How to Increase Productivity While Studying at Home

Everyone in this planet only has 24 hours a day, including the most successful people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos. Have you ever thought about why they are so successful when you can't manage your study time well?

The reason is they could be able to work their time productively while you waste it doing unnecessary things. So productivity is a good skill that we must develop as a student. The only thing we need to be productive is passion and hard work. I hope you guys have the courage to work on it because that's why you're reading this article. So let's find out through this article how we can be productive.

13 tips to improve productivity while studying

To improve your productivity, you must change several lifestyle things. Sometimes it may be more challenging initially, but you only need to add tricks and tips to your daily routine below. Then after a few days, they'll probably become your habits. So, you can be a more productive student without any effort.

1. Schedule more time than you expect

Most students make this mistake when planning their studying schedule. Usually, we need more time to finish a particular work than the time we estimated for it. Because no one can tell how things can change in the next minute. Maybe you can get distracted by something like a call from your friend, or else that can be harder than we thought. 

Even when making deadlines for your projects, you have to think of this timing problem. In my opinion, if you can give more time than a task needed, you won't feel much stress, and you'll be able to complete that task properly in time. 

For example, If you think you only need one hour to complete your homework, you must reserve an hour and a half for it. But if you feel this is just a waste of time or maybe this time is not enough, you can adjust the periods with your personal experience. Also, the other benefit of studying like this is that you can take a break in the remaining time or start working to be more productive.

2. Categorize tasks

Doing similar tasks in comparable periods is good because it won't disturb your workflow. It can make you do task by task without any effort. 

For example, you can continue studying physics questions after doing math. As both subjects contain similar content, you can continue each task without giving any force to your brain. Otherwise, If you study a theory subject like history after studying math, there's less possibility of doing that task productively.

Also, categorizing tasks with similar tasks and content is more important to minimize time wasting. Especially when you have tasks that need the Internet, like finding facts through google or submitting a project, you probably need to do all that kind of work at once.

Otherwise, searching for material on the Internet to understand a note while studying may also lead you to chat with friends and look at social networks, which wastes your study time and reduces productivity.

3. Start simple

This is the same as doing similar tasks at a time. When we study, the hardest thing is to start doing the work. But after getting started, we can continue the work smoothly and effortlessly. So that's why you should start with simple tasks; otherwise, you will be frustrated by doing them. If you had to write a long essay at the beginning of studying, you would procrastinate about studying as it takes a lot of time to complete. 

But if you can start with a simple task, it's easy to begin with. As an example, When you are solving math questions, first you have to choose the easiest one, then you can go to the most complex one step by step. When you are studying this way, your brain gradually adapts to learning. I remember the way our homework questions were organized in math textbooks. They were organized from the most straightforward question to the hardest one. 

So we didn't get frustrated while doing it. But if we have to do the most complicated question as the first one, we get bored solving it, or we waste time as we don't have much practice solving such problems. So you can use this method to improve your productivity.

4. Do one task at a time.

Multitasking is a common mistake that many students make due to their misunderstandings. Sometimes it may help us to complete a few tasks in time, but when you are doing a task that needs much focus, you shouldn't multitask. Some students think people who multitask are the smartest, rapidly improving their knowledge. You can do a simple experiment to confirm this. 

If you try to listen to a song with headphones while the teacher is teaching the class, can you memorize the things taught? Or, as I said in the article on studying with music, you can't concentrate well if you learn while listening to a song with lyrics. For me, it's pretty distracting as I cannot do any of the tasks correctly, either listening to music or studying. On the other hand, we can do an assignment successfully only when we focus enough on it. I also had friends who were making this mistake in the classroom. 

What they are doing is they try to do homework while the teacher is teaching in the classroom. But after I explained to them how badly this would affect their studies, they stopped doing that and paid full attention to the teacher. Share this article with your friends and tell them not to multitask but focus on one job at a time. So they will surely appreciate you sharing this article with them because it increases the productivity of studying.

5. Overcome procrastination

Procrastination directly affects our productivity. Because postponing work means wasting your precious time. Wasting our working time on unnecessary things can decrease our productivity. I mentioned the way to overcome procrastination in the article. How to stop procrastinating and start studying. So if you're suffering from this issue, look at that article for a clear idea.

6. Do complex tasks in the middle of the schedule.

As I mentioned, starting to work with complex tasks leads you to postpone your work and negatively impacts studying productivity. Also, if you schedule those complicated tasks to the end of the schedule, you won't be able to do those tasks as you are tired from working for a long time.

So to engage in complex tasks, you must choose the best time with much energy and motivation. I think that time is the middle of your study schedule because you have entered the flow state at that time and are not very tired of learning. Consequently, without wasting time procrastinating on studying, you can complete your assignments like a productive student.

7. Study in a productive space

The most important place for us as a student is our studying place. It should not be the bed; it should be a place with fewer distractions and an excellent environment to study with a clear mind. Otherwise, we can't learn productively there. Just think, can you study with concentration in a messy place with distractive noises. 

