How to Effectively Manage a Heavy Workload

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Since the start of online school, you and other student were placed under more stress than usual. In school, we have friends and teachers to ask for help at a moment’s notice, but now we have to text one another to get the help we need frantically. The workload is increasing as the school year continues, and the stress levels keep rising! How do you make sure you are using your time effectively when you have a large workload to do? We will talk about it below to make sure you know how to handle when you receive a lot of work.

The Pomodoro Technique

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If you find that you are struggling with the amount of homework you receive, try and break it up into chunks. Make sure to give yourself a break as toxic productivity will only induce more stress. For example, if you work for 1 hour, give yourself a 20-minute break. You can use any variation of the Pomodoro method to suit you personally. If you’re not sure how long your work and breaks should be, you should time how long you can study without losing your focus and the moment you do stop the timer. Whatever number you get, you should use that to reference how long your study sessions should be. You can then calculate the length of your breaks by dividing your focus time by 5.

Incentive Delight

Having small rewards will also make sure you stay focused and make you work longer, as well. Incentives will motivate you to finish a task quicker and more efficiently, on the other hand, if it is a timed assignment. These can be a healthy snack of your choice or pieces of candy you can have after each focus session. Equipping this with your Pomodoro technique will boost the incentive trick further. If you do not have a lot of stamina for more extended periods of work, the small reward will motivate you to make sure you finish the timer, so make sure you can get it. It makes the reward all the more meaningful since you worked to get it.

You can also break up any of the homework you are given. You usually get a few days if not a whole week till the assignment is due. This means you can utilise the duration to your advantage. Rather than spending the entire day on your homework, you can plan and divide it depending on how many days you have till submission. An example of this is reading a little bit each day, will help you process the information. Instead of trying to get it over with, you want to absorb the knowledge and use it in the future.

Symbolic Writing

You should not write full sentences during class while taking notes; create a key for yourself that you will understand. This can be done in various ways, what matters is that the key is personal to you and you can understand it when you review it later on. For example, highlighting in pink means symbolism, and yellow indicates that it is essential information. These types of tricks will help you skim over the “fluff” of the writing and get to the main topic faster. Writing bullet points is a more effective use of your time. Try to avoid filler words on assignments, such as “very” “really” and “seriously” because it adds on more time. You want to give yourself a significant amount of time to complete other assignments. You can even take this further and create symbols for words to save you more time. Words such as “with” can be replaced with w/ and “without” being w/o. Implementing characters can also save you time so more time can be spent on understanding the concepts.

Tone down on Social media

The popularity of TikTok, Instagram, and other social media apps decreases student productivity. As a student, you want to eliminate these types of distractions. If you know that you have a big test tomorrow and want to study for it, put your phone across the room and set a timer for the amount of time you want to learn. Even 10 minutes without your phone can help you work faster so that you get your 5 minutes of rest. If you are still having trouble managing how to use your phone during studies or is continuously distracting you – please read our blog specifically dedicated to it.

Prioritising Sleep

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One of the most important things to remember is getting an adequate amount of sleep each night. Teenagers and adults should be getting at least 7-9 hours of sleep a night. Being productive in the day will allow you more time to sleep. Sleeping is vital to stimulating the brain during the day, promoting cognitive and memorisation skills, and it “recharges” our batteries. You need to make sure you always keep sleep as a number 1 priority. Compromising on sleep to finish off a piece of work which is not due in the immediate future will only hinder your progress for tomorrow. You can ensure you get the right amount of sleep by setting a “Work Curfew”. By placing a specific time if the nigh, let’s say 9 pm, you are setting yourself to not work on anything after 9 pm. Even if you sleep way later, you ensure your mind can have its comfort break to transition into sleep mode easily.