This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Bates chapter.
Second semester’s starting to pick up and kick into gear, and sometimes I find it difficult to be as productive as I need to be when I’m doing my work. With that in mind, here are some helpful tips for getting things done.
- Completely freak out about the amount of work you have to do. This step is absolutely crucial. Before you even start your work, you have to obsess about the amount of work you need to get done, be it coursework, job applications, etc.
- Do not use any system of organization. None. Being organized is so overrated. Who needs to know precisely where all of their papers are when you could fling assignments into the winter breeze as you walk out of class?
- Forget to save documents on your computer. Why write a paper only once when you could write it twice or even three times because you didn’t save it before taking a break?
- Spend more time taking breaks than doing work. Catching up on 50 years’ worth of “Doctor Who” episodes is much more important than that 8 page English paper due in two days. Besides, “Doctor Who” is a British TV show, and that’s technically English, right?
- Deprive yourself of sleep. You can definitely function on less than one hour of sleep per night. That’s what coffee is for. And Red Bull. And 5-Hour Energy. And excessive amounts of sugar.
- Choose to use valuable time researching pictures of birds with arms. (Side note: you will not regret looking up pictures of birds with arms. They’re hilarious.)
- Prioritize doing literally anything over doing work. Now’s a great time to get spontaneously nostalgic and reminisce about memories from elementary school. Also, you really need to fix the squeaky hinge on the drawer of your desk even though it doesn’t really bother you. Or, at least, it didn’t bother you before when you had plenty of free time to fix it. Now, though, it’s the most irritating noise in the world and you need to fix it before you can focus on anything else. You also should call your grandparents; they probably want to talk to you.