Life Changing tips for students from Elon Musk
Author: Adan Khan 5 min 26 sec
Elon Musk is seen as a productivity machine. Having time blocked his days down to every 5 minutes and batch multiple tasks together at once we have collected a range of tips that you as students can use in your studies to boost your productivity and set a better routine. Start with at least one of the following information, and you will soon start seeing the results of your changes soon.
Nothing easy is worth having
Nothing in life is easy, you have to work on anything to make sure you get exactly what you want, to the quality you want it in. If something is too easy, then it is probably not worth your time or the outcome will not be up to your standards. To get the desired grade or achieve the results you want, you need to put in the work. You need to know on a scale from 1 to 10 how disappointed you would be if you could not achieve your goal in that set time. Depending on your answer, you will know how much time and effort you need to reduce the chances of being disappointed. Let’s say if other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks, and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, even if you’re doing the same thing, you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to complete. You will be able to accomplish the results at a must faster rate. Therefore you will be able to get the gratification from having finished something up to your satisfactory level.
Learn to delegate early
Putting in the hours and being dedicated to your work is a significant step, but you also need to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Once you know what aspects of your learning, you need to work on not. It will be excellent to work on them to make them better, but you also need to find more talented people at those things than you. Many gifted people might be better at something than you, let them help you out. It will also improve your social skills and be an excellent gateway to scheduling regular sessions together to work on similar things together. Depending on how great you get on with them, you will be able to even meet up with your group of friends even when you do not have the same task. You would be able to learn tips and tricks, and it will be more time-efficient on your part in the long run.
Don't be afraid to dream big and embrace failure
Having big dreams and aspirations is great, but you should also be prepared when they don’t meet specific deadlines or go incomplete entirely. A series of early rocket failures did not put Elon Musk or his team off refining the technology and trying again. Failure is a part of learning and also gives you the best experience. Utilise it as useful feedback to know where to modify your dreams and goals when needed to better suit your needs and increase the chances of fulfilling them. Let failure inspire you and not crust your spirit.
Learn to prioritise and stay on target
Throughout your academic life and professional life after that, you will have many things that attempt to demand your attention and time. These things may be essential or important at the same time. To make headway, you must develop the ability to prioritise. You can use the Eisenhower Matrix to know which things are important, urgent, not important and not urgent. You can stay productive on your busy day and have tome to wind down for the day feeling accomplished.
Learn to figure out what you want and why. Etch the reason into your memory or use a myriad of side- memories. Such things will sharpen your focus and help you “stay on target”. These will make a regular reminder of why you are doing the things you are and why you started to begin. It will help with your motivation, especially when you’re feeling down. But you are only human, so give yourself a break from time to time as well. We suggest you use the Pomodoro technique using chunks of focus and break. Furthermore, make sure to get enough sleep!
Write a schedule and stick to it
Setting goals is a crucial start for understanding what actions you need to take to achieve them. Set goals and then break them down into more manageable chunks, if needed. Avoid pointless meetings and conversations, for example. Also, cull any other activities that consume your time but do no help you make progress towards your goal. You are allowed to have a “productive downtime” every now and then only when you have finished all the important urgent followed by important not urgent. You would know which tasks fit what category when you have efficiently used the Eisenhower Matrix and planned your day to complete those tasks.
After doing so, you can time block your day to know when you have to do what task. You can choose to do this on a traditional calendar or a digital, what matters is how efficiently you follow your schedule. Make sure you always allocate at least 5 minutes of a “break” between each task to allow your brain to digest what you have just done and prepare for the upcoming assignment.
Learn to be your own judge and jury
To become a high-achiever like Elon Musk, you need to have both the judge and the jury’s role. You will need to learn to question yourself consistently. Could I be wrong? What am I not seeing here? Is there a better way of doing this? What mistakes did I make in the past, and how did I learn? Another step to becoming a better judge of yourself is to know what questions to ask and when to ask them. This will only come with practice, and the more you use your role of the judge in yourself. Then the jury part of your role comes into play. After answering the questions you have asked yourself, you need to know what things resulted in such an outcome. You need to hold yourself accountable for whatever your answer is and then decide what you need to do next to progress further. Even after years of experience and putting excellent questions before, things will still happen that may make your outcome not go as planned. You, as the jury, need to be prepared for that as well.
Be highly selective of opinions
Opinions. Everybody has them, but a few are worth their salt. If you dream big, you will find many people trying to persuade you by saying how risky or how few ventures are successful. Elon Musk faced a lot of negativity as well, even with that he still persevered and reached his goals. You need to do your own research on whom you should get the opinions of and how much value you should give to each individual. You don’t need to waste your time on statements from people who don’t have experience or expertise in your required field. Don’t let them discourage you, if you know what you want, go for it and ignore the naysayers. Even when you get the opinions of the people you need them from, you still need to evaluate what they say.
Along with being the judge and jury for yourself, you need to do the same for them. How much of their opinion should you take on board? Are you even able to take them on board, to begin with? You need to look at yourself and see what is realistic for yourself first and then decide what you should do next.