Study Smart With These Productivity Hacks for College Students

Being productive or efficient is a vital aspect of being a college student. However, most college students often face different demands and distractions, from work to extracurricular activities, to social lives – strains that make it hard for students to focus and be productive. Even if you’re full of bright ideas and attend every class, low productivity levels can render all your efforts meaningless. 

Nailing productivity hacks for students is probably one of the most vital skills you need to develop as a student if you want to work smarter and not harder. Here are top productivity hacks for students that can help you focus more on your studies and make your college experience more bearable. 

Make Notes as You Study 

While there’s no harm in reading from your phone or PC, writing down key points while you study is a hack for students that allows them to retain information and ensure that their brain stays active and focused. Interestingly, research demonstrates that students who write notes on paper learn more than those who type. Write notes for whatever concept you learn, whether in the classroom or when studying, and the notes will help you make the concept clear and save a huge amount of time. 

Taking notes increases your attention to the concept you’re learning and makes you grasp and understand the concept quickly when you later go through the same concept or topic. Keep your notes brief, and feel free to use flashcards, diagrams, mnemonics, and flowcharts. Such memory techniques unleash your creativity and help you remember key concepts easily. 

Remove Any Distracting Triggers 

One of the top productivity tips for students is eliminating any potential distractions, including putting your phones on airplane mode and switching off your television. If you’re distracted continuously, consider rearranging your studying environment to limit self-distraction, like staring at the television, game consoles, and so on. Social media can also affect your productivity in school, so you might want to disconnect your connection or do away with notifications that will distract you while studying. 

Take Study Breaks 

Taking study breaks is one of the productivity tips for students that will help increase productivity. Don’t just study continuously for hours without taking breaks; your mind is likely to switch off and that wouldn’t be a smart way to study. 

Taking regular breaks while you study will help you avoid overworking yourself and straining your eyes. But as you give yourself breaks, consider the duration and the quality of your breaks. The quality of your study breaks defines what you’ll do and how relaxing, rejuvenating, or fun it is. For instance, socializing with your family or friends, taking a walk, or watching motivational videos can boost your productivity. 

Taking a nap can also refresh your body and rest your brain cells. In fact, research indicates that taking a nap can facilitate emotional and cognitive health, which will make you more productive. However, remember that taking a break will only increase your productivity until it becomes a distraction. The duration of your study breaks is also important, so don’t let them turn into distractions. 

Teach Others 

Have you ever heard of the protégé effect? Protégé is a psychological phenomenon where teaching or preparing to teach particular information to others helps you learn that information. Because of the protégé‘s beneficial influence, it’s a great productivity hack for students. 

Find students who don’t understand the topics you’re good at and teach them. Teaching someone will force you to organize, and seemingly, explaining a concept for about five minutes could save you about an hour of combined studying for the given effect. Likewise, students who learn intending to teach the material later can perform better because expecting to teach helps them enhance their learning and knowledge organization in free recall of their notes. 

Make a Detailed Semester Plan and Stick To It 

Making a detailed plan for your semester will make your college life less chaotic and more productive. Use a diary, calendar, or application to plan for the coming months or weeks in college. Something as simple as knowing when you have certain life events, extracurricular activities, weekend trips, and school project or assignment deadlines will give you plenty of time to plan your studies around them. 

If you’re working while studying, relying on your calendar and making sure you’re ahead of your deadlines is a critical habit, especially if you’re studying academic programs that are demanding. You’ll be able to balance studies and work while still being productive. 

Break Your Daily Study Load Into Smaller Tasks 

One of the best productivity hacks for students is breaking down your studies into segments – commonly known as the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique suggests that the optimal study period in a continuous stretch is two hours. 

So, you initially break down your study work into 25 minutes, separated by small breaks of five minutes. Once you complete your 4 Pomodoros, you can take a long break of about 15 to 30 minutes before repeating the process. Studying continuously for extended hours can exhaust your brain, but when you take a short break in between your studying, you’ll avoid putting your brain under much pressure. 

Stay Mentally Engaged 

Adopting techniques that will keep you mentally engaged is an important productivity hack for students because we only learn when our minds are switched on. Staying mentally engaged involves being actively attentive and focusing on what is important at a given moment. 

As Thorne and Thomas put it, attention is the first step in learning – we can’t understand, learn, or even remember anything that we don’t first attend to. Becoming attentive in your studies is the first step in your learning process. 

Bottom Line 

It’s important that you master core skills and hacks that will make studying fun, effective, and more rewarding. University of the People allows you to work smart through an online model that allows you to balance your work and still attend all your online lectures. You can also leverage various classroom forums and still interact with your peers and lecturers online at your convenience. Some high-demand programs to explore include Health Science, Computer Science, Business Administration, and Education. 

And now that you have all it takes to get started with your productivity journey, get started and get more done! Most importantly, adopt productivity hacks that will best work for you.