How to slack for better productivity

BirdieChao
May 21, 2017
3 min read

This is Birdie's 10th personal article

Guys, exams and submissions season is coming. Bet most of you are working you ass off to hit the deadline or to prepare for your revision.

I'm just like you guys. Working my ass off past few days. Trying to hit the project deadlines next week.

So, since exams and deadlines are burning our butts. Let me share with you a tip on how we can actually. Slack for productivity.

What is productivity?

First, how do we achieve good productivity? By not getting distracted and be really focused in our work. So, in order to be highly productive in your work. You need to be HIGHLY FOCUSED!

However, focus is something that can be drained off very easily. Especially when we are doing our school work. It had seems that our focus level drops from 100% to 10% in like 5 minutes.

So we often find ways to refuel ourselves. And some scientist concluded that there are 4 types of resting.

1. Relax and do nothing, maybe just some stretches.

2. Re-energise your body. Energy bar or coffee is the most common choices.

3. Be socially active. Talk to people.

4. Scrolling through social media or reading news.

No doubt! Scrolling through social media is your top choice of resting. Follow by having a coffee to re-energise your body.

But, did you often feel that actually, this kind of resting actually didn’t really help?

You still feel as tired or maybe, even more tired than before.

The reason is because these 2 ways of resting, is actually not effective in resting at all!

For scrolling through social media, you didn't start refueling your focus-ness. You just switched a place that you are more interested in to use your focus-ness. Therefore, it is still draining your focus.

As for energy boost, it’s pretty straight forward. You didn’t rest yourself at all. All you did was actually adding artificial energy into your body to force your body to work. So, once the artificial energy is gone. You feel more tired. That’s all.

If you are smart enough, you already guess that stretching and talking to people are the most effective ways to rejuvenate yourself.

For stretching, you took your body and mind off whatever work you have and just stretch. The reason why it is effective is because when you are relaxing your mind by blanking your mind. You also increased blood flow to your body through stretching.

Since there’s an increased blood flow to your body and you actually relax your mind well. You will actually feel much more energetic and refreshed if you did it right. Of course, the stretching has to be full body and cannot be too short. I personally think 10 minutes is fine.

For talking to your friends, It does the same thing as taking your mind off your work. To relax your mind. Remember, talk to your friends in real life. Not through your phone.

The most important thing while resting is actually to be disconnected. That will help you to get a more effective rest for better productivity.

When?

Since I shared about how we can rest, It’s a bit unfair if I don’t share with you guys when to rest for better productivity.

There’s a trend out there now. Which I personally also follow this trend.

We wake up early and work all the way with heart and soul till a certain timing. Most probably is evening or after dinner. Then we rest all we can. Then we go to a good night sleep feeling we have achieved a lot in the day.

However, this is actually not the best way for productivity.

Like I shared just now, our focus level drops easily after some time. And after our focus level dropped, imagine the efficiency of you in work. So, once our focus level drop. It is very inhumane to torture yourself to force yourself to work more when your brain is in need of rest.

Not only you are not getting the results of what you wanted, you are also wasting your precious time alway.

So the better way would be to take a rest after every one or two hours. Because by resting, it can help you to refuel your focus level thus having a better session of studying, revising or whatever you are working on.

I personally recommend that you walk out of your room or library. To see some view and let your mind experience something different. To let yourself totally get out of your working area not think about work totally. That would be the best way to rest.

So in conclusion, in order to get better results. You need to slack disconnected for 10 – 20 mins after every 1-2 hours of studying.

It's your choice

to live in your dreams or to be living your dreams

-BirdieChao