No success happens overnight. What we perceive as a sudden breakthrough is the result of days and years of toil in the dark. Perseverance is a science not a genetic disposition.
We often look at our idols and question how they can do it. We think that they are somehow special for being able to excel so insanely at something, and oftentimes, many things. We categorize them almost as a different species, nothing like us; greatness is in their genes and somehow not in ours.
But the truth is that they, too, are flesh and blood. Whatever they have done or become is only the result of calculated hard work, focus, and perseverance. It’s not easy, but it’s very simple.
Character traits are acquired and not inherited. There is a certain science to becoming a hard-working, focused, and persevering human being. The WHY (your purpose) is an art, but the HOW (the process) is a science- and it is the same for any person of any age, skill, or goals.
Adopt these insights and watch as you grow exponentially towards your dreams. More important, though, is the quality of life you will live when you know that you are living on purpose for a purpose.
Productivity is a state of mind, not the number of checkmarks on a to-do list. When you have incorporated these habits in your daily life, you will not only be efficient in managing your tasks but also in your mindset and your influence on those around you.
The first five tips are conceptual foundational habits that you must acquire for clarity and focus. The second five are the more practical action steps you can take to put that clarity and ambition to work.
Please remember that productivity is a long-term game. There is no point in trying to develop all of these habits at once. Be patient with yourself, work on one at a time, and give yourself proper mental recovery before moving on.
5 Conceptual Tips:
- Adopt a Growth Mindset
You have to want to grow. You have to see your flaws and shortcomings in light of the greater picture: progress. You have to believe that all you want to do and become is not only possible, but very attainable.
Scientists are discovering more and more that the brain is very flexible. Neuroplasticity allows for your experiences to physically change the neural networks in your brain. The more you learn, the more connections you make! Nobody is left out of the ability to make systematic adjustments in the anatomy of their brain.
That means you must see obstacles as a challenge that you are more than happy to overcome. I’m not telling you to take joy in suffering…that would be very unnatural. All I am saying is to not limit your abilities.
If there is anything that you need to learn or do, there is no reason why you can’t do it. If you must acquire new skills or unlearn other thought patterns to do that thing, then you have to believe that you can 100% do so.
Your philosophy should be that there is no such thing as failure; when you fall, you rise back up. Your attitude and effort determine everything, not your genes, talents, background, social class, or culture.
2. Clarity
If you haven’t read the previous post, The Number One Method to Become a Successful Student, please do so now. This will explain explicitly what is meant by clarity and how to achieve it. In summary, clarity is the quality of being coherent with yourself about your purpose, goals, and lifestyle choices that you do on a daily basis.
In the activity that I encouraged you to do in that post, you basically go from the big “cloudy” picture of your overarching purpose in life to the more “doable” action steps you could do to support that purpose.
If the actions you do every day do not support the goals you want in the future, then you have to take a step back evaluate yourself, and create new actions.
That all sounds great. The problem is that most people don’t know what they want. You can’t have a vague, rough idea of what you want to do or be in this life. It will pass before you’ve become any of it if you live with that vague, careless mentality. Clarity empowers. It gives you intentionality and confidence in your actions and your existence.
3. Know Thyself
For students specifically, this is an essential step. You have to know who you are extremely well. How do you learn best? How do you like to take notes or study for an exam? Which time of day do you function best at? Do you like the quiet of a college dorm or the chaos of a public cafe? Do you like to study with friends or alone? Are you an early morning-breakfast-workout person or a late-night-snacker-last-minute-slacker? Or are you something in between?
These questions help you figure out a lot of things, many of which are critical to your success in any environment and potentially can make or break the upcoming habits.
Have a nice meeting with yourself and figure this out. If you don’t know these basic things about yourself, if you’re not self-aware enough, and if you haven’t figured out the patterns of your personality, you can’t change them or maximize them.
For example, I’m an early riser. The latest I ever wake up even after a sleepover on summer nights is probably 8 am. I like to start my day early, have some quiet, reflective time, and then get some important work done or go to class. I can’t work past 4 pm. I get too cranky and lethargic in the evenings. The only thing I can manage is eating dinner, watching a show with my family, or go on a walk.
What about you? Tell me your tendencies and preferences. Now, capitalize on them. Use who you are as an advantage and don’t let it wear you down.
4. Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses
This fits quite nicely with the previous tip. However, there is a slight difference: after you have figured out your natural personal preferences and tendencies, you must then classify them as a strength or a weakness.
In other words, now that you know you have a natural tendency to procrastinate to the last minute, you must define it as either a strength or a weakness. Nobody can tell you what category this tendency falls under, everybody has a different take on it and everybody can capitalize it (or not) in a unique way.