So keeping a perfect study space that is clean and organized is essential to being productive while studying. I didn't have a good study space in the early days of school. But with that, I found out how it decreased my work productivity, so I gradually converted my room into a place specially made for learning. Now I have all my things well organized, I have a particular place for each tool I use and bookshelves to keep my books in order. I have labeled each bookshelf and categorized the books so that I can find a book whenever I want, reducing waste of time.

So that clearly shows how your studying space and arrangement can affect studying productivity. That's why I came up with an article discussing making a productive study space at home. So I'd like to suggest you read it so you'll have a better idea.

8. Manage a to-do list

Usually, I add all the tasks I have to do the next day to a to-do list. So it helps me to do everything without missing any job. The best thing about my to-do app is the animation of cutting the task every time I put a tick after completing a specific task. Cutting those works one by one by finishing the schedule makes me happy. It motivates me to continue my daily routine. When I feel that I have studied for a long time by completing many tasks today, it motivates me to learn continuously.

9. Minimize distractions

Distractions are the crucial things that ruin our productivity. As students, smartphones are the biggest distraction that we have. Because smartphones are full of different types of distractions like notifications from social networks and friends, gaming, watching videos, and much more, which take us away from our studies.

Likewise, we quickly get distracted from our studying schedule without even knowing. So by now, the main problem for the lower productivity of students is the distractions they're getting through social media and mobile phones. 

Even at home, It profoundly affects our studying productivity when there are too much noise from others, the environment, friends, and colleagues. So it is your responsibility to minimize those distractions, like turning off the mobile phone or putting it in the don't disturb mode while studying, asking friends and family not to bother when you're learning, etc. Likewise, you will be able to learn more productively when you can minimize distractions.

10. Track your time

Productivity is wholly related to time management. So to study productively, we should be able to manage our working time and the time spent on unnecessary things. Then we can analyze those data and plan our next day to work with maximum productivity.

Also, suppose you can find out each time spent unnecessarily playing games or social media and compare them with your studying time. In that case, you'll be able to see why you lose your productivity. As a solution, you can use a digital clock to measure and manage your time, and it's way better than an analog clock as it has more features.

11. Use productivity apps

Even though the mobile phone is a massive distraction for students, it has many more positive benefits. The ability you get to read this article is the best example of that. If you didn't have internet facilities, you would not be able to read this. So starting today, use your mobile phone and computer to improve your productivity.

For that, you can use different kinds of apps and websites. It can be a time management app, task management app, mediation app, or motivational app. So it's your choice to use your phone against your studies or for the good of your studies.

12. Choose friends wisely

There are many advantages and disadvantages of studying with friends; I talked more about that in my previous article. Our productivity also depends on what kind of friends we choose to study with. If you're with some sort of time-wasting friends, you probably won't be able to learn productively. But if your group is hard-working, intellectual friends, they'll surely guide you to the best results.

If you go through the article I mentioned, you'll get a clear idea about finding friends for group work. So go on and look before you start studying with your friends. If you choose the right friends, you won't be distracted from your studies, and also, if you're a good friend to others, you'll surely share this article with your friends to learn how to work productively.

13. Do activities that give you feedback.

When we're doing work knowing we won't receive any reward, we get bored doing that task after a while. This affects the lack of productivity in our studies. When we don't get feedback for that work, the interest in engaging in that task may decrease. We may get distracted from that task if we don't have enough passion.

That's why we need to use such tricks to convert any boring task into a task that gives us rewards. This refreshes our minds and helps keep our studying mood for long hours by motivating us. 

As I mentioned in the article how to reward yourself while studying, you can make different kinds of rewards and feedback on your own. Not only that but also to become an expert in anything, this feedback concept is essential. I got to know about this through one of my favorite science YouTube channels, Veritasium. I've shared the video below so you can check it out.

How can I do productive study at home?

In the schools, we have a proper timetable separated into several periods and a whole staff to make us work productively. As they teach us in each period according to a well-planned structure, we can study in the flow state without much effort.

But at home, we have to face the opposite of this situation. We must make our own timetable, schedule tasks, find studying and memorizing methods, and organize our surroundings to learn better. In this case, we first need to make a productive study space, and next, we should be the making of our study routine or timetable.

So if you read the article with attention, you should clearly know what I'm saying by now. Also, when we are close to an exam, we tend to study continuously for hours. So to keep our studying rate at a productive level, we have to do several things such as meditation, having a nutritious meal, effective study breaks and rewarding ourselves. I've discussed this deeply in the article How to study long hours with full concentration.

How can I study more productively at night?

Studying at night has many advantages, especially because it's free of distractions. So we can concentrate on our studies easily and as there are no distractions we have the ability to study for long hours productively. The biggest challenge we have to overcome during a night routine is sleepiness.

But you can use simple tricks like having a shower before your studies, drinking more water, chatting with friends when you're bored, taking small breaks, etc. If you want to know more about pulling an all-nighter, I'd recommend the article How to pull an all-nighter which is a complete guide for studying at night.

When we want to understand a subject deeply, it's not important how much time we work but how far we work productively. If you're not studying productively, it's not worth it, even if you're a hard-working student. So revise these facts again and try to add them to your life. Also, if you have better tips and tricks than those, don't forget to share them in the comment section below.