If you’ve read other articles of mine you already know that I studied a double degree (meaning two full-time university degree programs at the same time), while working part time as a web designer. About the same time I started dancing tango and in all that time I was mostly in a relationship as well. To put it in one sentence: I’m busy. Almost all the time!
Immediately before I came to Sussex to study Computing and Artificial Intelligence I probably had the busiest time of my life. I finished some essays for my courses abroad, wrote a dissertation for a course in Germany, learned all Italian grammar for an exam, cleared out my flat full of stuff that accumulated in the 6 years that I lived there, painted the place, pulled the floor out, sold or gave away most of my furniture and did all the reading and writing for my Bachelor thesis. All that I did in just under 6 months. When I left Germany I was shattered. I didn’t have any privacy for about a month, because I basically wrote my Bachelor thesis while either sleeping on my Dad’s or my Mum’s couch. In my last holiday at the Baltic Sea I usually spent half the night writing my thesis. In the last two or three weeks in Germany I basically went tango dancing every night, because I was so burnt out. I just needed something to balance me.
I have to admit that I’ve become much less busy lately. I only study one degree, I didn’t work at all last year and I actually relax a lot. If I relax nowadays, my mind is not working anymore: I even meditate to achieve this kind of calmness. The reason is quite obvious though: I’m ill and actually on something that might even be considered a holiday. My first uni year at Sussex studying Computing and AI and also the holiday afterwards were supposed to be my time off after this insanely busy time back in Germany. I tell you I wouldn’t ever want to do this again! It was just all a bit much, especially with the emotional strain of leaving a place which I considered to be my home. I know now that there’s no need to hurry.
In my “year off” I got an average of 85% (everything above 70% is a first class degree), while I was under a lot of pressure because of relationship problems. I found out that I’m very ill for at least the last 2 years now and for about another year to come and while I was considering to go back to Germany, because neither the new degree nor my new living situation was very pleasurable. Everything basically just blew up into my face. My relationship was over, my living situation was if considered realistically a nightmare for quite some time and the learning experience was just not worth the effort in case of the degree. I mostly knew the stuff already and it still took quite some effort to get good marks. If I had been happy with my situation and if I had had a more challenging first year, I would have done and achieved a lot more.
What have I planned for my second year in Brighton? Well, first of all, to be able to be productive you have to be in a position where you can be productive. You have to be in a situation where you don’t have to worry about things too much.
Preferably there shouldn’t be any financial issues at hand. I borrowed money from my parents for my tuition fees and we already agreed last year that they will pay for my living expenses until I finish my BSc as well. In general you should be in a position where you are mainly happy where you are. After one year of struggling with it I finally am quite happy with being in England. It gives me a lot more opportunities for my future and Brighton is also a pretty place with lots of things to do if you’re bored. My living situation will be a lot better than last year, because I’m going to live with 2 postgrads in a lovely house near a big supermarket and with perfect public transport connections. To make things even better I’m going to buy a scooter (it’s in fact a gift from my parents for my excellent average in my first 1 1/2 degrees) so that I will be even more flexible. There is no relationship that could blow up, because I’m single and quite happy with that, and additionally I also have much more friends in Brighton now than I had last year. And then there is the most important bit: the main aim of my productivity efforts is going to be a lot more interesting – in second year my AI specialization starts and I’m only going to have 1 or 2 straight Computer Science courses.
You see: I have analysed my situation and I’ve tried my best to improve my situation in all aspects that went wrong last year. Now I will have near perfect working conditions, if everything goes well.
So, what’s the plan for next year?
- getting the highest average in second year
- help first year students as a Peer assisted learning (PAL) leader
- write at least three 1000-2000 word blog articles each week
- do the reading for all the courses I have and for an additional course per term
- hand every coursework in on time and without the feeling that there would be room for improvement
- go tango dancing at least once a week in Brighton – more often if there are new tango dancers in town – and at least twice a month in London
- start running again as soon as my health permits it and take up tai chi
- join the Hacker Space in Brighton and attend all Brighton Robotics events to learn more about the topic, especially on the hardware side
- … to be honest the list goes on …
All of this will take a lot of effort to maintain. I will have to manage my time very carefully and I will have to make sure, that I do get enough relaxing done as well, because I’ll be ill for another half a year at least. It really sounds like I really need to start being incredibly productive as well, while doing it in a more intelligent way than my last time being overly productive. In the last month I actually thought a lot about how to get this done properly and I’ve tried to identify the most important tips that I gave to other people when they asked me how I managed to study two degrees at the same time. Here they are:
- At the beginning of a work period (a new term/semester, the start of a new project, anything that could be seen as a real beginning) make a plan! Identify the deadlines and set the earliest and the latest start date to work on it. Why the earliest? Well, here is the reason:
- Do one thing after another. If you switch tasks you will lose focus and that will cost you time. Try working only on one thing at a time for the entire week – if you have to start with a project at a certain time, even though you’re in the middle of another project, try only doing administrative bits until you’ve finished the other project, so that you can have a block of time allocated to the juicy bits of the next project. Never start too early or you’ll waste time, unless you have really nothing else to do.
