If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
Did you know that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42? Yes, you read that right – $42 dollars in exchange for $1. In this post, we’re going to discuss why email marketing is so important, the 6 main concepts, and how you can design your email.
After reading this article, I suggest you head over to an additional post about email marketing tips & tricks. This post will help you make your emails more enticing and will teach you the proper ‘mechanics’ of writing them.
Also, I’m running under the assumption that you’ve already picked out the email marketing software you’ll be using.
If you’re reading this post you likely already know the benefits of email marketing for your business. If not, here are a few great reasons why you should use email in your marketing strategy.
Build loyalty
As we know, improving brand loyalty is important for your overall business strategy. By building brand loyalty you create lifelong customers who are much more willing to engage, converse, and provide feedback when you ask for it. Building loyalty is important for increasing sales, increasing company growth, and building a positive reputation.
Promote sales and offers
“Consumers spend 138% more as a result of email marketing, when compared to consumers who don’t receive email offers.”
If you’ve subscribed to any newsletters – you probably have a good idea of how they use them to promote their sales and offers.
You’ll typically find that in each email they’re purposely presenting you with only one main CTA, or call to action. Usually, it’s for you to purchase a product, helping you to understand their product, or offering coupons for a sale they have going on.
When done correctly, a well-written email won’t come off as spammy and will not feel like a marketing email. In fact, you may not even notice they’re trying to sell you something, it seems as if they’re just providing information.
Gather feedback and reviews
A great way to gather feedback and reviews for your products and services is to simply ask. Instead of uploading a poll to Twitter, you can send personalized emails with the intent of gathering feedback. This way you can reach the customers who matter and improve your business while doing so.
Promote your latest content
More than likely your customers care about your business – especially if they’ve purchased something from you. They would appreciate getting sent valuable content that will make their life easier, better, or overall more exciting.
A great thing about promoting your content is that they get to know the brand and are more likely to make a future purchase.
Email Marketing for Small Businesses
Whether you’re just starting your eCommerce site or you’re a seasoned veteran of small businesses, your email marketing strategy will play a key role in the success of your business.
Before you begin creating your strategy, it’s important to keep in mind your target & market audience.
For example, my current opt-in form is catered more toward men, but my audience is comprised of more women. What does this tell us? I should update my opt-in to look more ‘female friendly’. Essentially, use lighter colors and more attractive fonts. Appeal to what the majority of women like (a balanced life) instead of what the majority of men want (more money & more recognition).
Ultimately the specifics of your marketing will be heavily based on your audience.
The 6 Main Concepts
When you first start email marketing there are 6 main concepts to kickstart your marketing into gear.
How’s your traffic looking
When first starting your business, it’s important to remember that first having an audience and some traffic is more important than your email. If no one is coming to your website, how will anyone be able to subscribe to your newsletter?
I’m not saying you should completely neglect your email marketing, but you don’t need to create any complex automations or spend a lot of time making your lead magnet look perfect.
Some people are surprised to find that it takes them a few months to even a year to start having consistent traffic.
Lead magnets
Have you ever been on a blog page and noticed they were offering something that seemed valuable and worthwhile to you? Maybe a free financial spreadsheet or a free trial to try their app.
The product that they give you is called a ‘lead magnet’. This is a piece of content that’s considered worthwhile and valuable to your customer. Before you can begin collecting emails, you should create one using Canva, or a similar graphic design tool.
Opt-in forms
Opt-in forms are the actual forms that show up on your website to try and entice your customers to give you their email for the lead magnet you’ve created.
This is an example:
Segment your subscribers
When first starting an email list it’s important to decide if you need to segment your subscribers. Segmenting your subscribers is useful if you have more than one type of audience. Like a blog that offers services.
You may find that your blog audience is interested in your programming tutorials but your other audience is interested in actually buying a website from you.
If you aren’t offering any services or having multiple types of audiences on your blog you can skip this step altogether.
Email automation
Email automation is useful so you don’t have to send emails to your subscribers as soon as they subscribe – especially if you’ve promised them a lead magnet. It’s the 21st century – no one likes to wait!
Email automation is used to send out your first lead magnet and a particular number of consecutive emails – usually spread throughout the week. The series of consecutive emails to encourage your customer to buy is known as an email campaign. This helps you to stay on track and never forget to send an email to someone who has subscribed to your service.
More than likely your email subscription service will allow you to create an automation for free, but some softwares do require that you pay before they’ll allow you to use their automation services.
Don’t be a perfectionist
One of the most important tips I could give you is to not be a perfectionist. You’ll likely find that you’ll end up changing your email strategy as time goes on and you’ve built a bigger audience. It’s still important that your opt-ins and lead magnets are good – but don’t worry too much about the rest when starting out.
How to design an email
Believe it or not, there is an art to designing your emails. It’s actually mostly a series of rules to follow rather than actual designing (thank goodness for that).
But to make the most out of your email I suggest you check out my post about email marketing tips & tricks. This post will help you make your emails more enticing and will teach you the proper ‘mechanics’ of writing them.
Essentially, you want to personalize your emails, use 50 to 150 words, make it easy to unsubscribe, use emotions for higher engagement, and use cliffhangers.
If you made it to the end of the post – congrats! You’ve learned the basics of email marketing. Now it’s time to apply the information you’ve learned.
Email Marketing Tips & Tricks for Small Businesses
If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
As a small business, you already know that your email list is one of the most important tools for your business. Despite email being one of the oldest forms of marketing, it is still a key ingredient used for sales and disseminating your content.
In this post, I go over 11 ‘pro’ tips you can use to increase sales, improve retention, and build a community of like-minded individuals in your inbox.
One of the easiest and simplest ways to increase retention and the CTR of your emails is by using personalization.
Now, before you slump your shoulders and assume that I mean writing hundreds of emails – which let’s be honest, no one has time for… you can use a variety of things to automate the process.
To personalize your email list you can segmentyour email lists, use their name in the email, send automated emails based on behavior, provide value and information based on the services/items they’ve purchased, and link to relevant information personalized for them.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways to personalize emails, you just need to know where to start.
If you’re new to email marketing I suggest you first start with gathering names through opt-ins to use in your first email sequence.
If you’re not so new to email marketing, you could start to segment your subscribers – although a word of caution – this may mean double the emails that need to be written.
Use power words
Power words are one of the unspoken rules that almost every marketer uses, even if they’re completely unaware of it.
Power words are simply words you use in your titles/CTAs to trigger a psychological or emotional response – which then compels the customer to act, buy, or just click in general.
The types of words used will differ based on what emotion you’re trying to evoke from them. Whether that be trust, understanding, happiness, excitement, or anger – all of these strong emotions will build your brand awareness and help your customers to click.
There are hundreds of power words that you could use so no need to worry about running out! As time goes on you’ll find using power words in your titles/CTAs will feel natural and will be automatic. So it’s definitely worth spending a few minutes to figure out.
No power words title:
10 Ways to be More Frugal in 2023
Title with power words:
10 Ridiculously Easy Ways You Can Save Money in 2023
It’s also important to note that I made the second title more personalized to the person clicking through by using ‘You Can’ instead of to.
Keep it brief
When I first started diving into the differences between good email marketing and great email marketing, one thing became very clear – email length.
Some other helpful tips regarding email length and content:
50 to 125 words are best for responses
Try not to make your emails too short
Make your email easily understandable (avoid words like presumptuous, precursor, or tantalizing) you get the gist
Don’t have an obnoxiously long subject line
Make the CTA or what you want them to do very clear in the email
There are instances where you may find that all of these things may not be realistic for you. The best thing you can do is to follow the guidelines and continually test out new things. You may find that longer emails and more advancedlanguage resonate with your specific audience.
Just keep in mind that most people don’t want to be reading a 5000-word email.
Be mobile-friendly
We may consider this to be one of the basics, but it’s still important.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in an instance where you need to be scrolling both vertically and horizontally – it’s really annoying.
Even if your company is solely a B2B, you should still strive to make your emails mobile-friendly. As a virtual assistant, I still check emails on the phone and cringe internally whenever I see a poorly formatted email.
Depending on your email marketing software, you’ll have different options for making your email mobile-friendly, but here are a few guidelines you should follow.
Stated above, keep your subject lines short & sweet
Make sure CTAs and other email elements will shrink as needed (Tip: if you’re a programmer/dev, you may find that using %’s instead of px is better for a lot of elements – and it makes programming that much faster)
Send test emails to yourself to look at on your phone & tablet
Send your emails at optimized times
While looking through many other blog posts and statistics it was a bit unsettling to find a lot of blog posts contradicting themselves or statistics not aligning with one another.
Although I can say there was a slight pattern,
6am-11am
2pm-4pm
8pm-12pm
It’s best to use your own discernment and test these times yourself. It can be hard to place an exact time on when you should send out emails because your audience may prefer a different time.
But do make sure to track the best time to send out emails. A poorly timed email can be the difference between no engagement and full engagement.
Make it easy to unsubscribe & clean your email list regularly
A lot of people think that if they make the unsubscribe button hard to find (they may even attempt to hide it) – that their subscribers will just keep their content and think twice before unsubscribing.
Even if you believe that you can reel them in with catchy content and a lot of value, more than likely if they’re wanting to unsubscribe, they aren’t interested in anything you have to offer.
The problem with hiding and making unsubscribing difficult is that people will just choose to mark you as spam or outright block you – which ends up telling Google that you’re an untrustworthy source. Do you know what happens when google marks you as spam? Not only does google start to automatically send every email to all of your subscribers straight to spam, but you also lose rankings on Google, especially if you’re using your emails linked to your domain.
It’s important that you also regularly clean out your subscriber list to avoid people blocking or marking your emails as spam instead of unsubscribing. This will also help you to save money as you’re not paying to store and send things to thousands of unresponsive emails.
How and why you will delete these subscribers will be up to you and your email software.
Use A/B testing
“A/B testing, also known as split testing, refers to a randomized experimentation process wherein two or more versions of a variable (web page, page element, etc.) are shown to different segments of website visitors at the same time to determine which version leaves the maximum impact and drive business metrics.”
