#idk why i'm even on there tbh since all of my social energy & limited time is intentionally going to my finally-irl friendships

[caroloftheshells]

it’s spooky movie time and evidently i MUST see malignant, right now

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Hiya 😁 I really want to be more productive and start doing better in school, taking better notes, studying better, etc. but honestly I'm the most unmotivated person ever and I don't want studying/school to take up my whole life. However, I'm in high school next year which means I really have to try hard. ☹️ What things can I do to be more productive and be better at school? Is there steps I can do to build up to getting into a normal routine rather than changing it all right now? Thanks 🤔

Hello! (Sometimes I get carried away and talk too much — most times? — anyways, there is this thing about motivation and my personal view on it and below it there is a bulleted list with actual tips. I wrote it all for a reason, so I’d recommend for you to read it all? Oops!)

Structure of it all (under the cut): Introduction // Part I - Components of the Routine // Part II - Productivity // Part III - The Routine Itself // Part IV - Whatever Else That Needs To Be Said 

PS: It ended up much longer than what I expected? Hope it’s not a problem…

PSS: If anyone knows the sources to any of those things that I mention I saw somewhere on tumblr, please let me know to put it here, thank you!

I didn’t mean to star this harsh on anything but it might be taken — mistakenly — such as… Hm, I’ve seen this quote around my dashboard sometime in the past few days and I couldn’t deny that it had a lot of reason within it — I don’t have exact source right now, but it goes something like: motivation gets you nowhere, discipline does (also don’t know who to credit for, sorry). 

Yes, motivation makes everything easier in some ways, but it’s definitely not everything. With motivation and no discipline you’ll barely accomplish anything. On the other hand, if what you lack is motivation then you can accomplish great deals with discipline. 

 Like I said, this isn’t supposed to be a harsh message — its purpose was to give some hope. You don’t need to be the most motivated person ever to accomplish your goals, you need to have them set clearly (even if they change every few days) and a lot of discipline. Motivation would help? Yes, of course it would. But, don’t worry about it, when you’ve broken the starting inertia, have your goals defined and start seeing progress and getting closer to them, this is the kind of feeling I like to call motivation. 

 For me, motivation doesn’t come first. Motivation is build up on objectives and goals, it is shaped by the path that takes you to your final destination, it keeps growing bigger and stronger the closer you get, the cleaner you see the next steps you need to take, the more possible and close to your reality it all seems. Being motivated is a process — that is acquired during a much longer process, one that requires discipline — through the path that takes you to your goals.

PART I — The Parts of The Routine

 Ok, I suck at giving titles but this is basically about what will be a part of your routine (let’s leave how to arrange this for later). Just to show that it doesn’t have to have only school related stuff and that a normal routine can be pretty productive.

Good news: studying/school doesn’t have to take up your whole life, neither it should. First off, overdosing yourself with mental work (studying, for example) will kill an expressive amount of your productivity and in a long term (combined with not varying your activities) it might cause you a burnout (what will kill of most of your productivity). So…

Allow yourself some “me-time” — in this context I mean time spent doing absolutely nothing, thinking about life, thinking about nothing, not actually doing anything — in a regular basis, but don’t let it rule. What do I mean by that? Well, physics tells us that breaking inertia is equally hard one way or another — starting movement or quitting it — but, this is only true in vacuum, with no friction. Seems to me that working and trying to be productive is the activity with the most friction ever, seriously. Ok, let’s quit talking about physics — I don’t even know why I started, tbh. What I mean is: starting to work and to be productive is extremely hard, on the other hand, letting it all go to hell is so easy. Allow yourself “me-time” but limit it, otherwise it will easily take over and start the no-productivity world domination — the little voice of “it’s better to let it go and not do anything for a while, just a little bit more, you don’t need to get back right now, you have plenty time to do what you have to do later, let’s just do nothing a little longer, just give up already” can be pretty convincing. Trust me. Respect yourself and your timing but don’t abuse, don’t make excuses — or at least, don’t listen to the excuses you make.

Hobbies. Save some time on the week for your hobbies, go to classes or courses about it, practice on your own, I don’t know… Just spend some time doing something you love. The difference between doing some activity you love from outside school and doing nothing? Even if it has absolutely nothing to do with academics, by practicing a hobby you will be productive, you’ll be developing skills, getting to know yourself better, enjoying your time and not being idle (not lazy, idle).

Free time. Another important thing to keep space for in your week is some free time, doing some activity — so it’s not “me-time” — that doesn’t really develop a skill — depending on your hobbies they might, but usually they don’t. Save some time to read, watch netflix, watch a movie, television, surf on the internet, check social media, do something random you choose to do.

Spend time with people/Go out. Go out with your friends, go to parties, go to the movies, the theater, go shopping (but please be reasonable with your spendings), bring people home… Idk, there are many possibilities. Being social seems to boost extroverts’ energy, if you are introvert do what you feel up to (it can be just a few people — or one—, in quiet places). You can also not spend time with people — sort of — just go have a walk on your own, animals can be great company as well, do some people watching somewhere, once again, there are many possibilities.

Study. Seems to me like this is actually your goal, the objective of this ask. Yes, it plays an important role in our society and, since you’ll be starting high school soon, it gets you into a college (if that’s what you want, we’ll get to that later). Yes, since it’s the whole purpose of this, you have to save some time to study… I don’t think I have to explain why.  

