind of goes against what I said just now, but just listen, is to get a study buddy, all right? And what I like to do, I know I just said you shouldn't study with your best friends. However, if you can manage to make sure you guys aren't talking, like being on call, right? Like a Zoom meeting, or Google Meets, and you both promise to mute, that could be very, very productive, all right? So first of all, you guys can schedule these study sessions to hold each other accountable. Something I like to do with my friends is, we get up at 5 a.m. to study, and if one of us doesn't show up, we have to pay the other person 25 bucks. So it hurts my wallet, but at least it's to my friend, and it holds both of us accountable. I think I've only paid 25 bucks to my friend once, so give that a try. And then with a study buddy, you know, if someone's going through the same pain as you, it's more bearable, and you can ask each other questions, and when you're taking a break, you can talk to each other instead of scrolling on social media. So study buddy is great, just make sure that you can prevent yourselves from getting off task, because that would be detrimental. All right, so sometimes, there are just times where we just do not feel like studying at all, right? And so what I suggest is called the five-minute trick, where you just force yourself to sit down and study for five minutes. Just push through those five minutes, and afterwards, what I find is that it kind of gets the ball rolling, and it's not that bad, so then I can keep studying. However, if it's just not working, then just listen to your body and take a break. All right, so basically, to wrap it all up, productivity, go to work smarter, not harder, okay? It's about the quality of your tasks, not the number of tasks you cram in. You want to really understand your body, understand your energy patterns, when you have to take breaks, like when the five-minute trick doesn't work. And yeah, and when you're taking breaks, try to focus on what actually makes you feel good, not just a quick dopamine hit. All right, maintain a clean workspace, right? You can change up the environment if you want to. Balance work and play. Have a study buddy if you need someone to hold you accountable. And yeah, just remember that everyone is different, so it's important to find what works for you, not what's trendy on Instagram or Pinterest. All right, I'm going to leave you with one last quote, and it's, the cost of procrastination is the life we could have lived. All right, thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Nancy, and I'll catch you next week.