4 Productivity Hacks That Will Let You Get More Done in Nursing School

Getting through the nursing school can be challenging. Sometimesit can feel as though there just isn't enough time to finishall your assignments and study and then take on all the other things involved in living life. For somepeople, being productive and getting more done comes tothem naturally. For others, it is a skill that needs to be practiced every day until they can find the best method for improving productivity that works best for them.

People who manage to get more accomplished every day, aren't superhuman, but instead, they've been able to master a few simple habits that have provided them with a boost in productivity. The good news is that anybody can improvetheirproductivitywith therighttechniquesandstrategies.

You can actually leave work or school feeling more satisfied andfulfilled with what you've accomplished. All it takes is a fewproductivityhacksto help getyou there.

While you probably know a few tips for improving yourproductivity, like keeping your desk organized and gettingeight hours of sleep a night, there are so many other thingsthat you can be doing to guarantee a boost in your dailyproductivity. Here are five productivity hacks that can helpyougetmore done in lesstime.

1)Implement the Pomodoro Technique  

The Pomodoro Technique helps to train your brain to focus for short periods and helps you remain on top of deadlines and can even improve your attention span and concentration. The methodology of this technique is simplewhen you are faced with an enormous task or series offunctions, you break down the work into short, timedintervals, called Pomodoros, that are spaced out with shortbreaks. It is a cyclical system where you work in shortspurts, which ensures you remain productive while takingshort breaks that help to bolster your motivation and helpstokeep you creative.

The Pomodoro Technique is probably one of the moststraightforward techniques to implement because all youneed is a timer. Beyond that, you don't need to use anyunique apps, tools, or books. Here's how to get startedusingthePomodoroTechnique toboostyourproductivity.

1.  Choose a subject that you want to complete.

2.  Setyourtimerfor25minutes.

3.  Work on the task until the timer expires, then put acheckon a sheetofpaper.

4.  Take a short break, usually around5 minutes.

5.  After your break, set the timer for 25 minutes and starttheprocessagain.

6.  After your fourth cycle, take a more extended break,usuallyaround 25 minutes.

7.  Start the process again.

Completing the process several times throughout yourworkday will help you accomplish more. It is essential tounderstand that a Pomodoro is a unit of work that can't bedivided. That means that if you become distracted duringyour 25-minute session of work, you either have to end thePomodoro early and restart it later, or you need to postponethedistraction until later.

 2)Utilize Parkinson’s Law       

The famous British historian and author stated, in 1995, thatwork expands to fill the time available for its completion. Inthe realm of productivity, this has become known asParkinson’s Law. Parkinson had worked in the British CivilServiceand saw first-hand how bureaucracy works.

Bureaucracy is itself a by-product of our culture, thanks to the limiting belief that spending more time working is some how better than working smarter and faster.

When it comes to Parkinson's Law, it means that if you giveyourself a week to finish a two-hour task, then the task willincrease in complexity and will become even more dauntingin order to fill the week. The job may not even take a weekto accomplish, but the extra time will be filled with morestress and tension about having to complete it. When you can assign the right amount of time to your tasks, you can gain back more time, and the task will ultimately reduce in complexity.

One way to utilize Parkinson’s Law to improve your productivity is known as running against the clock.To implement this idea into your nursing school schedule, you need to make a list of the tasks that you need to complete. Divide the tasksup by the amount of time that it will take you to achievethem. Then give yourself half that time to complete eachtask. For this to work, you have to see accomplishing the task in the given time as crucial. You need to treat each ofthese time limits as any of your other deadlines. Part of reversing the thought that you have to work harder, not smarter, is to see the deadlines that you set for yourself as  unbreakable, just like the deadlines that are set by your boss or professors. 

When you first implement this technique, it will be partiallyan exercise in figuring out how accurate your projects are orthe tasks on your list. Some of your time projections will be accurate, and you won't be able to beat the clock when you cut the time allotment in half, so you'll need to experiment with different times until you find something that works.

3)The Five-Minute Rule for Beating Procrastination                        

One of the biggest obstacles to our productivity is our innateability to procrastinate. Most people tend to procrastinate atthe beginning of a project out of fear or uncertainty, andsometimes it’s a combination of both. To overcome theunclear or daunting start of our work projects is to giveyourself a five-minute rule for getting started. So how does the five-minute rule work?

