Four Ways to Get Things D.O.N.E. (No Motivation Required!)

Every semester, we all reach that point where doing literally anything sounds better than going to class or doing homework. Deep clean the bedroom? Let’s do it. Watch some YouTube DIYs for fall decorating? Heck yeah. Cardio? …Okay, no, don’t put us down for cardio. Here at Her Campus, we’ve compiled a list of strategies that will help you be more effecient in getting your schoolwork done. Read on to see what will work best for you!

1. Find your prime working time. 

Some people are night owls. Some people are early risers and wake up flawless, ready for the day (like Beyoncé). Some people are particularly fond of the afternoon. Whatever your most productive time is, schedule your biggest tasks for that time so you’ll get the most work done. If you’re not a morning person, don’t lie to yourself and say that you’re going to get up before your 8 a.m. exam to study…because you probably won’t. If you’re not a night owl, don’t plan on being at the library until 1 a.m…because you’ll fall asleep on your notebook and wake up having drooled on yourself in public. Awkward. 

2. Treat Yo’Self.

We’ve all seen the reading trick on Pinterest where you place gummy bears or other small treats on your reading material and eat them when you reach them in your reading. You can do anything from this to getting a manicure at the end of a hard week to letting yourself take a night off to reward yourself. Just always be mindful that your reward matches the task–answering one discussion post for your online class does not warrant taking the rest of the night off. If you need to, you can recruit a friend to keep you accountable. 

3. Be Honest!

It’s happened to everyone before–we gave ourselves way too little time to get something done and ended up scrambling (with Red Bull in hand and under-eye bags) towards the deadline. Be honest with yourself in terms of your capabilities. Not an English person? You may need a little more time to write that paper. Math makes you want to pull your hair out? Get your homework done during your prime-time and make sure to schedule a break or two for sanity’s sake. If you find yourself dreading a certain task, set a timer for 15-20 minutes and work on that task ONLY (no phone, no snack breaks) until the timer goes off. Take a short break, and then set the timer again and get back at it. Breaking a big task into smaller pieces will make it easier to manage, and you’ll breeze right through it–think “Elle Woods getting into Harvard” easy. 

4. Quit…sometimes. 

You read that right. I’m telling you to quit occasionally. There will be days when you are just not feeling it and that’s okay! As long as you’ve given yourself enough time to do the assignment (tips on how to do that are here), you’ll be safe to take a night off from it. This is actually beneficial to writing papers–give yourself a night off between finishing the paper and the due date, so that you can read over it with “fresh eyes” and catch any errors or awkward wording before it gets to your professor. Allowing yourself to be more than a paper-writing, equation-solving, critical-reading machine for a night is just as important as buckling down the rest of the time. So if you’ve been trying for 45 minutes to force yourself to write that thesis or read through a LearnSmart assignment and your brain is just 100000% done, it’s totally cool to put it away and forget about it for a couple of hours. 

• motivation
• productivity
• school