If you’re new to email marketing, this section may be a little too advanced for you. But if you’re eager to improve conversion rates, keep reading!
If you’re finding that your newsletters and emails tend to be either hit or miss, you should try using A/B testing. A/B testing is exactly how it sounds. Essentially, you send one version to 50% of your subscribers, and the other version to the other 50% of your subscribers. Between these two versions, you should only change one single element.
You also don’t need to change anything too complicated, it can simply be the color scheme you’re using.
If you change too many elements, you may find that you’re unsure which element contributed to the higher engagement / reduced bounce rates or etc.
A/B testing is so popular because it can help save and make you money, and is both easy and effective. Keep in mind that you should have a good sized audience before using it otherwise you may receive skewed or inconclusive results.
Use emotion & storytelling for higher engagement
Good email marketers provide value but great email marketers provide value and provide it well.
At this point, it’s not much of a debate whether or not using storytelling and emotions help your business. In fact, when I was doing a deep dive into the interwebs for additional information on storytelling, I found that you could increase your brand awareness and product value by 20x! If that doesn’t tell you how much you should be using storytelling, I don’t know what will.
Using emotions in your emails is very similar to why you should use power words (talked about above). By eliciting emotional and psychological responses in your customers, you help them to make a decision to purchase, click, or continue down your marketing funnel.
How much more likely are you to click on an offensive news story that caught your attention than a vanilla article about office plants?
Use cliffhangers to get them excited for their next email
When thinking about the best ways to keep our customers on the email we just sent, we sometimes forget to encourage them to read our next emails.
The way you can do this is by giving them cliffhangers or by offering something of value in the next email. It doesn’t have to be anything time-consuming or complicated – you could simply tell them that you’ll be discussing the “#1 thing that helped you succeed in your business’” or along those lines.
Just make sure that you don’t overhype the content too much otherwise you’ll leave a sour taste in their mouth when you under-provide.
Make them excited to receive your next email!
Keep the design simple and professional
By keeping your email designs simple and professional, you are eliciting an air of trustworthiness and responsibility. Unless your specific niche is in something unique, colorful, and a bit eccentric, you should be careful with how complex you make your emails.
Most individuals enjoy an easy-to-read and to-the-point email. If your customers feel confused with what you’re trying to offer and they don’t know what value you’re providing them with – they’ll click off and unsubscribe.
Don’t be confused – I’m not saying you should never use colors, pictures, or unique elements! I am saying you need to make sure that your email flows and is able to keep their attentionwithout causing any confusion.
If you’re a web designer you probably understand the importance of UI and UX in your designs. Always keep the experience engaging and the interface straightforward. This is exactly what you need to be doing with your email designs!
Conclusion
Thankfully all of these things are easily implemented into your email strategy. If you aren’t sure where to start, bookmark this page and slowly work your way down the list.
If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
Deciding whether or not to start a business can feel daunting if you’re new to the world of online income. Especially in the age of instant social media – where it feels as if everyone is trying harder, doing better, and working more.
By the end of this post, you’ll be equipped with the know-how knowledge to determine whether or not this lifestyle will be for you.
We’ll go through the traits of a successful business owner, the pros and cons of an e-commerce business, and discuss some of the high-potential businesses you can start working on today.
When digging through blog articles – or even just social media in general – it can be very hard to figure out whether the e-commerce lifestyle is truly for you.
Are they just pretending to like it?
It seems too easy to be true.
They must have some skill or ability that I don’t have.
I’m not as [smart, attractive, curious, independent] as them – so I probably wouldn’t succeed.
These are all doubts that we all have while starting a new business. It really sucks to think that you could fail, waste time and money, or you’ll disappoint your family.
Although these are very real and negative aspects of starting an online business, there’s also a lot of potential that come with it as well. Potential to make passive income, quitting your full-time job, and the pride that comes with running a successful business.
Before I started my blog I was worried that I would immediately fail – that I would somehow do something utterly stupid and ruin my entire life.
Dramatic much?
But here I am just a few months later – confident in my abilities and working every day towards my goals.
Honestly, at this point, I don’t even care if I fail. I’ve learned so many skills and I’ve gained a huge amount of respect and confidence for myself in such a short period of time.
Even if your business idea is unsuccessful, the amount of confidence, respect, and knowledge you gain is worth it. (In my opinion)
Another huge reason most individuals want to start their own business is to have the luxury of doing what they love.
While there will be a lot of aspects that you dislike about running a business – you’re still able to follow your passions while doing so.
Before we jump into the pros and cons section, remember to stay until the end. I give a list of 10 e-commerce businesses you can start to create today.
You never know – starting an online business may change your life forever!
Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
Do you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur?
When first deciding whether or not becoming an online business owner is for you, you need to know if you have the right characteristics.
This list isn’t in any particular order.
A Curious Problem-Solver
Are you willing and able to learn? Starting a new business is all about being able to learn new things and apply everything you’ll learn.
You’ll need to be able to problem solve almost on a daily – if not hourly basis as a business owner. Individuals who are curious are the ones with the most innovative problem-solving skills.
Structured and Dedicated
Are you a person who rides on the waves of motivation? You only do things when you absolutely have to or your work style is very inconsistent?
Then starting a business may not be for you.
Against contrary belief, you will need to be putting in as much time and effort into your new business as you can.
Are you running a business or a hobby?
If your e-commerce site is purely a hobby and you’re not intending to make cash from it, it’s completely acceptable for you to work whenever you feel like it.
If you’re running a business – be prepared to be putting a considerable amount of work and effort into it. (At least in the beginning.)
Adaptable and a Risk Taker
Depending on your niche and the type of online business you decide to run, you may need to be constantly adapting and taking risks to succeed.
We are in an ever-changing online environment where a simple update could change the course of your business in a matter of minutes.
Are you prepared for something like that?
Although I wouldn’t say it’s likely for your website to be made completely obsolete – you still need to be able to adapt to changes quickly.
What would happen if your Facebook followers were to move over to Tik-Tok? Would you continue to try and build your Facebook account or could you adapt to using Tik-Tok?
Could your business survive if you got banned on Instagram and lost your following?
If You’re Not Already – Can You Become Comfortable With Failing?
I honestly wish at the beginning of my blogging journey someone would have told me how much failing business owners go through.
Seriously – expect to be told NO a lot.
Do you want to run ads? – Your site isn’t providing enough value.
Do you want to write a guest blog? – Sorry, you don’t fit the vision of our company.
Do you want to add someone’s affiliate link to your site? – You aren’t getting enough traffic.
Do you want to partner up? – We already have selected a better candidate.
You will fail over and over and over again. The only thing you can do is get back up and try again until you succeed.
You need to be prepared that things will not go the way you hoped and will be more time-consuming and difficult than first expected.
And if everything does go as planned – good for you! It’s better to be prepared for obstacles than to expect to immediately succeed.
Persistent and Optimistic
Are you naturally a persistent person? Are you optimistic about what you can achieve?
Not only will business owners try again after they fail, but they will also stay positive about future opportunities
Of course, it sucks to get rejected, but hey – maybe next time!
Starting from Scratch
Before you start your business, you also need to keep in mind the resources that you have available.
Do you have enough money for your business idea? If not, are you willing to put in the work to make the money on the chance the business may fail and you lose all of it?
Are you able to work 10, 20, or 30 hours a week?
Keeping in mind the amount of money and time you can invest will ultimately decide what business you can start or additional changes you’ll need to take in your life.
“If you want to get into e-commerce, there has scarcely been a better time. The opportunities are growing by the day.” – Baltic Media
It’s always important to innovate when the time calls for it – and by examining the growth of e-commerce businesses, I’d say now is the time.
You’re able to make passive income
After you’ve successfully launched your online store and you have successful marketing, you can sit back and relax. (Mostly)
You’ll be surprised to find that a blog post or a repurposed image can be sending customers to your store months later.
And the great thing is – once you’ve completed a piece of content, it’s created.
Besides annual updates, you won’t need to be constantly creating things to be selling. You can rely on your well-built strategies to be bringing in the cash for you.
You can reach more companies
You’re probably thinking, “well, duh”.
But this is a huge pro that we sometimes forget to take into consideration. Especially if you’re already selling services.
Besides the obvious fact that having an online store builds your brand’s authority, it also easily showcases your skills to anyone interested.
You don’t need to be knocking door to door or relying on WOM (which is still a really good marketing technique, don’t get me wrong).
You can just send them a link and they can find out what you’re all about.
You don’t have to worry about opening or closing hours
This is my favorite pro, personally.
You don’t have to worry about individuals catching you at the wrong time, or not being able to access your services/products.
You could be selling your handbags or receiving emails from clients at 3 in the morning.
An online start-up can be minimal cost
This is one of the beauties of starting an online business.
A lot of business ideas can be started with the scraps you’re able to make from your part-time waitressing job.
While it’s still an investment, it doesn’t have to be a super costly one.
Cons
The start-up can cost a lot (Depending on the niche)
Contrary to what was stated before, start-ups can also cost a lot of money if you’re ill-prepared, uneducated, or due to your niche.
This is why it’s always important to research the costs associated with the type of e-business you’re wanting to start – before you start it.
Concerns about privacy and safety
You don’t want to be the person who has to tell a customer that someone has access to their bank accounts.
When dealing with customers online, there is a lot that can go wrong, and a lot you can get sued for.
You need to be looking into all the legal, privacy, and safety aspects your website needs to be following. If not, you can get hit with a pricy lawsuit.
It’s important to know the risks of owning a website.
Lack of engagement with customers
Some people consider this a pro, others consider it a con.
Is a large part of your business model making people feel at home when they walk into your store? Or maybe you enjoy getting to speak to each individual and to see them fawning over your expertise.
Not only do you lack engagement during the sale – but you also lack engagement if something with the sale goes wrong.
It’s already difficult to try and fix a problem from an upset customer in person – it’s even harder online.
A way to avoid this would be to simply have (what I like to call) a location niche. So if you’re a web designer specializing in creating blog sites, you can be a web designer specializing in creating blog sites in the New York Area.
