How to Be A Productive Student | Master Study & Career Plans

1. How do I become a Productive Student?: Hello, everyone. My name is Francesco and welcome to this skill share class all about how to optimize your time as a student and really master everything inside and outside of college or university . This course will cover a range of different topics will go from everything from getting organized all the way to being a super student at maximizing your time. I'm really excited. As an ex student, I left university 1.5 years ago on. During that time, I was able to use a lot of my productivity skills and also tools to be able to save a lot of time as a student and I wanted to bring together. Of course, that will help you guys sharing some of the things I learned and also the mistakes I made along the way. This won't only just help the academic sign of your course. I wasn't very good academically. The aim off this course is to cover all aspects from your social life to your personal life , to your professional life as well, as well as including how to optimize your academic time to I'm very excited, guys, because this is something I've been putting together on my head for the last year and wanted to share it all in a course for you guys. So before you enroll, I wanted to go over some of the topics and categories that we're going to cover. The first is getting organized. Getting organized is very important, whether it's clearing your mind or clearing the desk in front of you being able to have that proactive approach when you're starting to plan ahead, optimizing the time is so important, and we're going to start with that in the first part of this course. We're then going to move on to planning ahead. We want to share with you guys a few techniques on how you can plan the next month and few weeks ahead, as well as some of your goals on routines. We then want to break things into actually doing things we want to share with you a few time management techniques as well as practices that will help you to save valuable time. Where that studying, applying for a job or building your portfolio, and finally frankness course we're going to recommend plenty of tools as well as providing you with all of the information you need to know to really maximize your time as a student . We're also going to show you some off the super student techniques. They were really supercharge you in case you want to go a step further than just what's already in the basics off this course. Now, if you're a student of, no matter what age, if you're eager and you're in high school or you're in college or university, I want to take advantage of this. I highly recommend that you enroll here today. If you are not interested, that's absolutely fine. We do plenty off on the stuff to keep productive. I was over host. Keep productive on YouTube, which is a YouTube channel dedicated to helping you find the most suitable productivity applications. It's free to become a subscriber, so subscribe today as well as enrolled in this class. I'm really excited to have you guys, so let's jump in 2. Getting Yourself Organized For Study and Work: So it is great to have you enrolled here on this class. I'm very excited, and I'm looking forward to going through everything with you guys. So as you can imagine, being student can be pretty daunting. Whether you're fresh off this block and you just joined university or college or you're a high schooler, whatever the situation, whether you're one or two or three or four years into everything, it can be pretty daunting. And the weirdest thing is as well is getting organized because you might not necessarily have ever bean organized or have found it pretty stressful when it comes to organization. So we're gonna show you a few techniques that might help you. When it comes to organizing your digital on physical spaces, we're going to start with physical space. Physical space is really important. When you're a student, you might have everything everywhere, and that can be very stressful, especially when it comes to later. In the course, when we talk about planning and actually doing things, you can seem distracted or even your mind clotted by the stuff around you, and that can make a huge impact. Our first recommendation is actually to dedicate two hours a two hour blanc. This could be after lectures. Or this could be over. Weekend toe actually dedicate time to cleaning our room. This could be the act of shutting yourself in your room on actually focusing without any interruptions on getting forwards cleaned up. Also, anything unnecessary interview room. This could be anything from old, close to things that you've been keeping hold of. The goal of this isn't necessarily to clean your room on a regular basis, although that's very good if you're a student. The goal of this is to really help you declutter the mind and get ready to organize yourself when it comes to the academic personal on the professional side off your life, so you probably have a lot of paper that is a wrap dotted around your desk or even in your drawer. The first thing I would do is not necessarily to organize. It is to place it in one location. The goal is to have some form of in box where you can store all of your things in one place , and then you can process them and organize them later. This is something that is referred to his HGTV Getting Things Done, a book by David Alan and has been a very popular technique in being able to process routine items so it can imagine a lot of you guys. The students have ipads have laptops, maybe even a chromebook. And you've got all of your digital stuff there because lectures ascending new staff, you've gotta download stuff from a portal on many different other things. I remember getting a lot of digital stuff when I was a student and making sure that digital signed ISAS organized is your physical side is so important. So now you've got a big pile of all of the papers that you need to sort. It is important to make sure that you also have your digital side organized. So what we recommend doing is using a service like Google Drive or one drive to store and back up all of