I wrote a blog post about a blog post hehe.

Currently as I am typing this I am supposed to be studying for my intermediate microeconomics midterm. It’s also 2 am (my exam is at 11 am).

BUT ANYWAYS MY BEST FRIEND ALSO BLOGS!! He wrote one titled “8 Unheard Productivity Hacks That Surprisingly Work” (give it a read!) so I figured I’d try them out and review them.

It’s kind of funny how I’m productively (?) procrastinating. Anyways, I think it’s worth sharing my thoughts with you guys. Hopefully you get something out of these.

1. The Slow Start
   • Summary: Get over the fear of starting by committing to doing your task badly for the first hour (takes the pressure off).
   • My review: I really like this one. I use it for chores mostly. I start a 5 minute timer and just vacuum or do laundry or whatever.
   • My rating: 8/10 pretty much works
   • Cool quote award: “Once you hit rock bottom, you can only go up!”
     • Fire line, applies to all aspects of life
2. The Ugly Outline
   • Summary: Dump all your thoughts into the messiest outline possible before starting. No structure, just content.
   • My review: YES!! I storyboard all the time. Storyboarding, mind-mapping, brain-dumping, ugly outlines, whatever you want to call it, I promise it works.
   • My rating: 9.5/10
3. The Winning Goal
   • Summary: Pick one task that would make you feel accomplished if you did nothing else that day. Focus on it first.
   • My review: This is kind of hit or miss for me. I feel like I have too many priorities at any given time that I need to be doing more than one thing otherwise progress would be too slow.
   • My rating: 4/10
4. The Sandwich
   • Summary: Start and end your day with the same task to double your chances of getting it done.
   • My review: This one was… okay. I get the idea of starting and ending the day with the same task to give it more attention…but it felt repetitive. I tried this with studying for my econ exam (yes, the same one I’m avoiding right now by writing this post). I started studying first in the morning and then again after I was done for the day. By the end of the day, it felt like the ghosts of supply and demand were haunting me.
     • I think this would work better with creative tasks where there’s more of a “fresh take” feeling. Like maybe outlining a blog post or a painting or a slide deck in the morning and then polishing it up at night.
   • My rating: 6.5/10
5. The “Reverse To-Do List”
   • Summary: Write down what you’ve already done instead of what you need to do. Helps shift your mindset from “I’m behind” to “I’ve made progress.”
   • My review: Works sometimes? I usually just end up adding extra stuff I already did on the list to make myself feel better (I suppose that helps though? I don’t know).
   • My rating: 7/10
6. The Five-Year-Old Interrogation
   • Summary: Ask “why?” five times in a row when you’re procrastinating to uncover the real reason you’re avoiding a task.
   • My review: More of a journaling thing in my opinion but definitely helpful in getting past roadblocks in productivity.
   • My rating: 9/10
7. The “10-Minute Rule”
   • Summary: Tell yourself you’ll only work on a dreaded task for 10 minutes. The hardest part is starting.
   • My review: I think I maybe misinterpreted this as the first one. Oops. Either way, it works.
   • My rating: 8/10
   • My tweak: Maybe this goes without say but I usually set up a timer when doing this. Really helps.
8. The Caveman
   • Summary: Use a worse tool to do the task—pen and paper instead of Word, Notepad instead of Google Docs. Removes distractions and expectations.
   • My review: I carry around a notebook especially for this.
   • My rating: 10/10
   • Other comments: The name is funny.

My personal favorite random productivity hacks:

1. The same song on repeat in my headphones while I’m doing a task. Especially when studying for an exam, it really helps because I can stay focused as after a while I just tune out the lyrics. Plus, when I’m taking the actual exam, there’s some memory recall going on in the background (who knows how the brain works).
2. Study crawls.
3. Dance break.
4. Parkinson’s law (work will expand to fill allotted time). Essentially, if you give yourself 4 hours to write your English paper, it will take you 4 hours (or more). But if you create a fake deadline and say you only have 45 minutes to write it, more often than not, you will get it done in 45 minutes. Think about all those times you left assignments due at 11:59pm till 11 pm. Pretty much the same concept.
5. Studying with people I don’t have much in common with so I yap less.
6. Going into an empty classroom at the business school and teaching the material to an imaginary audience.
7. I have more but I forget. Maybe I’ll write about it later.

Overall these hacks were pretty fun ways of getting out of a unproductivity slump (is this a word? I don’t know. My brain isn’t working much right now).

ANYWAYS I HAVE TO GO STUDY BYE!!