Part II — ProductivityHow to make your work be effective? Simply tips to be more productive, as well as time management — this is important, trust me.  

The Pomodoro Technic: there are many apps to help you with that, just search for “pomodoro” and you’ll be filled up with lots of options, just choose one. The basics of this is working for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break, after a few cycles (usually four) you take a longer break — around 15 minutes.

The 60/20 Technic: Basically the same thing as the above, but the cycles are made of one hour of work and twenty minutes breaks between them. I’ve never really seen any apps for this but you can still count on your own, everything is not lost.

There is also this one that says that you should work during 90 minutes sessions with a 20 minute break cycles, it’s said to be based on the ultradian rhythm — it seems like it the body rhythm through the day.

Discipline. Yeah, we got back there… Whatever routine you choose to follow, keep up with it — that doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind later on. Don’t give up. Doing things randomly is dangerous — not that it never works — it gives you not consistency and doesn’t make any habits. Habits are powerful, it takes around 21 days to form them and 66 to become automatic — take it into account while making your routine and struggling to start it, in a few days it’ll be just the natural thing to do. Thank you google. 

Find out what type of learner you are. There are visual learners, kinesthetic learners, auditory learners, among other categories. Each type gets along better with different kinds of study techniques, use the ones recommended for you type(s) instead of insisting in what is conventional but might not be fit to the way your brain processes it all. Here are some links to tests and technics.

Cut distractions. At least while you’re working, try to keep your phone and internet away, they are truly a temptation and totally mess up with your productivity. Set up a study space that helps you concentrate.

Set priorities. There are really nice tables of priorities — the time square or something — around Tumblr, here is a good post that talks about it as week as many other useful things.

The five minute rule (is that how it’s called?). Once again, I saw it somewhere in Tumblr, no credit for me, but I don’t know where it comes from to put a source here. Basically, you should do all the tasks that will take you 5 minutes, at most. Knowing that each of them will not take that long to finish, you’ll be more willing to start and probably accomplish a lot.

At school itself: if you have the possibility of choosing your subjects, choose the ones that you care/are passionate about. What if there is nothing? Pick something close to your interests, or something that is the path to something that you actually like. It’s easier to get motivated if you’re studying about what you’re interested in.

Part III — The Routine Itself

Balance it all, the way it feels better for you. I’ll leave it up for you to do, since you said that you want a “normal routine”, but I’m going to give some suggestions about the studying time.

Do a bit everyday. It seems like most of this part will be explained on this topic. Anyways, revise your materials the same day (rewrite your notes, read the textbook if you haven’t already, do some exercises, watch video classes, sum everything up). Do your homework the day you get it, as much as you can, this way you won’t have a bunch of stuff to do the day before.

Revise. Revise. Revise. It will take you least time every time you do it, first revision might take you half an hour, the second maybe half of the time, the next? possibly five minutes. Let’s say you get home and rewrite your notes the same day, the next day you define the important topics, the next you sum everything up, the other you make a flash card and from there on you just have to read a tiny piece of paper. This way you’ll fix the content in your mind and won’t have to kill yourself studying the days before the exam.

Visit the material before the class, if possible. It’ll save you some work afterwards, trust me. Even if you just run through it, not giving all you can, you at least know in what ground you’ll be during class. Reading the titles and defining the topics covered is already something, it helps.

Practice. Do exercises to test your knowledge, this way you’ll know where to focus instead of trying to study everything at once for the exam. Besides, practice makes perfect, right?

How much time to save each day? That’s up to you, balance all the activities in a way that doesn’t get you overwhelmed, make it comfortable. You can also have different approaches for different classes, so you don’t have to save the same amount of time for every subject. A good shoot for me, personally, would be two hours of diary study and a bit more on the weekends around 3 or 4 hours, but this is just what worked best for me, just an option.

Part IV - Whatever Else Needs to Be Said

Those are just suggestions and they are pretty general, I’d recommend you to adapt it to your own needs, wants and reality. Also, somethings might seem pretty simple at a first glance but turn out hard when you actually get to do it, take your time.

Don’t give up, it takes time. You can make a gradual change in your routine if it looks like too much, or even just take part of it, something is more than nothing. Also, you don’t have to wait until next year to start adapting yourself to the new lifestyle you want to have.

Remember, I know our society puts a lot of importance in academics, it might seem like an academic career is the only path to follow but remember that it isn’t the right choice for everyone — even if the pressure from everyone around you tells you the opposite. This is just me talking, before making any decision consider your environment and your family — sometimes it can be pretty hard, I know.

If you fall out of track, just know that it’s never too late to do what’s right for you, ok?

Find study buddies to help you keep in track and be the motivation you might lack sometimes.

Everyone is its own individual, there are certain ways of doing stuff that are so normalized that seem like it’s the only option available. When the patterns doesn’t fit to our beings, our function, when it’s not the best option for us individually, it feels like we can’t fit and it sorta kills out our motivation. This is just a friendly reminder that there are a bunch of ways to do the same thing and none are the right choice as well as none is the wrong one, do what’s best for you.

I hope it helped, if you need anything else just let me know and I’ll do what I can to help. Anything at all.