In this post, I’m going to give you three things – Einstein’s approach to laziness, three simple hacks for you to end laziness, and one easy formula for you to beat laziness. So let’s get going.
What if I told you that you could sit in your balcony on a chair and sip a cup of coffee and be productive? This is the time for you to reflect on your priorities, maybe reflect on what you studied yesterday reflect even on your music lesson, but spend time in solitude, and you will find the results to be startling. Productivity is not about getting a ton of things done; instead, it’s about getting the right things done in the least amount of time.
Tip number one – The 15-minute rule. Now before you sit down to study alarm for 15 minutes and when the timer goes off, you can choose to close your books. I’ve tried this often, and it becomes like a game. It motivates you to sit down for the next session, and at the end of 15 minutes, you are trying to beat your record of exceeding that 15 minutes.
Tip number two – Co-partner. Plan some activity with a friend. The monkey mind doesn’t let us work, but the monkey is also social, so when you work with a friend, almost 100% of the time, the monkey enables you to work. I’ve tried this and believe me the amount of productivity that I get in that one session beats two-three hours of studying alone. The trick here is to choose the right partner.
Tip number three – Don’t break the chain. It’s also called the calendar trick. Actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld uses this to motivate himself to write. Every day that he completes his schedule and work, he puts a cross on the calendar, and he puts up the calendar prominently on a wall. Doing the same, you will start seeing the cross patterns on every single day, and you don’t want to break that pattern, and you’ll find that cross on the wall will motivate you to work that day.
Let’s talk about the right food. First, a new study has found that eating junk food not only makes us fat, but it also makes us mentally slow and less motivated. I have found this that the day I eat protein-rich food as against a dense carb food, I am much more productive, and I have much more energy. I feel less tired as well, so try even to get that one protein shake but eat everything in balance and slightly reduce your carbs in the beginning. It seems a little complicated, but by the end of it, the results are worth it.
Tip number two within food – Light and early dinner. All good diets seem to begin at breakfast and end at dinner. So have a light nourishing, well-balanced meal and have it a little early in the evening. After that, go and shut your kitchen door physically and if you can put a lock on your fridge, do that.
Tip number 3 within food – Hydration. Drink about two-three liters of water. Drink most of it in the first half of the day.
The second part of the formula was the Right time. There is a close correlation between time and study. There are three quick tips that I have for you here under the category of time.
The first is the rule of two. This is a golden thumb rule. The idea is – study for half an hour and takes a 15-minute break basically whatever time you study take half of that as a break.
The second tip is golden hours. Each of us is different. Some of us are more productive in the morning, and some of our work better at night. But you know best about your golden hours and try to catch at least one hour of work during that golden period.
The third tip is to reboot your brain. If you want your mind to work productively, activated, and motivated throughout the day, you need to give it rest to recharge and reboot once. Every day this could be in the form of meditation, exercise, or even that period when you sit down to reflect and think. Remember, the most significant rule of time – if you have a mountain to climb, it doesn’t get any shorter by waiting, so start climbing.
The third part of our formula – sleep with a vision wake up with a mission and work without intermission, before going to bed if you can plan something or have a view of something that you want to accomplish. The next day you will wake up with a mission, and that’ll motivate you through the day. Find your mojo, and there will never be a dull day after that and have no fear. You don’t need to see the entire staircase you need to climb one step at a time.
Finally, distractions the favorite topic of all of us. It’s a bit like newton’s third law of motion – for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Every time you sit down to study almost equally, you get distracted, and you don’t feel like studying, the only thing that you have to do is to recognize it and control it.