This will greatly decrease your target audience but you’ll be able to see your clients in person and the site will still provide opportunities to work with bigger clients in different areas.
Added costs of operating an online store
If you’re someone who doesn’t want to have to mess with all the ‘backend’ stuff or you don’t want to be putting in a lot of effort – it can cost a lot of money.
Whether that’s from web designers to programmers to virtual associates to marketing software, they all play a key part in your business.
If you decide to start an e-commerce website you either have to take these roles or you can hire them out. A lot of people realize they’re way over their head and end up spending a lot more money than they intended to.
There’s no one to hold your hand
I know a lot of people who are dead-set on having someone guide them through life’s troubles and always needing to vent to anyone who will listen.
Unless you have a business partner who is willing to carry your weight – no one is going to be making decisions for you.
Whether it’s deciding the color scheme for a website mock-up, creating the wireframe, or even the cost of selling the business – these will all ultimately be your decision.
Even if you were to hire individuals to do all of these things for you, more than likely they don’t want to be told to ‘do whatever’. The creative freedom it provides is nice, but at the end of the day, you still need to be the one making decisions.
And no employee wants to be responsible for the failure of your business.
In fact, one of the main problems for e-commerce owners is the lack of vision and direction. Know what you want and go get it!
Ways You Can Make Money Online
The most important thing to keep in mind is that the more effort and money you put in – the more you’ll likely get out.
“Dropshipping is an order fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, the seller purchases inventory as needed from a third party—usually a wholesaler or manufacturer—to fulfill orders.”
With proofreading, you simply correct grammar, copyedit and proofread text for an individual or business. Proofreaders often hold bachelor’s degrees in English or Journalism.
Selling T-Shirts
Selling custom t-shirts is a very popular way to make money online now. You often see individuals selling ‘merch’ in the form of t-shirts, caps, sweaters, etc.
In fact, there are people who sell courses for more than $50,000!
If you’re an expert in something or you have a knack for teaching – this may be the right course (ha) for you!
Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is someone who essentially takes care of the ‘busywork’ of a business. As a VA you’re able to niche down and offer specialized services if you choose or you can do general administrative assistance. You also don’t need a degree to become one!
Blogging
Blogs are everywhere because they have the potential to make a lot of money. Through a blog, you can build authority to sell services, your own products, or others’ services and products for a commission.
Write a Book
If you’re an expert on a topic or you really love creating stories – writing a book may be for you. Whether you decide to write about gardening or aliens taking over – you still have the ability to make money.
It’s important to keep in mind that you also have to do marketing and set up either your own or someone else’s site to sell your book. This also includes competitive analysis and research on your target audience.
Writing a book is usually not the best way to make a lot of money, but it can make you more credible and increase your authority. Which can lead to more sales for other services or courses you may offer.
Write & Edit Resumes
A lot of people want to seem as appealing as they can for hiring managers. We’re in the age of high competition and education – we all want to outshine each other. Resume writers typically earn between $100 to $400 per resume.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing and blogging are often seen synonymously – but neither of them has to rely on the other. Affiliate marketing is simply offering a link to other’s products so you can collect a commission when the other person buys the product.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular forms of marketing because of its simplicity and your ability to make money long-term.
Review Products or Services
Depending on your audience size, you can make a lot of money from reviewing others’ products or services.
How often do you see YouTubers providing their opinion on a piece of software or the latest tech?
A company may offer to pay you through giving away a product for free or by offering you a price.
If you’re not famous or you don’t have an online audience, you can also make money writing reviews.
If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
When you think of routines, do you think of words like – boring, inflexible, rigid, and stressful?
What if I told you that your routine could actually be fun, flexible, reliable, and an important driver in your life.
All of us have routines – even if we don’t realize it.
Maybe you wake up and check your social media sites – that’s a routine.
Maybe you watch TV as soon as you get home from work – that’s a routine as well.
All of these bad habits that we’ve accumulated usually make up a big portion of our life. We just think of them as bad habits – not the accumulation of a bad routine.
This article will flip the way you think of routines and will give you the tools needed to start living a happier, more fulfilled life.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, I’d like you to take a look at the four rules I personally implemented when starting my journey.
The First Rule
The first rule to building a fabulous routine is to understand that creating a new routine means breaking bad habits – which is hard.
Whoever said creating a life-changing routine would be easy was lying.
Have you ever tried to break a bad habit before – like smoking? It’s really hard but once you quit, you never want to go back to the way it was before. Your entire perspective on smoking changes for the better.
The Second Rule
You actually need to follow all of the steps outlined in this post. At first, it may feel overwhelming – but even just implementing a single thing into your routine every few days will make a difference.
Try and forget all of your previous ideas of what should make up an ideal routine and focus within yourself. What do you want out of this routine? Why do you want a routine so badly? What should this routine accomplish for you?
Knowing this will help you to stay focused and motivated when you start to feel overwhelmed about the idea of following a routine.
The Third Rule
Are you one of the individuals who try something new and quit after things get hard?
The most important thing for a routine is consistency. Even if you don’t accomplish what you’re wanting – just showing up is more important.
Remember, this routine is to make your life better. Always show up for yourself even if you don’t want to.
If you struggle with consistency, you can scroll down to the ‘Four Struggles of Routine’, I go more in-depth.
The Fourth Rule
You have to accept that failure is a part of the process. You are not going to be perfect and never fail.
Failure is a sign that something in your routine isn’t working. So instead of taking it personally – look at it through the lens of improvement.
Why isn’t it working? Is there something you’re not doing? Is there something else you could do instead?
Don’t bash yourself – love yourself enough to improve.
When I first started implementing a routine in my life, I was irritated. Watching YouTubers and reading articles about how routines changed their life motivated me, but I kept feeling unsure of myself. Why are others able to keep a routine but I can’t? Am I broken?
It weirdly felt as if I needed an expert to build a routine for me – because creating one myself seemed impossible.
I even at one point completely gave up on the prospect of creating a routine for myself because I believed it just wasn’t for me.
As you can tell – this is no longer the case.
I have come a long way in just two short years of experimentation about all things productivity, and now I have the privilege to talk and teach others about my experience.
I hope you stay for this entire post because I believe that your perspective, experiences, and life will be changed for the better.
Take Responsibility for Yourself
After too many failed attempts at creating amazing routines for myself – I finally decided to make a change. I decided that I would not give up on myself and I would keep trying until I figured out how to make it work.
Most of us aren’t taught how to manage our time, hold down jobs, be productive while happy, or have consistent daily routines. And some of us weren’t raised in an environment where these ideals were displayed to us.
As irritating as these experiences were when we were children, we’re now adults. It’s time that we decide to teach ourselves the things that we were failed to be taught. And most importantly – take responsibility for our happiness.
Because that’s what you’re signing up for when you create a life-changing routine – a fulfilled and happy life.
At this moment in time, I can whole-heartedly say that the benefits of a routine are worth the confusion and difficulty when first starting them.
I’m able to consistently follow my routine every day. Not only am I consistent, but I enjoy it and find it comforting. Just because I’m consistent doesn’t mean that I don’t have to deal with unexpected events. But the great thing is – I know exactly what to do when these things happen.
Honestly, where I’m at in this moment feels exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I hope that by creating your own personalized routine, you’ll feel this way as well. You will be consistent with a realistic and easily followed routine. It will also be flexible enough for many different types of dreams, goals, and ambitions that you have.
How to Prepare for Your Routine
When first starting a routine, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
Your Routine Will be a Mess
When starting a new routine, you’ll find that the first few weeks are an absolute mess. You have to face the fact that no routine is ‘perfect’ and that you’ll have to constantly be moving things around.
This is what I like to call the ‘routine growth phase’ because you’ll be changing your schedule so much. Expect and welcome it!
It’ll Be Changing With You
As you grow into life, your routine will change over and over again. This is the great thing about routines, they’re adaptable. But because of this, you’ll have to learn when you should and shouldn’t change a well-made routine.
Others Steal (or borrow) Your Time
You notice the people around you are using up more of your time than you expected. I was really surprised when I first started time-blocking that I was spending more time with my boyfriend than I was with others and myself combined!
Too Many Or Not Enough Priorities
When building your routine you’re faced with the realization that you either have too much going on – or you have a boring life.
“Knock-Knock” “Who Is It?” “Time-Management”
This is probably one of the hardest things about building a routine – but not often talked about. You have to learn and know about time management to build a good routine.
I’ll put the basics here:
Have 3 main priorities a day
Give yourself enough ‘free time’
Know when and how to work
Know where to spend your time
Is it a Bad Routine or Are You Being Lazy?
Are you purposefully sabotaging yourself? Or are you not taking responsibility for your time and actions?
A big part of creating a routine is to look honestly at yourself and determine whether or not you’re giving the proper effort. You may have to face the reason that you’re not able to cope with routines is actually the fault of your own – not the making of a bad routine.
You’re Breaking Bad Habits – Give Yourself a Break
You’ll need to be prepared for the mental toll a routine may take. Like I mentioned before, you are going to be breaking bad habits that you’ve had – maybe for years.
You have to be kind to yourself when you fail and try and keep a positive mindset. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have feelings – rather I’m saying you should work through why you’re having the feelings.
When you get to the root cause of feelings, you’re better able to understand how you can work with them rather than against them.
Using Maslow’s & The Coaching Wheel in Your Routine
When creating a routine it’s important to have balance in your personal and work life. I personally like to use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the Coaching Wheel to determine what I need to be focusing more of my time on.
“Balance is a feeling derived from being whole and complete; it’s a sense of harmony. It is essential to maintaining quality in life and work.” – Joshua Osenga
Using these tools has completely changed my view on life and myself. Even thinking back to who I was and how I treated myself a year ago completely astonishes me.
If you’re looking for balance, peace, and to be fulfilled in life, I suggest you take a look at these.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a motivational theory in psychology that demonstrates a 5-tier model of human needs.
