Everyone has experiences of procrastinating, but have you ever wondered how you could get rid of these bad habits to study or work more effectively? Here are a few ways that you could try using, they are so simple but you can maximise your productivity out of your study/working sessions!

 

Firstly, study apps. They are very useful because they stop you from using your phone on social media while studying, preventing you from scrolling on your phone and wasting time when you are supposed to do work. They also count how long you have been studying in focus, analysing statistics, and organising them in charts to show your productivity every day, over the week, the month, or even in a year. There are a lot of different study apps that are available in app stores, but these are the two that I find the most useful, are Forest and YPT. 

Forest is available both on Android and IOS, however, it is a paid app on the IOS app store. In the app, you can grow different trees while you are studying, however, if you use your phone in the study session, your tree will be destroyed, motivating you to keep learning until the timer ends. Also, you can label different study sessions, having an idea of what subjects you have used time on the most, which is helpful for you to plan your study sessions.

YPT is available free on both Android and IOS. In the app, you can see how much time you have studied and according to how much time you have studied, there are a few different study icons on your profile. You can join a study group where you can study with friends, you could also see other people who are also studying and how much time they have studied to motivate yourself to continue studying. The app will only allow you to use the apps that you have set in advance, which social media is blocked while you are studying. You can also see your insights on how long you have used on different subjects shown in different colours. 

 

Secondly, if you don’t like using study apps because it will stress you more, the most straightforward way is to put your phone or whatever device that distracts you away from your desk or ask your parents to lock your phone and give it back to you after you have finished studying, I study in my room, therefore I will put my phone in the living room, I find it very useful because I am too lazy to walk to the living room to get my phone, so I will concentrate on my studies instead.

 

Thirdly, to-do lists. You don’t make to-do lists just for the sake of it, every time you make a to-do list, you have to assess how many tasks you have or have not finished at the end of the day, which helps you organize and plan how many tasks you should assign to yourself the next day to finish all the tasks. This could also increase efficiency because you know what you have to do in priority, instead of doing what is not as important or having no idea of what has to be done.

 

I hope these ways can truly help you to get productive and save time on studying, achieving the ultimate goal of ‘work hard, play hard’!