Obviously, productivity is necessary to complete some of the awesome stuff you have planned. If you want to become someone, accomplish something, you need to get productive. If you want to do an extra major, or run a little business besides your normal major, you need to work at least twice as fast (instead of twice as much!), but you are in college. Here to party, to have fun with friends, right? Of course, and I believe this is still possible, besides being remarkable.
How to be productive in college, besides having fun
Being productive without having your normal life suffer from it, asks for a couple of things to do.
- Find your productive period. When your friends are away, when are you the most productive? In the early morning? In the afternoon after lunch or right before dinner? Or maybe in the late night, between 10pm and 2am? It doesn’t matter, as long as you find your productive period now. When you are doing tasks, write down how you felt during the task and when you did the task. Find patterns, they should be easy to find!
- Make these periods hyperproductive. What if your productive period changes from productive to hyperproductive? What if you read 10 chapters in an hour instead of 5? That would mean a big time saving change! You know how to this obviously. Switch off your internet, phone, facebook, instant messengers, and everything. Switch off, be productive. Make your working hours as useful as they can get.
- Explain it to your friends and try to get them in the process. Explain what you are trying to do to your friends, this will make them understand why you aren’t reacting on your phone all the time, why you won’t chat with them on facebook. If you tell your friends you want to do more while having as least the amount of fun with them you have right now, they deserve an explanation. Tell them what you are doing, the pitch: ‘I am trying to become way more productive, you know the idea I’m having about [INSERT DREAM/GOAL] right? Well, to accomplish that without losing you guys, I need to do more in less time, which means I have to change the way I work, the way I live.’
- Appreciate your working hours as much as you appreciate the time you are doing fun stuff. Stop seeing working hours as bad hours. Don’t make that big of a deal out of it. This is just something you have to do to accomplish what you want. Study for a couple of hours now, work on your new business plans now and don’t have a bad feeling about it. Whatever you are doing right now will bring you closer to the goal you are having on the long term. Appreciate it!
To become as successful as you want to be asks for a call for action. This call can be answered, without losing your precious time with friends and family, you just need to do the right things. Have fun, but work hard also. Work faster, smarter, but not more. Find your productive spots in the day and make them hyperproductive, appreciate these working hours and appreciate your time with friends even more. Good luck.