How To Be Productive

4 min readNov 12, 2020

I feel overwhelmed these days and who doesn’t?

We have a lot of things to do in one day while we only have limited energy and time. This leads me to do a little research on how to be productive so i can feel less overwhelmed and then I’ve come to this one method that I think works the best for me.

First thing first before getting to the “how to be productive”, there’s one thing that I want you to know, it is the trap of productive procrastination. We need to know because we don’t want to fall into this trap. And I as the person who has fallen will tell you how it felt like when you fall into this trap.

So it feels like you’ve done a lot that day then you feel exhausted and at the end of the day when you check your work, nothing’s done. Yes, you are wasting your time on a whole new level.

In the usual procrastination, you do things like watching Netflix, eating, and sleeping, you are aware that you are procrastinating, but in the trap of productive procrastination, you may not realize that you are procrastinating. Because the trap of productive procrastination is the act of being busy while avoiding doing the valuable things that you should do. Instead, you’re doing things that make you feel productive, feel good about not doing the works that are truly important and impactful.

For example, you have the assignment to write an essay, but instead of searching for the topic and start writing the essay, you are watching a lot of videos on YouTube on how to write a good essay, you set the room to get the mood and after that, you call several of your friends because you want to discuss, but you know and we all know, that the discussion only lasts for 15 minutes and then you end up talking about unnecessary things, not related to the essay. Congratulations, you’ve fallen into productive procrastination.

It’s important to know about this because we want to get real productive here, we want most of our works to get done before the deadline haunting us and we want to use our limited time and energy for valuable things only.

Now we can move to the main topic, how to be productive.

This is what I do

First, I write down all of my commitments.

I know that I feel overwhelmed because I’ve made a lot of commitments with myself conscious and unconsciously, so I need to list all of them and if it feels unnecessary, I will just eliminate it, because again, we only have limited time and energy.

So these are my commitments:

- Self-care

- Get clear skin

- Get a higher GPA than last semester

- Make a good YouTube content

- Self-development (learning other things besides college)

- Learning new languages

- Running my own business

Second, I split my day into several sections of time

It helps me to make sure that I have included all of the commitments, and then I can decide the things that I should do on that day.

So this is how I do it

Weekdays

07.00–10.00 (self-development time, learning new languages)

10.00–20.00 (get a higher GPA than last semester)

20.00–21.00 (lose weight)

The time isn’t that strict, you can change it, things can go differently from the section of time, but at least you’ve done all of the commitments on that day. There are so many times when I go back to the “get a higher GPA” commitment after do the “lose weight” commitment. There is also a time where I have to move the “lose weight” commitment to the morning because I know the class will take more time and I have so many assignments to do on that day. So, the actual purpose of split my day into several sections of time is so I can focus on what I’m doing because there’s a time where I’m in the middle of doing something for example doing my assignment, and then suddenly the thought of “i should do something else” distract me, so when that thought came, I can tell my brain that there’s time for that but now we should focus on what what we’re doing, in this case is the assignment.

And then things are different on the weekend

10.00–12.00 (self-development time, learning new languages)

13.00–14.00 (running my own business)

14.00–16.00 (make good YouTube content)

16.00–17.00 (lose weight)

20.00–21.00 (self-care)

For me, it’s hard to do the commitments on the weekend if don’t focus to do the “get a higher GPA” commitment on weekdays, so I have to be as productive as I can on weekdays, that’s why it’s so risky for me if I fall into productive procrastination, I’ll end up not doing the rest of the commitments and it will make me feel more overwhelmed for the next week.

The third step, make a to-do list

All I have to do is fill the activity that I should do to fulfill my commitments, every day is different depends on the need.

For example, on weekdays