You had two weeks to complete it, but the only acceptable time to time to complete your 5000-word essay on politics is the night before it’s due. Like me then this is quite a common occurrence no matter the project/essay/work. I decided to try and solve this problem. I worked to become a bit more productive. So here are some tips I learnt along the way which may be of use to you.
1. Remove anything that can be a distraction. For most people, our phones are a huge distraction. In order to be more productive, the best practice is to remove or restrict your phone. If you like me and constantly check your social media. What I found to be really useful is to log out of your social media accounts such as Facebook when you are finished scrolling. Another useful tip I found was to not install any of the social applications onto your phone. Login and browse these websites through your browser. This makes it less likely to consistently visit Instagram every ten minutes.
2. Break it down. It’s no fun having to tackle a 3000-word essay in one go. Breaking up your work into easier chunks, aim to split it 500 or 400-word segments. It is much less daunting to tackle a smaller segment.
3. If you tend to do your work in your room or dorm, Instead find a workspace that you can work your best in. This space can be your college/local library, a quiet section of the dining hall or even outdoors in a park. Getting out of your room is great to create a separate space for work. Doing this will create a split in these locations in your mind. When you have distinguished work and personal locations, you create an association with what you need to do at the location. When I sit at the library desks, I get into a work zone which helps me be more productive.
4. Finally, if you still get distracted by laptop or your phone after removing all social media. Then remove it all together. Write out your essay fully on paper first.There is a software called optical character recognition (OCR) which can scan your handwritten papers and convert your writing digitally into Microsoft Word. This software is great to remove the need to always use your computer to write your notes or essays.
Written by Luke Courtney