One of my very best friends is super intelligent and humorous, but she tends to leave work and projects to the last minute. She is most creative and excited when there is little time to get something done- it kind of pressures her adrenaline into work mode.
I, on the other hand, would be pressured to “cry mode” if something important was due in a few hours and I hadn’t even started. We all function differently. Because of how I would respond to that situation, the procrastination tendency of my friend would be classified as a weakness if it were MY tendency. To her, though, it’s a strength.
Understanding your weaknesses makes you mentally aware of what to avoid. Understanding your strengths helps you capitalize on them to propel your goals. The key is to not fight with your nature or your personality. Rather, discover it, work with it, and make it work for you.
5. Seek Knowledge Continually
The last of our foundational habits is to seek knowledge. You should never settle for what you have or what you’ve become. Always desire to expand your thinking and your character.
One of my family acquaintances had dinner with us about a month ago. While eating, he asked me what classes I was taking and how I was doing in them.
I said “Well, it’s pretty tough you know, especially that AP Literature class and all those books I have to annotate and analyze each month. I think I’m a very slow reader.”
He chuckled for a bit, chewed his food, and then said “No, it’s just that you try to read every single word.”
I was confused, to be honest. What do you mean by “try to read every single word”? What else are you supposed to do?
He recognized my confusion and quickly added, “Nobody has time to read all those books they assign you. Just skim through them and make a couple of annotations on each chapter and you’re done!”
Truthfully, I was shocked. That person was pursuing a master’s in Biomedical Engineering. It was evident by his attitude that he didn’t care about the growth of his field or his mind. He just wanted to get the degree as quickly as possible, so he could have a good job and make a good living out of something he likes and is good at it.
But, it must be deeper than “something you like and are good at.” It must be something you want to advance; something you want to put a part of yourself in. Seeking more knowledge, being hungry for improvement, and striving to progress are a sign of not just passion, but of life.
We are evolutionary creatures. If you don’t have a desire to evolve yourself in any way (or a specific field of knowledge), then you are not functioning at your peak as a human being. You are choosing to stay mediocre, limited, and quite sadly, unsatisfied.
5 Practical Tips:
- Develop Routines
Imagine you wake up one day at 7 am, and you know exactly what to do. You brush your teeth, wash your face, make some coffee, and then read. After that, you grab your computer and start tackling one big assignment before you head to class. You come back and make a very appetizing brunch as you sit and respond to some quick emails. You review your notes from class, make a few fixes, and then make a project outline.
You set a timer for 45 minutes and finish another assignment. You head to another class and then you repeat the same pattern, but instead of brunch, you have dinner at 6 pm. You call your friends or your parents and go hang out and do something fun and active. You come back home, do some chores and gentle cleaning, finish a last-minute assignment, and then go straight to bed.
Are you still here? Or have you been completely immersed in that little lifestyle description? What if that person can be you? Not necessarily the exact responsibilities or activities, but the same manner in which they are done. What if you could be just as productive and diverse in your areas of focus as that person? What if you could do well in school, have fun in your relationships, enjoy your hobbies, and spend time developing your character on the side?
It all boils down to routine, folks. This imaginary character has their life together, not because they’re some kind of breathing machine or have impenetrable willpower, but because they just made little routines.
Choose an important part of your day you want to work on in the beginning and select a few actions that you want to make a habit. Do them every day and it becomes a routine. It’s not rocket science. It is only hard at first because you are not in the habit of doing it, but once it becomes a habit you no longer have to push yourself to remember to do it.
That’s the biggest mistake most people make: they think that you have to input the same amount of energy every time you do the action as the first time you did it. No, no, no. There is an initial release of energy and then you level out and eventually glide back down and not push as much. If you’re not familiar with the concept of “activation energy,” then I encourage you to take a look at this post.
After you have mastered that part of your day, move on to other parts. Again, don’t try to flip your whole day around at once. You’ll end up exhausted and defeated.
Routine enables you to be efficient. After a while, you don’t need to think about what you need to do or battle with it. You just do it. Not to sound cliche, but you do become an energy-releasing wizard after a while. And the cool thing is: that you’re not inserting that much energy in the action anymore!
2. Create a Schedule
Most of you are bored of reading by now. You probably already heard this one a thousand times. I’m not going to harp on it for much, but just hear me out.
If you don’t know what you need to be doing and when you need to be doing it, then you’re probably not going to do it. But, Fevet, I don’t like to be limited or feel controlled. A schedule is not a rigid master who whips you when you misbehave, it is you who do that to yourself. It’s not the schedule’s fault if you don’t make it flexible.