You work your way (mostly) from the bottom-up until you’ve reached the level of self-actualization. In self-actualization, you’ve become free of bias and are more accepting of facts.
In the self-actualization state, you are able to become fully who you are meant to be. Not many individuals end up reaching this because it takes a lot of dedication and commitment.
Coaching wheels are simply wheels used by coaches to determine how satisfied you feel with your life. The problem with doing online tests using these is that they don’t take into consideration what you PERSONALLY need, feel, and want.
Most individuals have different levels of needs and wants in their life so customize it to your standards.
The Actual Process
The process for actually building a realistic and attainable routine is in your expectations and your ability to solve routine-related problems as they arise.
SMART Goals
One of the first stepping-stones to a great routine is the ability to set amazing goals.
Like I asked in the introduction, What do you want out of this routine? Why do you want a routine so badly? What should this routine accomplish for you?
Knowing the answers to these questions will encourage you to create a vision for the type of person you want to be.
Then you can take these visions/ideals of yourself and create goals using the SMART goals image above.
When working towards achieving your goals – make sure that you focus on one at a time. Sometimes when we’re feeling excited and motivated to change our life around we overestimate what we believe we can do in a short period of time.
By focusing on one goal at a time, we avoid feeling overwhelmed and giving up when things get difficult.
You also should give yourself rewards for accomplishing tasks or the goal itself. Just make sure the reward is worth it!
Avoid Burnout
One of the key ways to avoid burning out is to give yourself more than enough time to complete your tasks.
If you feel like you’re unable to follow through with your routine, you’re doing too much. You need to add 15 to 20 minutes more for each item in your schedule.
If you feel that you’re having too much downtime and are just not sure what to be doing with your time, just schedule more tasks for yourself.
Remember: This process takes experience and practice. Don’t expect to create a perfect routine on your first try.
I’d also like to discuss the four main struggles that I see people dealing with when creating a routine.
Half-Assing
When some individuals create their routine, they go completely in-depth about the goals, aspirations, and achievements they want to have. But when it comes to actually following through with these things – they just ‘hope’ that everything will pan out as hoped.
When it comes to putting in any actual real-world effort or application – they give up.
Make sure when you’re building your schedule, you spend MORE time actually doing the schedule than you do planning and making it.
I’d say that 10 minutes to plan out your daily routine is enough when you’re getting started.
Perfectionism
The other extreme of half-assing is perfectionism. Some individuals expect perfection from themselves and their routines. This can be crippling and cause you to feel overwhelmed, irritated, and overall exhausted.
When you start following a routine – you need to have the expectation that you and your schedule will fail.
Failing and sucking the first few times is the key ingredient to building an awesome, realistic, and amazing routine for yourself.
Instead of looking at your schedule as a task of things you have to do in order perfectly, look at it as a science experiment where you’re the ‘research organism’.
Procrastination is another big issue that people deal with when creating their schedules. This usually happens because their environment is set up against them and they don’t give themselves consequences for not completing their work.
The habit I want to build: I want to start working out every day, consistently.
Cue: Drinking Pre-Workout
Craving: Driving to the gym (A craving is different for everyone and develops as a result of a good cue, response, and reward) (So don’t try to create a craving – it will come naturally)
Response: Working Out for 1 Hour
Reward: Lunch (You want to make your reward obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.)
Protect Your Schedule at All Costs
The final way to create a life-changing routine is to get rid of all of the things that will ruin your new schedule.
Distractions Everywhere
It is almost impossible to succeed in an environment that is against you.
Looking for a balanced environment in which you are both challenged and accommodated will strengthen you and allow for prosperity.
You need to get rid of both environmental distractions and distractions from tasks you’re working on.
Falling into Bad Habits
Falling into bad habits is inevitable. There are steps you can take so you don’t fall into any – but more than likely you’ll end up picking one up anyways.
The most important thing is that you’re prepared for bad habits to come, and are well-equipped to deal with them.
The way you can do this is by being mindful and present of yourself and your surroundings. When you’re able to acknowledge and identify a bad habit, you’ll be able to deal with it.
Not Taking Responsibility for Your Time
No one is going to hold your hand and walk you through life.
No one, but yourself.
When taking this journey to build a new life-changing routine, you need to learn to love yourself and the time you’ve been given. A part of loving yourself is by taking responsibility.
Being responsible for yourself means saying no, setting boundaries, learning to live a balanced life, and taking responsibility for the time you do have.
There will be people, things, ideas, and habits that come in and out of your life, it is up to you to determine what is and is not worth your time.
You’ll be amazed to find that you have a lot more control over your life and situations than you think you do.
Quitting When Things Get Tough
The last barrier to living and creating a balanced life-changing routine is quitting when things get difficult.
As stated above, you are responsible for yourself and your life. You only get one – live it to the fullest and never give up on yourself or your goals.
What Are You Doing Today for Future You?
Before I wrap up this article, I want you to really think about whether or not the things you’re doing now are helping to create a better future for yourself.
Where will you be if you continue this same path in 1 year, 2 years, or even 10 years? Will you be happy with your life or will you be drowning in debt, bad habits, alcohol, drugs, or repressed anger and sadness? You have the ability to be, do, and accomplish what we want in life – the only question I ask is: Will you take action today to achieve what you want tomorrow?
Finally End Procrastination and Conquer Your Perfectionism
If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
Do you ever look at all these YouTubers who are pumping out content day in and day out? Or perhaps you see the class president always acing their assignments. Maybe the mom who always seems to be present and attuned to their children’s needs.
You see them and you think – I want to do that.
But then you remember – you have a procrastination problem. Everyone says being addicted to drugs is bad, but being a chronic procrastinator is even worse.
When you’re a procrastinator you miss out on life. Your life becomes dull and you sit around all day daydreaming about what you wish you could be.
Or if you’re a perfectionist – you sit around all day wanting to start something but failing. Again, and again.
To me, that sounds terrifying and kinda sad.
This is what most people’s lives consist of. Always wishing they could be more, always wishing they could accomplish something. I felt this way too.
The great thing is – you don’t have to feel this way. You can start to enjoy your life the way you were meant to. You can achieve goals that seem far out of reach and you can start accomplishing all of this today.
I’ve struggled with both procrastination and perfectionism for the first 19 years of my life. I can say it was definitely one of the hardest personal battles I’ve fought.
It’ll be hard for you, but it will be worth it.
I’ve since come a long way from being a procrastinator and perfectionist – now I teach people to be more productive in life.
By the end of this article, you will have all the information you need to stop procrastinating and to end your perfectionism. It is up to you whether or not you actually use my ‘big sister’ advice and take control of your life.
The Main Goals
It sucks to see all of these YouTubers and influencers who seem to be living their best life. Especially if you feel like a failure who consistently wastes all your time.
But at the same time, you feel so overwhelmed because you can’t seem to start or finish literally anything. This causes you to worry about your future and you just fall into this deep cycle of:
Feeling this way is completely normal. If you’re really wanting to stop this cycle, make sure you read the rest of this post. I not only talk about practical steps you can take – but I also talk briefly about the psychology behind these problems.
When I personally started my productivity journey, I really had four main goals in mind.
Taking Responsibility
I wanted to start taking responsibility for my actions – my perfectionism, my procrastination, and just myself in general. You can do this by deciding from this point forward, that you’ll be 100% honest with yourself.
There’s nothing wrong with being imperfect – we all are. But lying to yourself about your shortcomings won’t change others’ views of you, it only hurts you and any personal progress you’re wanting to make.
Stop Relying on Motivation
I started my productivity journey because I really wanted to get my life back on track. I was sick of the roly-poley situation that was going on with my productivity. Basically, this was from riding the wave of motivation – which almost everyone knows leads to mediocre & unfinished work.
I also wanted to stop making excuses for not getting things done. I was always too tired, too hungry, too unmotivated, too busy, with everything. If you really want to change your life, you have to stop making excuses.
Be Consistent
The last thing I wanted to do was consistently show up for myself. Remember this is a personal journey – try to get rid of the thoughts that you’ll stop procrastinating to be better than someone, or to accomplish tasks for others.
This journey is for you – so enjoy the ride godd*mnit!
If you’re seriously wanting to change your life, make sure you implement everything I talk about. Not doing one or two things can make the difference between beating or continuing your procrastination.
You’re gonna fail – and that’s okay. Use it as a learning opportunity instead of an opportunity to bash yourself.
My Results
When I truly started to work on my perfectionism and procrastination – I almost immediately saw huge benefits.
The first thing I noticed was that I stopped feeling rushed all the time. I used to always dread doing anything because I knew I would feel so overwhelmed by just the sheer amount of stuff I needed to do. I also felt very proud of myself for finishing the tasks I had planned to do. You can get this benefit too if you set realistic goals for yourself to achieve!
Honestly, I really, really hope that you do everything I’m about to tell you. You’ll be so amazed and proud of what you’re able to accomplish. When you stop procrastinating and you start showing up for yourself – you become your best advocate for life.
So if you’re wondering why I decided to group procrastination with perfectionism, it was for two reasons.
The second reason is that perfectionism has a huge impact on your productivity. It’s almost impossible to be productive and finish what you need to if you have that nasty voice in the back of your head telling you that it’s not good enough.
If you don’t have or have never struggled with perfectionism – good for you! I’m jealous haha.
How You Can Overcome Your Procrastination
“[Procrastination is] the action of delaying or postponing something”
– Oxford Dictionary
When looking into what causes procrastination, I was surprised to see the sheer amount of things that can cause us to procrastinate. To keep it simple I’ll just list a few of the most common.
If you struggle with a videogame addiction (yes, it’s a thing) and you have your games sitting out next to where you study, you may as well not even study. We all know that once you come across a problem that’s mildly difficult, you’ll give up and head over to your console.
I personally use a website blocker to stop me from scrolling Reddit, Facebook, or YouTube.
Set up your environment in a way that will make it easier to do the tasks you’re needing to do, rather than the alternative.
Create a Routine / Time-block
The second step is to set up a routine. For me personally, this step has worked wonders to keep me on track and it automatically sets up time-oriented goals without me even doing anything.
