Sign up for my weekly newsletter where I share exclusive productivity tips, useful life advice and insights from my life as a medical student in Australia.
How productive are you really?
Hey everyone!
It’s really important for us to accurately quantify how long we spend on certain activities, because it’s very easy to overestimate or underestimate how productive we are.
Since mid March this year, I’ve been tracking how long I’ve spent in ‘productive’ hours through a time tracking app. Surprisingly, I’ve found that I study and work a LOT less than I thought I did.
Through my scheduling system, my calendar usually contains 10-15 hours of study for me to do during a week. In reality, time tracking has made me realise that I only study for 7-8 hours a week, far less than what I would like (15+ hours).
This leads me to ask - where did my time even go?
If I sit down to study from 8am to 11am, what often happens is that I start at around 8:10 and finish at around 10:45. Even though it may seem like I studied 3 hours on my calendar, I would only have done a realistic 2.5 hours of work.
Furthermore, time tracking has made me realise that I spend a lot of time using my phone and being unproductive between tasks. Not only that, I spend much more time travelling, hanging out with friends and doing admin tasks than I expect.
Although this may seem like an issue, this information empowers me to make smarter decisions with my scheduling and productive time. Even though I hate to say no to things, sometimes I might have to turn down opportunities because they are simply taking too much time away from other things that I want to do.
It also encourages me to be more disciplined with my work time. If I start tracking time, I know that I NEED to be working, so this encourages me to really switch on and start working effectively. I’ve somewhat conditioned myself to associate turning the timer on with working, so now I can turn the timer on when I’m procrastinating and it almost forces me to start.
One thing I know I can work on is avoiding my phone between work blocks, because I often end up wasting large amounts of time.
I’d highly recommend giving it a go! If you’re interested, the time tracking software I use is called Toggl (not sponsored, I find it does the job decently well)
- Emil
My Progress:
YouTube subscribers: 7,986
Newsletter subscribers: 169
YouTube revenue last week: $102.31
Welcome to Emil's Emails!
Sign up for my weekly newsletter where I share exclusive productivity tips, useful life advice and insights from my life as a medical student in Australia.
In the video that I posted last week, I talked about a method of doing practice questions that allows you to learn more from practice questions to get better marks. This involves a bit more initial work. You need to mark every question with a confidence score and review each of the questions with low confidence so that your confidence improves over time. You invest some time studying the topic of the questions you don’t know much about, and that enables you to improve your knowledge and...
Hey everyone! Perfectionism is a silent killer, but there are several ways to break through it. The signs of perfectionism are often insidious and easily missed. They can manifest in every aspect of your life, and can lead to feelings of stagnation In this newsletter I’ll share how I recognise perfectionism in my life and some strategies to overcome it. In medicine, I notice perfectionism the most when I’m targeting areas I know I’m weaker in, like metabolic derangements for example. I’ll...
Hey everyone, Happy Easter! I’ve been in a bit of a productivity rut recently. I have been slightly sick, quite busy and a bit behind on many different projects, meaning that I have felt quite overwhelmed. While preventing burnout is one of my core mantras, it’s sometimes inevitable that this happens. When it does, I think journaling is one of the most powerful techniques to help you escape a slump. I’ll explain why in this newsletter 👇 This morning, I sat down and decided that I needed to do...