How to stay as productive as possible?

[convulsevasti]

Hi everyone,

I often find myself making plans to use time productively, but just end up in a cycle of doing nothing. Is there any useful tips on how to overcome laziness? I am a young person at a stage where I feel i really should not wasting time...

 

[Meimi18]

Oh I'm also real bad at that lol
Honestly, outside incentives help a lot, like expectations from other people. Gotta be careful with that one though because they might stress you out instead of actually pushing you to do stuff. My psychiatrist gave me a bunch of time management tips, did not end up trying any of them but hey
Time blocking might help, basically you group tasks that are similar, set a 30 min timer and try and dish out as many as you can. Or I might be misremembering the technique, but it's worth a search
Anyways, it's also good to remember it's not laziness if you actually wanna do things but can't bring yourself to, that's a different thing, laziness is a conscious decision. Also you can't be productive ALL the time, if you try to do that you'll crash and burn
Not sure if any of that might help, but good luck, be easy on yourself

 

[convulsevasti]

Oh I'm also real bad at that lol
Honestly, outside incentives help a lot, like expectations from other people. Gotta be careful with that one though because they might stress you out instead of actually pushing you to do stuff. My psychiatrist gave me a bunch of time management tips, did not end up trying any of them but hey
Time blocking might help, basically you group tasks that are similar, set a 30 min timer and try and dish out as many as you can. Or I might be misremembering the technique, but it's worth a search
Anyways, it's also good to remember it's not laziness if you actually wanna do things but can't bring yourself to, that's a different thing, laziness is a conscious decision. Also you can't be productive ALL the time, if you try to do that you'll crash and burn
Not sure if any of that might help, but good luck, be easy on yourself

Thank you for the advice! Appreciate it

 

[niceday]

Maybe you need this time to rest. We're not workhorses. I spent a long time searching for a "special method" before realizing that if I don't do anything, my life won't change. And if it does, it'll only be for the worse or for nothing.
Work-life balance and so on... :D

 

[usernamesarehard]

Maybe use a pomodoro timer? It's helped me before because I felt like because I'm only working for 25 min I had to be as productive as possible.

Depending on what you mean by as productive as possible, either: set specific goals (ie I will finish this draft, sweep my room and study chapter 2) for the day or accept that you can't be productive every hour of the day, you're human not a robot. Some people can be hyper focused on tasks for long periods of time, but they're the exception, not the rule.

Personally I find having specific goals helps a lot because I don't have to plan my day down to the hour, but I can still get what I need to get done done.

Also if you're depressed maybe consider taking meds? I was against it for a long time, but I'm able to be way more productive now that I'm not tired and sleeping all the time.

Finally, you're going to have to just ignore the temptation to not work. I'm a huge procrastinator and the only reason I get anything done is because I force myself to not give in to distractions and force myself to stay in my seat and work.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I weirdly used to find that exercising gave me more energy to do things. I guess by improving fitness/ releasing endorphines or whatever. I just can't seem to face it now though.

Contemplating failure also still works on some things- fortunately, seeing as I feel so reluctant to do anything. In the past,

I've actually taken on things where I could fail eg. college courses, an Etsy shop- because I realised I needed set goals to work towards.