I simply create time blocks on Google Calendar and title them whatever I want to get done at that time. Keep in mind you should always strive to keep your time-blocking realistic, which includes downtime. If you pack too much into your calendar you’ll feel burnt out and not accomplish everything you’re wanting to.
If you stick to your schedule long enough, it will soon become a habit. Once it becomes a habit, you’re golden. Just remember to keep being consistent or you’ll have to redo the process over again.
Elimate Distractions
The third thing is to eliminate distractions. This is very very similar to the first one, except this is for each task that you’re doing.
So instead of just getting rid of your phone entirely, just hand it to someone until you’ve finished studying. Rather than completely getting rid of these things from your daily life, you can get rid of them for specific tasks you need to do.
You need to match your addiction level to your dedication level. If you know that you literally can’t stop getting on your phone when studying, you need to lock it in a box and give someone else the key.
A lot of people tend to slack and just think ‘meh, I’ll just put my phone in the next room’. And then you see their ass waddling off to grab their phone after 2.5 seconds of studying. Don’t be this person.
Yeah, this one really sucks but I promise you that you’ll get your tasks done.
So for me, if I watch YouTube for over 30 minutes in a day, I have to deep clean an entire room in my apartment. My boyfriend holds me accountable so there is no way I can get out of it.
So, let’s use the studying example again. You can give your friend an embarrassing picture of yourself to post if you don’t complete the homework assignment.
You can even take it a step further and tell them you have to send them proof for them to not post it.
Trust me, if nothing cures your procrastination problem – this definitely will.
View Failures as Progress
If you’re someone who always seems to fail at being more productive, first off, forgive yourself right now. Literally, apologize to yourself. Right now.
Another thing I’d like to point out – failing is a good thing. I love failing because it allows me to reflect and figure out what went wrong. Instead of shaming myself, I accept that I’m human and I make steps to improve the process. I immediately remove my emotions from the situation and think, “it’s okay, what went wrong and how can I do it better next time?”.
Take Responsibility for Your Time
Do you ever notice that something ALWAYS seems to be going wrong? Does it feel like whenever you get started on a project you can’t finish it and everything keeps getting in the way?
You’re probably not taking responsibility for your time.
From time to time, it’s okay for something to take longer than expected, or for your schedule to get ruined by an unforeseen event.
But if you’re finding that this is always happing – more than likely, the problem lies with you.
It’s easy to blame others for our misfortune, our emotions, ruining our schedule, or just being too much to deal with. But in reality, this is actually our responsibility to deal with.
It’s your responsibility to make and use your time wisely. No one is going to hold your hand or ‘save’ you. No one is going to make you do anything – it’s entirely up to you.
It’s up to you to control and work through your emotions, it’s your job to make sure your schedule is followed, and it’s your job to tell others no when needed.
If you cannot accept that the time you’re given is your responsibility to take care of, then you can’t expect to do the things you’re wanting to in life.
Set up Realistic Goals
You also need to be setting up realistic goals. You can check out an article here if you’re wanting to know how you can do that.
The Psychology of Perfectionism
“Self-oriented perfectionism is imposing an unrealistic desire to be perfect on oneself. Other-oriented perfectionism means imposing unrealistic standards of perfection on others. Socially-prescribed perfectionism involves perceiving unrealistic expectations of perfection from others.”
Healthy perfectionism involves having high but realistic standards for yourself and others, being conscientious, and being persistent in the face of adversity.
You also probably fail to set proper expectations for both yourself and others. If you’re not a very forgiving person, it may stem from your other-oriented perfectionism.
Individuals with perfectionism also routinely shrug off compliments. We don’t believe we’re good enough – so why would someone else?
I’ve noticed that some people even get offended when people compliment them. They believe the other person is lying or trying to manipulate them.
Or you may find yourself constantly seeking approval from others. You become this validation machine that needs someone to tell you you’re good enough. And honestly, it’s toxic. Instead of focusing on ways you can improve yourself and help others, you’re focused on how others perceive you and think of you. Not only that – but you may do things in an attempt to make the person think more highly of you or to like you more. (This is actually manipulation.)
I’m not sure if anyone has told you this before but it’s none of your business what other people think of you.
If you were to ask all of your family members what they think of you, they’d all say different things.
We are all entitled to our opinion and we are all entitled to withhold any opinions of our choosing.
How would you feel if people were constantly asking you what your personal opinions and judgments about them were? You’d get annoyed and feel like you had to lie to appease them.
Basically – focus on yourself!
How You Can Overcome Your Perfectionism
So if you’re wondering, “well how do I even get started with mastering my perfectionistic tendencies?”
In my experience, perfectionism is slightly harder to overcome because you can’t rely so much on others to help you.
Perfectionism is something you’ll have to work on and practice by yourself.
Look at Your Core Beliefs
“Core beliefs are deeply buried assumptions that guide our behavior, how we see ourselves and perceive situations. These beliefs impact how we feel, how we relate to others and guide our success and satisfaction with life and relationships.”
Growing up, you may have been constantly criticized, only shown love when you accomplished something, being compared to others by your family, or you were in a toxic environment.
Looking at your core beliefs will help you to understand what assumptions and beliefs you created as a child during these situations.
This is relevant to perfectionism because people typically have the core belief that they’re not good enough or they aren’t valuable.
If you feel this may be you, feel free to look into your core beliefs so you can start to challenge them.
There will always be someone better, stronger, more attractive, smarter, more accomplished, etc, than you.
You should always work to be better than yourself. Healthy competition is still good but just make sure that you aren’t viewing yourself as less valuable because you aren’t as good at something as someone else.
Just do it. Just get started. Stop planning everything.
Something I find very prevalent with perfectionism in myself and others is the need to plan out everything and to have the first draft be the best draft.
If you’re unable to start something, the way to start it is to just do it.
Just get started already!
Create very small goals for yourself (like just picking up your pencil). And just do your project.
Guess what, if you hate it, you can just restart. The faster you make mistakes, the faster you can learn to do it the correct way.
In fact, you should practice failing. I’m not even kidding. I’m thinking about adding a section to my bullet journal listing all the ways I’ve massively failed throughout the year.
Failures are used to teach, motivate, and encourage you to do better next time.
You’ll be surprised that when you fail or mess up, it won’t be as big of a deal as you were making it out to be.
You need to learn to be more compassionate to yourself and others. A lot of the time when we see someone do something we think, “ugh I wouldn’t be able to live if I acted like that.”
That’s you being hella judgemental. While I personally don’t struggle with this as much, I did have a friend that struggled with being super judgemental.
The more judgemental you are towards others, the more judgemental you are towards yourself. Learning to be more compassionate and understanding of others’ mistakes will allow you to be forgiving of your own mistakes. Which will help tremendously with your perfectionism.
We’re all stuck on a planet and just trying to make it to another day – there’s no reason to make it harder on ourselves or others.
Learn to Trust Yourself
It can be very hard to trust yourself, especially if you feel that you’re not able to follow through with promises that you make.
By trusting yourself, you start to follow through on your actions and you stop relying so heavily on others to tell you if you’re doing the right thing.
To completely stop perfectionism, start to trust that you will be consistent. Even if you fail, you’ll always get started again.
What Your Results Should Look Like
Before I finish this article, I would like you to know that it’s completely normal for you to slack of sometimes.
It’s honestly a part of the human experience to need breaks and to not perform at 100% all the time.
If you expect to perform 100% all the time after this article, you need to reread the perfectionist section.
Ever since I’ve integrated all of these tips into my daily life, I’ve found that I’ve started to love getting things done on time. I’ve also noticed that completing my daily tasks is easier because they’re now a habit. You also end up surprising and motivating others in your life. It’s a bit weird but when you start to work on yourself, others take notice and they want to do it as well.
Remember to be kind to yourself and to work towards being a better you. Also, keep in mind to be forgiving and to work on your self-care.
Basically – once you implement these you’ll start to love doing your daily tasks. You’ll feel more fulfilled and slowly build trust in yourself.
Good luck with your venture into the unknown and enjoy the journey.
The Truth About Work-Life Balance: Stop Feeling Overworked
If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
I hate the feeling of dreading work, of dreading going home, and of dreading life in general.
The main cause of this dread was constantly feeling and being overworked. Most individuals don’t stop working at work, and we blur the lines between our work life and our actual life.
We all know that person at work who doesn’t want to be there. Nothing makes them happy, and they always seem to be stressed about literally everything. I was this person.
If you’re wanting to know how you can stop feeling like this, how you can stop being so overworked, and how you can finally start living your life, this is for you.
I hope by the end of this post you feel confident in your ability to be actually productive and a happy, fulfilled person.
I want you to have a new outlook on life and a burning passion to change. If you don’t feel this way after this post – that means either I’ve failed or you’re not in a position or mindset to change.
Because of my personal ties to this subject, I hope you understand that I won’t sugarcoat anything. Before we get into the thick of things, I want you to have a basic understanding of where I’m coming from.
and in the beginning… there was confusion
Honestly, my newfound knowledge of why we’re actually overworked came about three weeks ago. I was watching a YouTube video about how to enter into a deep workflow and afterward, I felt completely dumbfounded. A few weeks prior to this incident, I had been listening to a podcast about time management and busywork.
This podcast had made me realize that what I had actually been prioritizing, was the wrong things. This made me a bit embarrassed because, well, I literally spend my days writing about how we can be more productive.
After the video on deep workflow, I decided to deep-dive into this newfound knowledge to discover whether or not these key pieces of information worked. And well, here we are.
The Series of Unfortunate Events
Before all of this, I always felt frustrated, annoyed, and tired. When I finished work it felt as if I hadn’t accomplished anything. This was so frustrating!
I’m sure you probably understand this feeling as well. You feel guilty for taking time out of your day for yourself when you have so much to do. You feel as if you’re not actually getting any important work done and your job doesn’t make you happy anymore.
Sometimes this causes our productivity to come in waves. One week, or maybe just a single day, we’ll be super productive. We feel a burning passion to change how we work and to develop a more positive mindset.