- One of my professors used to say: “Have courage to leave gaps!” I like to call it: Know when to stop. You can do 80% of a job in only 20% of the time. The last 20% are the hard bit to make it perfect and it will take you 80% of your time. You will be most productive, if you can be happy with an 80% perfect piece of work. In my last year I got 85% so I certainly “wasted” some time on perfectionism. Know when to go for the hard 20%, namely when being perfect will increase your skills. Next time it will save you time and the last 20% will only be the last 15%. Once I wasted an evening on getting the listings plugin working for LaTeX – now I only have to plug my source files in, specify the programming language and it will produce a perfect Appendix for a report. This saved me a lot of time on about 3 other deadlines where I had to hand in printed code as part of the submission.
- Know when to say no! You can’t make everyone happy and you certainly can’t do everything. I often skip lectures if they’re wasting my time. To some lectures I will be 10 minutes late in a calculated fashion, because the lecturer won’t start talking about new things until 10 minutes after the start of the lecture.
- Know when to say yes! Someone wants you to do something for free? If you can learn something from it, then say yes! Say yes, even if you don’t know how to do it (but do warn the person who’s asking), you will learn it – it will cost you a night or two, but if you really want it, you’ll learn it. To get my scholarship for this summer I wrote on my CV that I know C++. In fact I only looked at a C++ book for an hour 4 years ago. It was quite a struggle to pick it up, but it only took me about a week. Now I know C++ and next time I’ll be much quicker at doing things with it.
- Write everything down: If you’re very busy you just can’t trust your memory. Additionally having it written down will keep you from worrying about everything all the time. If you don’t need to remember it, you won’t and if you don’t remember it, you won’t worry. Be careful not to lose your notes though and if you only keep an electronic record, print it: there’s nothing worse than losing your to do list!
- Be tech savvy: Google’s text message reminders are free in England and probably also in other countries in the world. You can set up a Google calendar, which reminds you automatically whenever you add an item to the calendar, so that you won’t have to specify that you want a reminder each time. Use technology where it makes things quicker and easier for you!
- Take breaks! If you just work and work and work you’ll soon have a burn out. Relax every day for at least an hour, even if it’s the last day before the deadline. A last effort will be only half as productive when you’re tired and hungry. Relax every week for at least one day. Declare this day as your day off, even if you might have work to do. If you really can’t get away from work for a day, treat one day as your day off and do only things that you consider the fun bits of your job. A day off will increase the productivity immensely for the rest of the week. 6 days of 5 hrs concentration is better than 7 days of 3 hrs concentration, right?
- Value what you achieve! Don’t just treat everything as a to do list item. Celebrate success with a treat and treat yourself with a drink if you fail. All this matters, it’s not just things that you tick off! If you value what you do and achieve you have more incentive to do things and to do things right. You will be more motivated!
- Don’t sacrifice your life! If you’d rather do something else than be productive, then do it! Spend time with your new love, go tango dancing instead of doing the last minute effort on a deadline, go out for a pint instead of reading that last article. If you rather want to do something else than what you’re doing all day, then it’s probably not worth the sacrifice anyway! If you really love what you’re doing, you won’t even consider it as a sacrifice to not go for that pint.
Being productive is a hard struggle and getting the balance right is probably the hardest part of this struggle. Believe me, you’ll be sick of it, you’ll even hate it sometimes. You’ll have melt downs when your carefully designed plan blows up into your face. You’ll have days where you can’t bring yourself to do anything, because you worked too hard for too long. Once you get the balance right though, you’ll love every minute! You’ll love ticking off these tasks, you’ll love the success, you’ll love that pint more if you know you earned it and you’ll especially love those people asking you how you did all this!
If you want to be more productive try reflecting about these 10 hints I gave you here. You won’t become more productive just by following some tips a random person gave you, no, you really have to understand why! Try to identify what behaviour of yours would be not a good idea if you follow my tips. And then ask where it came from and whether you really think my tip would improve your situation. Not everything works for everyone, so try and pick what you like and maybe try out the rest later, when you have time for it. What are your secrets for your own productivity?
Check out the other articles featured in the productivity week:
- Why being busy isn’t necessarily being productive
- On the meaning of productivity
- How to make your procrastination productive –
Part 2 - How to make your procrastination productive –
Part 1