That means giving yourself realistic time to finish a task. Maybe creating a Google Slides presentation takes you an hour and 25 minutes, but you gave yourself 45 minutes to do it. Don’t curse the schedule or the productivity gods for not gifting you with robotic abilities when you just don’t know yourself well enough and haven’t planned accordingly.
I will say this: it is your fault alone if you can’t stick with a schedule. You can make it as flexible and as open for distractions as your lifestyle requires. You can tailor it to be anything you want. You can have, unlimited distraction time between each task if you need it, but at least you have some direction and you’re being distracted on purpose.
Along with the schedule, you must have some kind of futuristic planning system. I’m not talking about 2 to 3 years in advance, just a week or two ahead. If you want to look further ahead, then good for you, I applaud your enthusiasm and courage. I can get too overwhelmed and anxious. All I need to know is today and a rough idea of the whole week. As we all know, life doesn’t always work out as planned. However, smart planning decreases your chances of it not working out at all.
3. Complete Important Tasks First
Yes, eat the frog. I don’t know who came up with this quote, and I don’t want to eat any frogs, but when it comes to your work life, you must eat the darn frog.
There is a certain pit that I used to fall into whenever I tried to get a lot of work done. I would do all the little, nonurgent tasks first so that I can feel accomplished. It felt good, but I didn’t get anything done. The important, often most overwhelming tasks, must be done at the height of your focus and mental strength. Later on, you could do the not-so-energy-requiring tasks of answering emails and folding the laundry.
Any creative work- chapter readings, studying, writing essays, putting together a presentation, doing research- is highly taxing on the brain. It must be done first or it might be done terribly or not at all. If you have three chapters of a science textbook to read and take notes on, you better do that before your math practice because learning new content requires more mental focus and exertion than practicing content you have already been exposed to.
Please do not sit down and sprint through multiple choice questions, emails, or daily homework assignments, and then attempt a literary analysis of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. I promise you, you will be exhausted and unfocused by the time you get there. Literature is by nature art, a creative work. You’ll be as cold as the Arctic in your analysis of Heathcliff’s vengeful tone if you do it after the aforementioned activities.
4. Break Down Large Tasks Into Smaller Ones
Do you know why you skipped that essay and jumped straight into the basic, autopilot tasks? You did so because it was more overwhelming and complex. Much to my disliking, creativity, and learning are long processes that most likely cannot be checked off in one sitting.
I need to chew the content of a chapter in tiny bites. My task at any one moment is to read this paragraph or this page and think about it, not learn all the Laws of Thermodynamics in one sitting and apply them to a combustion reaction between oxygen and hydrogen.
If what you are doing and what you are learning at any one point in time cannot be described in a couple of sentences to a 5-year-old, then you are most likely complicating things. You don’t need to be a Greek Historian after reading a few chapters of Plutarch’s The Rise and Fall of Athens. Break down, not just tasks, but ideas. Simplify everything to its most reduced form so that you can better retain it and work with it.
For example, as of writing this post, I have a Medical Science research project due in two days (it was assigned yesterday). I could have frantically tried to finish it all in one sitting, but I wouldn’t have been creative. I could’ve pushed myself, with a lot will and unhappiness, to sit down and plow through it. But that’s not fun. Or inspiring.
Instead, I broke it down into three steps, one for each day. The first step is to outline the main ideas I want to include in my research, find reliable sources and save them to look at later, and set up a slideshow. The second step is to read the articles or pieces of books that I saved and take notes of what I want to include in my presentation. Finally, the third step is to put the information together in a creative, aesthetically pleasing manner. Just like that, you can be productive without being overwhelmed.
5. Do Something You Enjoy Before or During Your Work
There is a certain point where discipline is meaningless if the experience is not enjoyable in the moment, aside from any future gains. There must be an immediate reward so that endorphins can go off in your brain and associate that act with pleasure instead of pain.
If you have a long work day ahead of you, sit your bum down before you do anything in the morning and do something you like. If you don’t know what to do or why you should do that, check out this post. In essence, this tip is about the fact that rest is not a reward for hard work. Rest is a requirement for hard work to even occur.
I need some snacks and a drink while I study. I also need some good music and beautiful, quiet scenery. This makes me look forward to it instead of dreading it. It makes me get in the “zone” faster and retain the information better because my brain is not occupied with when it will be over.
If you have come this far in the post, you are probably a bit excited to try out some of these tips and a bit overwhelmed at the thought of it. It was a lot, that’s for sure. I recommend you only focus on one or two at a time. Also, notice if and how your behavior changes, and always track your progress.