Then comes the day where we head home, sit on the couch, and just feel like crap. Yep.
And then we’re burnt out for weeks. We procrastinate because when we were working, it didn’t really feel like we were even doing anything.
Then, you head on over to your friends. They tell you that you’re being lazy, or maybe they tell you they have the same problem. It feels like, under the surface, we are all being overworked, we just don’t want to be seen as a complainer or a negative nancy. Or the newer term: a Karen.
Well, I was tired of feeling like crap. I was tired of feeling as if I had worked on my days off, I was tired of trying to balance work and life, and I was sick and tired of always having work in the back of my mind.
I was especially sick of feeling guilty when I wasn’t thinking of work. How sad is it, that we feel guilty for not working when we aren’t supposed to be?
My Results
This is when I acknowledged that something wasn’t right. I remembered Einstein’s quote: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
…with me being the insane person that was doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different outcome.
So I decided that I would dedicate the rest of my life, if I had to, to figure out how I could stop these feelings. And to finally feel relaxed when I wasn’t working.
I took a deep dive into reading productivity books like the four-hour workweek, reading nearly 100 articles about how to overcome being overworked, and spent my free time thinking and breathing about living a more productive life whilst being happier.
As I’m now at the end of my road I’ve nearly eradicated any procrastination I was dealing with. I also don’t view my work as work anymore. I’m able to stay in flow and the creative juices are flowing.
I’m able to spend time in the present moment, which has greatly improved the time I spend with family, and I even sleep better!
Overall I can say, without a doubt, that I spend my time more meaningfully and I actually appreciate the time I’ve been given.
The Actual Process
There are a few key concepts that I started to implement in my daily life. These are just things that will kickstart you into gear and will make the process of eliminating stress a million times easier.
What’s Your System?
Before I had even started this journey, I already had a to-do list. I’m assuming that you also have a system that you use to make sure you get your daily tasks done.
That’s great, but if you’re really wanting to kick your productivity into high gear, use time-blocking instead of just regular to-do lists.
This will ensure that you’re getting your high-priority items done at the beginning of the day and that you’re being realistic when it comes to tasks you need to complete.
It also has the added benefit of ensuring you make time-oriented goals, even if that wasn’t your intention.
“Why do I need to do the most important things at the beginning of the day?” You ask.
Good question, you do these first because if something happens that ruins your schedule, your friends want to hang out, your mother calls, or just something very inconvenient, you still get the most important things done.
“How do I categorize my tasks by the most important?” You ask.
3 hours!? And I felt like I was being unproductive when I only worked 7 instead of 8 pshhh.
Knowing this information, I want you to cut your work hours into 2 or 3 chunks.
The first chunk you’ll work for 3-4 very focused hours. This chunk of time should be completed at the same time every day. (The routine helps you to focus better, set expectations for yourself, and improve your creativity.)
When I say focused, I mean:
No distractions
No social media
No human contact
No fumbling with papers
No checking email
No checking your calendar
I mean:
Complete immersion in your project
The ONLY time you take a break during these four hours is if your flow has been broken, and you’re not able to get back into it.
When you do take a break, do not:
Check social media
Check your email
Work on other things
Watch a YouTube video
Write a to-do
Essentially, don’t work or do things that will heighten your emotions or will give you ‘easy/immediate gratification‘. (This is talked about later in the post).
A break should be activities like:
Stretching
Meditating
Talking to a friend
Getting a drink (preferably water)
Coloring (yes, I’m an adult that colors)
Listening to music
For the second chunk, you’ll do busywork for 1 to 3 hours.
If you’re wondering what busywork is, it’s essentially low-value tasks that you need to do. If you’re unsure if something is busywork or not, just contemplate whether or not you’d be able to do it while sitting downstairs with your family.
These tasks should be easssyyy. A few of these tasks may be more time-consuming or need a little bit more concentration, but overall, it’s not SUPER important.
(If you can, you can always hire a personal assistant to do this work for you!)
Mixing your busywork and your highly focused work causes a lot of problems.
Usually you end up doing your busywork because it’s easier and your highly focused work gets neglected. This is bad because your highly-focused work is the thing that’s actually going to make sure that you go where you need to in life!
The last chunk will be anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours. During this time, you’ll just reflect on the state of your work and any improvements you can make. Make sure you set up your time blocks and you know 100% of what you’ll be doing during your focused work for the next day.
Don’t let Distractions Control Your Life
Are you noticing that you’re getting really distracted by your phone when trying to do focused work?
Throw it in a blender.
I’m not kidding.
But seriously, don’t allow something as stupid as wanting to check your phone distract you from work that may change your life.
If you’re not wanting to go the blender route, put your phone in a very inconvenient place until your 4 hours are up.
DO NOT RELY ON WILLPOWER. I used to always assume that after a while I would ‘toughen up’ and I’d stop wanting to get on my phone while working.
When actually, I was just getting distracted and hoping that I’d stop checking my phone at some point.
Keep Track of Your Thoughts
When you’re sitting at the dinner table with your family, do you ever think, “huh, I forgot to do this” or “I should check my email” or even “what am I going to do during work tomorrow?”.
Or maybe it’s really small things. The other day, I was thinking, “hmm this is a really good idea for a blog post!” and then… I realized.
I simply wrote the idea on a sticky note, and left it.
This is what you need to do with your work. Leave it wherever the fudge you work.
You shouldn’t even be thinking about work when you get home. Work should be the LAST thing you have on your mind.
I was taught that you should always bend your back over to get that raise, to get people to like you, or to just be a valuable person. (The last one is a little sad, but true for me.)
Some cultures do a really good job of keeping work at work, but sadly, a lot don’t.
100% of your work should be at the office, no exceptions.
If you work in an environment that doesn’t allow for this, then you need to either get out asap, quit, or accept that you’ll feel burnt out for the rest of your life.
Truthfully, this is probably the second most important thing to stop feeling burnt out.
I hope by this point you’ve decided whether or not you’re willing to make the changes necessary to finally love your job and to love your life.
My Personal Journey: Why You Should Work on More Than Just Your Finances
At the beginning of my journey, I realized that I was just going through the motions and existing. What was the point of trying to be a freelancer if I couldn’t even enjoy it?
It was that realization that I decided to just stop. Stop lying to myself. So I grabbed a piece of paper, drew Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and just started writing.
I circled where I was on it and wrote down the problems I was having. And I accepted all of this. I accepted myself for myself and decided that I was done.
And then I started to work towards changing the parts of my life that I had control of.
By truthfully looking at myself and allowing myself to be vulnerable, I was able to truly understand where my problems were, and I could take steps to fix them.
If you’re wondering how you should be spending your time best, this is how. You shouldn’t be working 24/7, you can’t possibly be happy by doing that.
At this point, you’re probably wondering: “so what’s the lesson?”.
Good question.
The lesson is that you need to learn to enjoy things outside of work. Above, I mentioned that a lot of people get home, plop on the couch, and just exist until tomorrow.
You have to stop this cycle now, and start working to enjoy the things you’re doing. I’m not saying that you should never watch Netflix, but I am suggesting that you need to take a look at yourself.
Are you truthfully happy with where your life is?
Are you chasing an unrealistic version of ‘success’? If so, stop. Take a look at Maslow’s and have an honest discussion with yourself. Involve the opinions of those you trust if possible, and just work on YOU.
A lot of people think, “ah as soon as I get [insert goal], then I’ll be happy.” “as soon as I get the body of my dreams – that’s when I’ll be fulfilled.”
I lost the weight that I spent months shaming myself for. Telling myself that I wasn’t good enough and that others must think I was lazy.
But actually, I looked in the mirror and just nodded. It was me – but just skinnier.
There wasn’t an ‘aha’ moment and I didn’t like myself any more than I did before. Once again, it was just me, but skinnier.
This put things into perspective. Not only did I shame myself the entire way through weight loss, but I also expected my life to be drastically different when I lost the weight.
If you’re someone who thinks that once you’re rich and your career is successful, you’ll then be happy – you’re greatly mistaken.
In order to truly be happy and fulfilled, having a good career is only one aspect out of many.
Meditation has a lot of benefits like improving your patience, self-awareness, creativity, imagination, skill-building to manage stress, and it improves your self-awareness.
Honestly, this is why people think meditation is a hoax. How could something as simple as sitting and concentrating on your thoughts do all of that?
Try it for a few months and you can thank me later.
Stop Giving yourself Easy Gratification
It’s really easy to spend 20 hours a week binging your favorite Netflix series. But doing this is actually making you stressed out.
By partaking in things that are tricking our brain into having large dopamine dumps – we’re making everything else in life seem grey and boring.
Think about this for a moment.
SCENARIO #1
Let’s say that you’re stuck in a small light brown room with only a single light hanging above you. You’re being fed only rice and beans for an entire week.
At the end of the week, you find a book in the vent of the room.
You will be 100% ecstatic to have that book in your hands. You will cherish the book and love it like it’s your own child.
You’ll read the book, dream about the things in the book, and you’ll think of ways that you’ll apply it to your life once you get out.
Now let’s take a turn.
SCENARIO #2
You’ve been hanging out all day eating pizza, chips, and drinking a large diet soda. You’ve been binge-watching YouTube and have been checking your social media in hopes that people are liking what you posted.
You find some random book on your shelf and you don’t even take a second of your day to think about reading it.
Why would you? When instead of reading you can just watch movies, eat pizza, and troll people on the internet?
It makes reading a book seem like the most boring thing you could spend your time doing.
Once I removed most of the things that were giving me huge dopamine hits and offering easy gratification – I really started to see a change in my personal and work life.
Work is no longer boring. Work is actually fun to do. I can appreciate the little things in life and I’m happier overall.
Taking away easy gratification during, before, and after work will ensure that you stop feeling burnt out all the time. Your work actually starts to become something you look forward to and you have fun with.
Note: I’m not saying that you can no longer do these things. Just do a lot less of them. It will make you a much better person for it.