As stated before, most procrastination is caused by eitherfear or uncertainty. Even if you are motivated to finish atask, fear of failure, criticism, or stress, ends up pitting usagainst ourselves. While we may want to complete the project, you also don't want your fear to become a reality.This conflict makes it seem as though it would be unwise or impossible to move forward in accomplishing the task. This explains why we often tend to procrastinate even when it doesn’t make any sense.

The five-minute rule works to lower that inhibition and lullsus into the idea that we can quickly dip our toes in a projectwith no strings attached. This allows you to reconsider your engagement in a task after the initial five minutes of work. This, in turn, can increase your feeling of being in control and providing you the ability to make an autonomous decision, rather than feeling like you are being forced to do something that you don't want to do.

This tactic will also lower what psychologists refer to as thecost of an activity. This includes the emotional cost,opportunity costs, and effort costs. Our motivation to engage in the action, after we've worked on it for five minutes ,increases while our costs decrease.

The real intrigue of the rule though is why we continue towork after the allotted time has expired, once we've startedto work. This is partly due to our expectations about howyou'll feel during an activity are imprecise. Once you've started on a task, you often end up with a more positive attitude about the task at hand. So, if you are suffering from procrastination, merely start a task and work on it for five minutes and see how quickly it creates a boost in your productivity.

4) Apply the 80/20 Rule           

Vilfredo Pareto originally developed the Pareto Principle orthe 80/20 Rule. As an Italian economist, he determined that 80 percent of the world's wealth is owned by 20 percent of the population, while the remaining 20 percent is owned by 80 percent of the population. Not only does this rule apply to economics, but it can also be used in other aspects of your life, including your productivity or lack thereof.

The 80/20 rule states that 80 percent of your results, comesfrom just 20 percent of your efforts. This doesn't mean that while in nursing school one day a week and give it a 20 percent shot and then leave, The 80/20 rule has nothing  to do with time. Instead, it is suggesting that you need to focus your efforts and work harder in the areas that matter most while accepting that it is okay to let the smaller stuff slide from time to time.

You can apply the Pareto Principle to all aspects of your lifeand dramatically increase your productivity. When it comes to using this principle to your daily to-do list, or to conquer nursing school assignments you want to tackle two or three of your most significant projects ,commitments, or tasks first. Rather than spending your timeon the smaller, trivial tasks, you need to use your energyand time to complete the more significant items on your to-do list. Take the time to prioritize them and recognize thatyou are doing so because those tasks will more than likelygiveyou 80 percentofwhatyou want.

You can take it even further to increase your productivityeven more. The 80/20 rule states that when you’re working for a long time on a task, you’ve most likely hit a majority of your goal after expelling 20 percent of your effort. This doesn’t mean that you should only spend 20 minutes on a task and then call it a day. For example, if you’re writing a nursing theory paper, you may break down the process of writing an article into five individual steps.

1.  Write the draft.

2.  Look for grammatical errors.

3.  Find references for the paper

4.  Correctly format it for the web.

5.  Submit.

The 80/20 Rule states that you'll get the majority of your results from 20 percent of your effort. More than likely ,writing the draft will give you the most significant return on your effort. This means that the smaller details of the task will only account for 20 percent of your outcome, which means that while they are essential, you shouldn't stress or waste your time worrying about them.

When you focus your efforts on the tasks that will give you the most substantial return, you can increase your productivity and get more done in less time.

 Bonus:  StopMultitasking                 

While multitasking seems like a good way to get more donein less time, it is something that can actually kill yourproductivity. When you multitask, you may believe that you are accomplishing a lot at once, but research has shown that our brains aren’t nearly as good at handling multiple tasks as we think. Recent studies have shown that multitasking can actually reduce your productivity by as much as 40 percent.

So, what is it that makes multitasking so detrimental to yourproductivity? While it might seem like you are accomplishinga lot at the same time, what’s really happening is that youare quickly shifting your attention and focus from one task tothe next. When you quickly switch from one thing to another, it can make it extremely difficult for your brain to tune out the distractions around you and can cause mental blocks to slow down your progress.

Recent research has shown that when you switch from onetask to the next, your productivity takes a severe hitbecause your brain has to continually shift and refocuswhich takes precious time. What's worse is that the morecomplex the task, the more time that you lose when you tryto multitask. So, if you want to increase your productivity, you have to stop multitasking and start focusing your attention and energy on completing a single task at a time.

Conclusion                               

Improving your productivity isn't a difficult task to accomplish. All it takes is creating the right habits that will allow you to get more done in less time. These five productivity hacks are simple to implement into your daily routine and will help you to improve your productivity dramatically.