6 Ways To Boost Your Productivity During Exams

1. Get enough sleep

We can not emphasize this enough. It is absolutely crucial to your health, memory, mood and probably 30 other things to keep up with your rest. It isn’t a matter of your beauty sleep anymore. If you aren’t well rested, your productivity will be non-existent. You probably have at least one friend who seems to subsist on a diet of coffee and red bulls, claiming that they are the secret to getting through exams. The main flaw with that is that sleep is not just to refill your energy. Your mind and body need to rest, otherwise, like an old laptop, they’ll overheat and you won’t be able to retain any of the information you study. So, even if it seems counter-intuitive at first, if you find yourself falling asleep, maybe you should take a power nap.

2. Eat less junk food.

Foods that are full of sugar and fat aren’t just bad for your body, they’re also bad for your brain and memory retention! Sugar highs and caffeine might initially give you an energy and productivity boost, but once you crash, it will be harder to recover. Having a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. Research from the World Health Organization says that healthy eating can raise productivity levels by up to 20 percent! Other research also shows that too much junk food can also affect your mood, motivation and ability to understand. You should eat more fruits and nuts, and no, we don’t mean the kind that come in a bar of chocolate. Start substituting chips with nuts and sugary drinks with fresh fruits and juice. Nuts and fruits give you natural boosts of energy and also help your memory and attention span with all the vitamins and healthy fats.

3. Plan your week

Sometimes exams are overwhelming because of the sheer enormity of the amount of studying you have to do. How can you squeeze hundreds of class hours into a week of revision? Don’t worry, even if you have procrastinated till the last minute, panicking or feeling guilty will not help. Think of your coursework as an elephant. How do you eat a ginormous elephant? One bite at a time. So, make a plan and stick to it. Try to break your to do list down into small achievable 25-40 minute chunks of work. Then, fill it into your schedule. This flexibility in your planning is important because there’s no way anyone can be working at optimum productivity all day. Remember, if you fall behind, don’t beat yourself up over it. That will only waste time and make you feel worse. Either go back and pick up where you left off, or continue with your schedule and catch up on what you missed at the end of the day.

4. Use a pomodoro timer to eliminate distractions

The pomodoro technique tells you to pick a task and stick to it for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, then continue with another task for another 25 minutes. Rinse and repeat. This is helpful because it allows you to switch between tasks and avoid monotony, while letting you still focus. Research shows that when you multitask, your IQ drops by an average of 15 points for men and 5 points for women. It also helps eliminate distractions because you are allowed to focus on only the task at hand for the duration of those 25 minutes. If you’re still distracted after a couple rounds of Pomodoro-ing, turn off your Internet connection or move to the quietest area you can find. Eliminate all distractions you discover.

5. Have a study buddy.

It helps if you find a friend who is in the same class and study together. Sometimes we need the motivation of being accountable to another person. Let each other know of your goals and deadlines and check up on each other from time to time. Study buddies are also helpful because they can explain difficult concepts and course material to you. You can also quiz each other. Study buddies are also great to discuss the material with and compare notes. You never know, you might’ve missed something important the professor said about the upcoming exam or what kind of questions will be asked.

6. Reward yourself.

Reward yourself in big and small ways. These rewards can be really motivating, like, if you finish revising a chapter that was particularly difficult, take a 5 – 10 minute break and watch a funny video, or call a friend. This refreshes your brain and readies your mind for the next chunk of studying. This also helps your productivity because it gives your mind a break and motivates you to keep going and stick to your schedule.

It can also help to think of the bigger picture. The best motivator at times is knowing that it will all be over soon. So, make post-exam plans with friends. Schedule in time to sleep in, watch movies, catch up on all your tv shows, or hang out with your friends. Better yet, think about the fact that you will finally have weeks of doing nothing where you won’t need to make schedules.