A huge way to do this is to only do things that you find intrinsically motivated to do. By finding things that make you intrinsically motivated, you’re much more likely to go into ‘flow’ when you’re working.
Life is too damn short to not enjoy your work and personal life.
Keep a Consistent Routine
Unless you’re someone who really despises routine, having a consistent routine will ensure that you’re able to keep your work and personal life separate.
A consistent routine helped me to really define what was and was not work. This helped me to enjoy the time I spent outside of work stress-free.
If you do all of these steps and you decide what you’re really wanting to do with your time – I promise you’ll stop feeling so overworked.
The Krabby Patty Secret Formula
When you read most articles about being overworked, they don’t actually tell you the process to fix the feeling. They usually suggest you try things that just cover your feelings or to be more mindful.
But this is for people who actually want to stop feeling burnt out. Forever. Not just today, tomorrow, or next week.
So here’s the actual process to stop feeling so overworked. If you pair these with all of the suggested processes above, you will start to love all parts of your life.
1 Chunk your Work
The first thing you need to do is to split up your work. This was talked about above, and it’s very very important. You need to make sure that you’re working on the highest value items first.
2 Enjoy Your Work
The second thing is that you have to do what you enjoy for work. If you’re in a position where you’re working a career that you find boring, get out.
A lot of people use the excuse of not having enough money to not make a change. I guarantee 99.9% of people could have the career that they love or be their own boss if they wanted to.
If you’re really against that, then you need to find a flexible workplace that will accommodate that need.
Would you rather spend the rest of your life complaining that you always feel overworked or would you rather take a chance to change your life and possibly be the happiest you’ve ever been?
I mean – you’re not losing out on much in my opinion.
Find something you love enough to go into a ‘flow state’. If you’re unable to find anything, I suggest that you stop giving yourself instant gratification. This will fix the problem and you’ll find what you truly love doing.
3 Love What you Do Outside of Work
Also mentioned above, you have to love what you do outside of work. You’ll never get rid of the burnt-out feeling if you feel as if all you ever do is work.
To find things to do outside of work, have a look above at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This will give you a general idea of where you are in life and what you should be working on.
Making money and having a successful career is only one out of many things that you need to be a fulfilled person.
4 Review & Revise Your Work
One challenge I personally faced when starting my new routine was the fact that I felt as if I was never getting things done the way I envisioned them. A lot of people have this problem, and it’s completely normal.
The way I fixed this was by having one day out of the week where I sit down and review all of my work for the week.
I look at everything and I write down areas where I slacked, what I need to work on for next week, and how I can do better next time.
Going through this process will help to put your work into better perspective and will help you to avoid half-assing things. It helps in this way because it forces you to go back and fix everything – which discourages slacking off in the present moment.
You’ll usually find that all of these smaller improvements can be worked on throughout the week during your ‘busywork’ time.
5 The Krabby Patty Secret Formula
Now, let’s talk about the actual secret to never feeling overworked.
It’s not much of a secret – it’s actually obvious and it makes a lot of sense.
How you spend your time before, during, and after your first working session will determine whether or not you feel burnt out.
That’s literally it.
Do you really want to stop feeling burnt out and like you never accomplish anything? Master the art of focused work.
Before you do your most important work of the day, you need to make sure that you feel good. You can do this by journaling, working out, meditating, or a combination of things.
During this time you really want to avoid anything that will give you ‘easy gratification’ or that heightens your emotions in any way.
Then you want to have an ‘opening ritual’ to state to yourself that you’re now in working mode.
By doing this, it’s like it hits a switch in your brain. You’re able to easily go into a flow state and your creativity is on fire.
This is obviously important, but how you spend your time during and after is just as crucial.
Like I stated in the ‘chapter’ above, how you spend your breaks and what you do during these breaks matter.
Essentially, spend your break doing very easy, mindless, and entertaining tasks. (Not easy gratification like social media or YouTube).
When you do take a break it should be in a ratio of about 1:3-4. So if you worked for an hour, give yourself a 20-minute break.
You ONLY take breaks when you find that you keep falling out of your flow state.
If you decide to take a different route – like the Pomodoro technique – you’ll find that you will interrupt your flow state. Which completely destroys the purpose of your focused work.You’ll miss out on the many benefits of being in a flow state like increased attention, improved performance, learning and skill development, huge increase in productivity, increase in task enjoyment, increase of creativity, and so forth.
Basically, you want to stay in this flow state for as long as humanly possible. (I’d also like to point out that flow is different from hyperfocus for those of you who are interested. Take a look at the differences here.)
You should also try to do similar tasks during your focused work time. For me, I write the entire time. All of my editing and marketing is done during my busywork time.
Completing similar tasks at the same time every day will allow you to get in the flow state quicker and stay in it longer.
After your session of focused work, have a ‘closing ritual’ as well. A closing ritual can be stretching, coloring, listening to a podcast, or even meditating.
During this time you want to shift your focus from work to what you’re going to be doing the rest of the day. Imagine yourself just enjoying doing your everyday tasks and relaxing.
The main goal of this session is to get your mind off of work and what you’ll be focusing on for the rest of the day.
If you’re willing to make the change to do everything I mentioned in this post, you’ll never feel overworked again.
Resolution & Extra Info
To end this post, I just wanted to provide some more tips for you and just discuss some of the good and bad changes that you’ll see from following this.
Perfectionism will cause you to criticize every mistake you make and you will never be able to just enjoy your life. By trying to avoid making mistakes, you actually end up just halting your learning and personal growth.
Half-assing will hurt future you, make you have to redo your work, waste your time, and will ensure that you will not get where you need to go in life.
Perfectionism and half-assing will both cause you to not succeed and will make you feel stuck. If I were you, I’d spend some time trying to improve in these areas.
The changes the steps in this post have made in my life:
In my personal life, using this method has allowed me to really love and appreciate my work. I also never procrastinate anymore because I find my schedule to be enjoyable, fulfilling, and time-efficient.
I strongly encourage you to implement all of the things talked about in this blog post into your life and career.
You may have to modify some of these things – especially if you work a conventional 9 to 5, but the application should be very similar.
You’ll find it crazy how much ‘mental’ work you were doing instead of actual work. You’ll realize how much control over your life you actually have and you’ll stop blaming others for everything going wrong in your life.
You do have to work on getting rid of procrastination, learning to embrace routine, quit giving yourself easy gratification, and to stop working during non-work hours.
But I promise you, the benefits greatly outweigh the cost.
The Ultimate 5 Step Guide to Overcoming Laziness While Studying
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From time to time, we all struggle with focusing and paying attention while we’re studying. Recently, I have found myself struggling to stay on task. I’m constantly wanting to go watch YouTube or do literally anything but study.
I decided to spend some time thinking about how I could start to focus better during my study sessions, and this is what I found. Hope you enjoy it! 🙂
The first way to stop being so lazy and distracted during study sessions is to plan them out.
When I say plan them out, I mean a complete step-by-step guide on what you’re going to be studying. Not only do you want to write out what you’ll be doing, but also write what you need to accomplish before moving on.
For example:
Step One – Open book.
Step Two – Read the entire first chapter.
Step Three – Jot down anything mentioned twice.
Before moving on – Be able to recall the 3 main points in each section.
Step Four – Break
Step Five – Recall the first section & take notes.
Before moving on – Need to apply the information to store in my long-term memory
and etc.
Have Sticky Notes Handy
There is a multitude of reasons why using sticky notes can be so useful.
They’re great for writing down main points in text, drawing images, writing summaries, creating lists, and just a whole lot more.
Do you ever find that you get distracted during studying by things you forgot to do, or you have a random question you feel you need to answer right at that moment?
Surprisingly, sticky notes took my focus level from a 3 up to an 8.
I found that when I thought of something I needed to do later, or I just needed to remember some piece of information, I’d write it down on a sticky note.
After my study session, I would spend some time consolidating my sticky notes and looking up the questions I had.
Using sticky notes in this way will help you to focus a lot during your study sessions, and it will also force you to stop using things you forgot to do as an excuse to stop studying.
Write Down any Distractions
In my blog post about the best ways to study long hours, I wrote about the main two mistakes that people make when it comes to their environment.
One of them is ignoring distractions or believing that they’re able to overcome their distractions. I’m honestly not sure if this is an ego thing people have, or they believe that they can be stronger in some way, but you can’t.
When you’re studying, keep a sheet of paper (or a sticky note) on your desk and write down anything that ends up distracting you.
Even try and include the types of distracting thoughts you’re having while you’re studying.
Writing down this information will not only help you to identify what exactly is distracting you, but it will better help you to understand the negative thought patterns that are holding you back.
Personally, I always get a dreadful feeling when I’m studying because I worry I’m not actually learning anything. I didn’t notice this until I started writing down what I was feeling in the moment – and now I no longer have this problem.
Find Ways to Get Rid of Them
Not only should you identify the distractions you’re having, but you should also be able to find ways to get rid of them.
If you can’t get rid of them, you should work towards solving them or coming up with ways you can avoid the distraction and what to do when you do get distracted from it.
If you’re someone who checks their phone every 20 minutes, I suggest you take your phone and place it in a different room, lock it, and hand over the key to someone else.
Make it nearly impossible for you to be able to get distracted.
When you do get distracted and you’re unsure of how to get rid of it – use Google.
You may find that you have to give up something in your personal life to allow yourself to stay focused while studying.
For myself, I found that getting on social media before I studied (even hours before), would affect my focus during my study sessions.
It would make me wonder what people were up to, what I was missing on my YouTube feed, and it would result in hours of binging. I found that I could avoid all of this by only going on social media before I slept or after my study session.
You may find that you need to completely cut out things from your life to focus. This is perfectly fine, just make sure that your priorities are well managed so you don’t cut out the wrong things.
Don’t Rely on Willpower Alone
Like I stated above, a lot of people try to stay focused by sheer force of will. This is the wrong way to look at it.
Don’t make things difficult because at the end of the day, the only person holding you accountable, is yourself.
Conclusion
I really hope this post will help you to stay focused during your study sessions!
Remember to subscribe to my blog for more content related to getting your sh*t together and feel free to email me any questions/advice you need!
