Having trouble studying during a global pandemic? don’t panic, we’re all struggling and we will get through this together. The most important thing during these times is to keep your mental health in the right place. Today, I try to highlight some of the most helpful ways that I’ve found in order to maximize my productivity during the quarantine. This helped me not only get things done but also to reduce my stress during the finals preparation weeks. So here are my top 3 tips to maximize your productivity during this quarantine:
Set up a place for work or studying:
Setting up a place for work or studying is probably the most crucial advice in my opinion. This is because having a different place for these tasks will automatically trigger your brain into focusing more. And that’s the reason why experts suggest that you don’t read in your bed. Because getting used to this habit will trigger your brain to work more while you’re in bed.
I highly suggest that you have a place where you strictly only study or work. For me, even separating where I game and where I study was helpful, even though I’m using the same laptop. Of course, not everyone has the luxury and space to do so, but you can always try to imitate the setup change.
If you don’t have enough space to separate where you work and where you do other tasks, then you can try by changing the setting. You can do this by:
- Have a lamp that is only lit while studying
- listen to some type of music that is designed for studying (I personally love this stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qap5aO4i9A
- change the temperature of the room
Schedule your day and stick to it:
Planning a day is the easiest part of planning, sticking to it is the hard part. While we’re living in a strange period, I would advise you to incorporate some healthy habits throughout your day like exercising in the morning. Doing these tasks will greatly improve your self-esteem and motivates you into doing the next thing. The snowball effect will carry on and you’ll be done in no time. This will surely help you maximize your productivity in the long run.
As far as how you plan your day is totally up to you. I’m personally not a morning person (especially now) so my day starts at 11 am and ends at 3 am. I use the blocking system when planning. The block system is like having big blocks in your schedule say from 1 pm to 3 pm: revising calculus. You can plan your day however you want to of course, but the most crucial part is sticking to your plan.
Disconnect your phone:
I can’t stress this enough: turn the airplane mode on and throw your phone. However, this can’t be implemented by everyone because you might have some important people in your life that you need to always be available too. In that case, you can start by muting the unnecessary notifications coming from your social media apps (or any apps really). I personally have never had my social media apps’ notifications. And since I never tasted how addicting they’re, I’m not tempted to have the notifications on.
Incorporate breaks in your schedule every 30 minutes for 5 minutes in order to have enough time to check your most important notifications. But, please don’t go to any social media app during your little breaks (this is more of an advice for myself lol). We all know what happens when you go into Instagram just to check for a second and end up at a weird comments section filled with bots and idiots. An hour later and you just realize how much time you wasted and your motivation hits the floor.
