3 Productivity Hacks No One Tells Teens About

Back in 1926, Henry Ford conducted an experiment with his staff, wherein he decreased their daily working hours from 10 to 8 and shortened the work week from 6 days to 5. Not so surprisingly, his workers’ productivity increased with this new schedule. It boosted production as more attention was paid to specialisation and voila! the iconic Model T was launched to much success.

Okay we get it, you didn’t come here for the stories.

This is what you came for

This isn’t the first time you’ve come across an article on the Internet that offers advice and hacks for becoming more productive. But hey, if making lists and setting goals were enough, you wouldn’t be here right now! Maybe you’re here because you’re shying away from tasks and just wanted that quick break, maybe you really want to fix your priorities. Regardless, you’ll be leaving this page more empowered.

We went the extra mile and codified the hacks we believe are too subtle to be explained constructively. And even though you wouldn't have heard of these before, you will see their relevance immediately.

Give yourself time to procrastinate

If you want to start studying at 7pm, then get to your desk at 6:45. Open your notes, presentations and guides and identify what chapters/topics you need to cover today, but don’t start. For the next fifteen minutes, do whatever it is that distracts you when you're trying to focus. If it is the new trailer that came out today, watch it now. If it’s a song that’s stuck in your head, listen to it and open its lyrics so you’re not singing gibberish in the shower. Text the people you have been leaving on read because you 'claim' to be busy. For fifteen minutes, just let the monkey in your mind jump around and do whatever it wants to, so that you're the one directing its actions later. As soon as it's 7pm, like a mature adult, put your phone on airplane mode and start studying!

This time, you will be able to focus. And that’s because you have been thinking about what it is that you’ll be diving into today for the past quarter of an hour but more importantly, you’re not fighting the urge to open YouTube anymore. You’ve already dealt with everything the monkey in your mind lures you with. Now, you can give your undivided attention to the task at hand.

Work Smart

Don’t let yourself sit at the desk endlessly and aimlessly. Instead make a rough plan for the day and decide when you will be studying. This way you can concentrate your efforts on a few predetermined hours instead of forcefully igniting your brain after every unjustified break you take. When you put a cap on the number of hours you’ll be studying for, you’ll start taking those hours seriously and thus your productivity increases.

We tend to confuse productivity with the amount of time we spend working, and that’s a dangerous misconception. We do everything right except for understanding why the word relevant is being emphasised. The number of hours you give is a pointless measure. What counts is if you have something relevant at the end of it. And no, that doesn’t mean you need to quantify your efforts or have something tangible to show. In fact, in some fields, at the end of long productive days, all you get are findings that make months of research redundant.

You will know at the end of the day when your efforts were relevant and you can call it a productive day. Just remember, productivity and hours worked have an inverse relationship. (Economics students, connect this to the law of diminishing returns.)

Learn to Say No

There are two places where most of us fail at making our intentions perfectly clear. When someone asks for help and when an opportunity comes in front of us.

More often than not you’ll be surrounded by lazy people, for all we know, you’re one of them. And the best thing about lazy people is that they’re either completely shameless and make you work for them or they need, what they like to call, help, at the very last second. These people derail you and make you significantly unproductive one night before the exam, but you’ll never realise this because in your mind, you tell yourself, “look at me, helping my friends and all, what a nice person I am.” But I’m sorry, you’re just being taken advantage of. Be unaccommodating when required.

Another instance where we can’t say no is when a new shiny opportunity presents itself. If you have already taken too much on your plate and don’t know how you’ll manage to eat and sleep with your existing responsibilities, adding to your workload — no matter how rewarding the task is — will only pull you back. Forget making the most out of the new opportunity, it’s likely you’ll start lagging with everything else, because let’s face it, even if you were given over 24 hours a day, your mind will not cooperate for more than a given number of hours. It’s important to prioritise and decide what it is that you want to do right by. By all means push yourself and take those leaps of faith, but keep in mind that you can’t get involved in every opportunity just like you can’t be at two places at once. Understand what all you’ve signed up for currently and what your capacity is before you make any decision.

The feeling of writing such a brilliant blog post after a terribly unproductive day is priceless irony. And that reminds me of another bonus point: don’t be too hard on yourself. Some days are low productivity days and that’s that. It’s not like you deliberately chose to work inefficiently. Go easy on yourself, keep your morale up and do what you enjoy, you'll be sorted for life.

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