I may answer through a blog post or send a personalized message back.
8 Ridiculously Smart Study Hacks Every Student Should Know
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Whether you’re just now taking your study sessions seriously or you’ve been an advanced student for life, there are a few study hacks that you should know.
I honestly shouldn’t have to even explain why time management is so important. If you go to the library and pick up any productivity book off the shelf, I almost guarantee that time management will be one of the main topics.
The same goes for your study sessions. You need to learn the best time for you to be actively studying and the best time for you to be creating flashcards or doing your easiest tasks.
I typically say you want to do hard and active studying first thing in the morning. After that, you can then do your busy work. This ensures that even if you end up studying for less time than you were expecting to, you still get the most important tasks done.
Walk During Study Sessions
Crazy to think that something as simple as walking can really change the direction of your studying. Read the super interesting quote from Learning Center.
“Standing while learning and completing assignments improves executive functioning, or the skills you use to break down tasks like writing an essay or solving multi-step math problems.”
Isn’t that just crazy? The next time that you’re feeling really stressed or you’re stuck in a rut, just get up and walk around for a bit.
Reward Yourself
If you’re one of those people to find it very hard to study because of a lack of motivation, I highly suggest you use extrinsic motivators to ensure your studying consistently.
Extrinsic motivators consist of anything that is given to you as a reward. Some individuals like to use chocolate after each studied paragraph, or some give themselves a break after completing certain assignments.
No matter what it is, you can use an extrinsic motivator to help you do it.
Just make sure that you build a habit so you can stop relying solely on extrinsic motivators – which will only take you so far.
A Little Every Day
A lot of people try way too hard to do it all. This is another facet of time management and knowing when to do your busy work. The most important thing to ensure consistency and exceptional work when studying is to build a habit.
Consistent habits allow for specifically creative and focused work. This helps you to not only perform better but also helps you to learn more, faster.
When building a habit, it’s important to remember that a little goes a long way. If you’re trying to do it all, you’ll fail at all.
If you slowly build up habits each day, by the end of the year you may be one of the most productive people on the planet.
Use Pictures & Teach the Information
Sometimes, you may find that you’re taking very wordy notes and it seems to take forever to study. One of your problems may be that you’re not using enough visual cues and pictures in your notes.
It’s scientifically proven that using pictures and visual cues helps us to remember the information more deeply and in a new way.
Not only should you use pictures and visual arrangement, but you should also try and teach the information.
When you teach information that you’ve learned, you’re better able to apply it and use the information to solve problems.
If you find that your study sessions are really easy, I would encourage you to try and teach what you’re learning and apply it to something seemingly unrelated. This will offer a challenge and will also help you to remember the information for much longer.
Use Different Learning Styles
A lot of people I know complain that studying is impossible for them. These are usually the people who study by reading the information and repeating it aloud.
If I’m being completely honest, this is a terrible way to study and remember information. To remember information, our brain needs us to make connections to things that we already know and understand.
This is why it’s important that you apply the information you’ve learned and for you to study it in multiple ways.
If you find that your study sessions are relatively easy, you’re more than likely studying incorrectly. If this is you, I suggest you spend time learning how to properly study.
One way you can do that is by subscribing to my blog! After you subscribe you get an email and you’re free to ask any question you’re wanting. I will either respond or write a blog post for you!
Sleep Before an Exam
A lot of students seem to think that cramming before a test will help them perform better. It doesn’t.
If you have to cram, I suggest that you cram at least one or two daysbefore the test.
The day before the test, make sure to get adequate sleep!
If you don’t sleep enough, you literally drop IQ points and you’re unable to use information stored in your long-term memory. When you’re unable to use this information, you’re unable to apply it. When you’re unable to apply it, you’re unable to answer questions related to it. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Almost everyone knows that sleeping is super important for your health, but it is also super important for your grades!
Study Before or After Exercising
A lot of bloggers tell people to work out about 30 minutes before a study session. While this is true, and it’s a proven that there are cognitive benefits for up to 3 to 4 hours after working out, you need to take into consideration the type of workout.
If you’re doing a light 30-minute workout in your living room, I suggest you do it before you study. But, if you’re going to the gym and doing an hour of heavy lifting see, I suggest you study before.
Typically, when you first wake up and you get over your sleep inertia, you’re actually in the best mental space for focusing and using the energy you’ve stored from sleeping.
Conclusion
Studying should not be something that you fear or avoid because it seems too complicated. I hope these simple study tips help you to study more efficiently and will teach you the importance of time management and productivity.
Remember to subscribe to my blog so you can improve your studying techniques and you can ask questions. Like I said above, I may answer your question in a blog post and you’ll personally be notified!
If you’re looking for someone to help build your site and complete your busywork, then do feel free to get in touch. I’m a virtual administrative assistant that would love to help grow your business with you. 💜 Get in touch here.
Do you ever have that moment while studying where your mind starts to drift off?
One second you’re thinking about what that word could mean, and the next second you’re thinking about what you’re having for lunch.
Truthfully, this is a common problem that a lot of people have.
In my high school years, I always found it extremely hard to concentrate on my assignments for school, but I could literally spend an entire week researching multiple frivolous facts.
Although all of the studying I do now is on my own, I’ve learned quite a few tricks that help to keep me focused even when I’m really not in the mood to do it.
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A mistake a lot of people often make is worrying about memorizing every single small detail. instead, you should learn to apply and solve bigger picture problems relating to the subject.
Solving problems instead of memorizing small details will keep you focused. You may find that memorizing small details is very monotonous and time-consuming.
Whereas if you work on solving problems it allows your mind to go into a flow state. Just make sure that the problems you solve are difficult but not too difficult!
When you do this, you’ll find that you end up memorizing smaller details easily.
After you’ve spent time solving problems and applying the study material, review your notes and determine the skills or areas where you’re lacking. Solve more problems or use flashcards to learn the rest of the details.
At first, you may find solving problems difficult and time-consuming – this is a good thing.
If you find that when you’re studying, it’s really easy, more than likely you’re studying incorrectly.
Routine
I personally know a lot of people hate routine. I also know a lot of people hate studying every single day.
But having a routine may be the number one reason some people succeed and others fail.
Having a routine will help you increase your studying productivity during each session and will help with stress.
You’ll also notice that when your routine becomes a habit, your study sessions will be more focused.
If you’re someone who’s been slacking on that diet, I hope this will encourage you to feed your body for your health and intrinsic benefits rather than just weight loss.
Listen to Music
Listening to music has been linked to improved memory cognition as well as focus. Although, you should beware of music in certain situations or certain types of music.
If you’re someone like me you may find that you got distracted quite easily. While I find listening to music during study sessions quite nice, it does not mean that I’m not being exposed to other environmental sounds.
Earplugs really help with studying if you have dogs, roommates, or just living in a loud area.
I personally like to wear my earplugs with my headphones over them. I still get to enjoy my music without any other sounds bothering me.
For myself, buying earplugs was one of the best investments I’ve ever made.
Have Breaks – Often
Yes, breaks matter.
I used to be one of those people who swore on not taking breaks. I felt like I could do my best work when I would spend hours using all of my energy to focus on the task at hand.
I also used to be very naive & ignorant.
“Research shows that taking purposeful breaks (anywhere from 5-60 minutes) from studying to refresh your brain and body increases your energy, productivity, and ability to focus.”
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The difference music can make when you’re studying is actually quite amazing.
Listening to music while you study can help with your productivity and can help put you in the right frame of mind.
Not only does listening to music help your productivity but it helps you stay focused for longer periods of time. Listening to the right type of music can also help improve your mood, which will directly result in better study sessions.
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We’ll first be taking a look at why you should listen to music.
The first and most obvious reason you should listen to music is if you have studying anxiety. It’s been shown that listening to music reduces test anxiety and overall stress in students.
Listening to music has been shown to help you focus – if, of course, you’re listening to the right music.
The final reason that you should listen to music is because of the emotional benefit. For me personally, I enjoy listening to classical music while working because it puts me in a good mood.
Now, we’ll be taking a look at why you should not listen to music while you study.
Listening to music while studying can actually reduce your cognitive abilities. Basically, this translates into not being able to memorize things.
While it is true that music can help you focus, it can also impair your ability to focus on tougher tasks.
From what I’ve personally read, it’s said that you should listen to music before your study sessions or while doing busy work. But leave enough room for silence when working on the really tough tasks.
You also want to stay far away from music with lyrics and try to only listen to instrumentals.
If you’re struggling to focus, I suggest…
I suggest that if you’re wanting to stay in the zone longer, you should invest in some earplugs.
If you’re a person with any sort of sensory processing disorder, earplugs can be a night and day difference. (They definitely helped me!)
I personally use Loop earplugs to keep my attention.
And I must say, they are a complete life-changer. I have found that my own productivity had improved drastically once I had started to use them.
Sometimes I like to put in my earplugs and place my headphones on top of them so I can stay completely focused.
They’re great if you have dogs, roommates, or just a busy home.
Perfect if you’re wanting little to no sounds for complete immersive studying.
I personally have both!
Classical Music
Of course, I had to include classic music as the first item on this list. Classical music is calm and elicits a positive studying environment. It’s also been shown to help with productivity in some studies.
Basically, any instrumentals that aren’t too hardcore, are perfect for studying.
I would just suggest that you steer away from listening to instrumentals of your favorite songs with lyrics, because it may break your focus while studying.
Listening to nature sounds is best for individuals who have a lot of anxiety. Studies have shown that listening to nature sounds actually helps lower our fight or flight response.
It’s a common myth that listening to electronic music is actually worse for your retention than listening to classical music. Thankfully, that’s not the case!
Electronic music is really good for calming the mind – just make sure so you don’t get too invested in the songs!
To wrap up this post, I mainly suggest that you use music as a way to relax your mind and to make your environment more positive.
To keep from using your music as a distraction – set up a playlist before you study and put it on loop.
Remember that listening to music is supposed to help your focus & retention, NOT for it to be your main distraction.
Happy learning!
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