just a teen thing

Set times & plan your day

Not many people are going to work well without some structure. Waking up in the morning without any sense of direction for what needs to be done, or what you’re going to do that day is a recipe for disaster.

Start scheduling or setting daily milestones. If you don’t work best in the afternoons but you work well in the late evenings, plan around it. Do the homework late in the night.

The Right Sounds

Pop open iTunes and play an album you like, it is much easier to work with familiar sounds around you. Don’t listen to fast pumping music like pop, heavy rock, or techno. Settle down to some soft or piano rock, like the Postal Service, The Fray, Mae, or Waking Ashland. Their music is all very slow paced making it calming to work to.

Keep an organized to-do list

When you’re juggling a handful of subjects in school, you’re just asking for trouble by keeping a to-do list in your head. Don’t you want to be able to sit down in the evening and have a few worry-free hours from your work? If you’re not keeping a to-do list somewhere other than in your head, you’ll be heading straight for burnout.

The solution is simple. Pick up a notebook then spurt out all the tasks and you need to achieve. Don’t worry about the order, just pump out everything that needs doing. Once these are on paper, focus on organizing them. It’ll feel much better having a visual action list you can look at to see what needs to be done.

Quit MSN

This falls under focusing on a single task. When you’re studying, the last thing you need is to be distracted by people chatting with you on MSN. It disrupts your overall flow and makes starting your work again hard to do. On occasion, leaving MSN open while trying to get things done can ruin hours of your work day.

Focus on a single task

Multi-tasking can be fun, and can be rewarding. You think you’re getting a lot done at once, killing two birds with one stone when all you’re really doing is dragging out both tasks longer. Keep tasks separate. When you’re doing one ignore the other—allowing you to work more quickly and efficiently in the long run.

Do It Straight Away

Someone ask you to complete a quick task which will take less than five minutes to achieve? Instead of writing it down and leaving it for later, complete it right away. It saves hassle when they ask you if you’ve done what was asked of you, and reduces your stress. The phrase to remember, do it and it’s done.