your data and files that is available now. Many universities do provide access to one of these. For example, a student might have access to one drive on a particular storage limit, but if you wanted, access is outside of university for your own needs, then you get about 15 gigabytes per package, which is plenty for you to get started adding files and documents. So to get your folder started, we recommend starting with four simple folders, and we're gonna call them personal, social, academic and professional. These air the majority of areas you win to rack with during your life as a student, and that's important. You need to be able to manage and monitor and keep hold of any digital files that irrelevant to all of these. So the first thing to do when it comes to digitally organizing ourselves is clear. Your desktop. This could be the space around your desktop. Start organizing all of those flowers and digitally put them on Google Drive or one drive. This will save you a lot of space and de clutter the space you're working in a swell. So now you've started to organize yourself digitally with the folders inside of Google Drive or one drive on. You've also got those papers in front of you, so the one thing you can do is begin taking photos of all of the documents that you have in hand, getting rid of un any unnecessary ones. For example, let's say you've got receipts from like a year ago, but you still have some. Warrant your information on it. Take a photo of them on at them into your Google drive storage. This might potentially go in your personal area, but a leaf you've got it is a back up, and you can get rid of the physical version. If it's more important, like a Mac book receipts, you need to keep hold of Apple. Then you can take a photo of this and have a digital backup of worst Case scenario. So scanning any physical stuff into Google Drive or one drive is important. Now you're probably wondering, OK, that's cool. I've got a lot of documents already added there, and I'm starting to and all of those unsorted ones. Now the goal is to keep yourself digitally organized and physically organized. This might be your opportunity to transition to digital note taking Now. For this, we recommend something called Evernote, or one note Evidence is a personal note taking service and will allow you to start adding lecture notes, organize them into notebooks and really keep ahead off your lecture notes and have them all in one place. You can also scan in any of those unsorted notes that you have in front of you and that will allow you to quickly add them all up for later inside of Evernote. You can also do this would one drive to and it will provide you with window to see everything that you've got and you're working on. Okay, so now you've really trimmed down the lecture notes and also some of documents or receipts or general bits of paper in side of your room. That is fantastic. You look around you and go, your room is a little bit cleaner. You've minimized and d clotted on some of the desktop space as well as a new digital desktop to it's important to then look at all of your notes and put them in a folder you need to sort them into different areas. For example, it could be per module, or, if you feel more comfortable, you can August organize them exactly how you organize your Google drive personal, academic, professional and social. So any new notes that become added don't necessarily have to be physical ones. You could start potentially using digital notes inside of Evernote and storing any documents or backups inside of Google Drive or one drive. So it becomes an opportunity for you to really take your stuff and get digitally and physically organized guys. So now your room is fairly clear. You've got your new Google Drive folder storage that is absolutely fantastic. And also you're starting to and your notes to Evernote as a popular service or even one note that is absolute great. So a next recommendation is really to brain dump, and this is an activity that you can use within a three piece of paper. Willing. Also include a worksheet that you can print off as an a 41 that would allow you to do the same activity. But all you can do is start adding all of the notes or ideas or events or meetings or times and activities. Also, any reminders, tasks, actions, things that you need to do that you are currently storing in your brain. Now the goal of this is to really get everything down on paper will come back to this later . We'll recommend a to do list application later on in his course, so you have a personal note taker and also a to do list application that will help you to organize all of your time. So, guys, I'm really excited to dive into next section, which is planning ahead, and we're gonna talk about some really popular areas. And we're also going to talk about how to plan your timeline ahead and also make sure your optimizing your time in university as well as optimizing your career and future potential. So, guys, I really look forward to it. Let's time to next section. 3. Planning Ahead with Milestones and Your Task Manager: so guys, we're gonna focus on planning ahead and something that I really tried to do it. University was make sure to take advantage of the time that I had. I had a four year period of university and really wanted to make sure it was planning my career as well as trying to hit academic grades as well. So I want to talk to you guys a little bit about milestones as well as planning your month ahead and using a certain app for that. So let's dive into that now. To start with the final activity let we left you with was a brain dump. This was an activity that you could do on a regular basis and will help you to build up your to do list application, which will reference in this video on also provide you with the ability to know Take now, this is a technique again referred to in the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. We recommend doing a brain dump at least every single week. We can't recommend this enough because students on I know a lot of students who did brain dumps found that it really helped to reduce stress because they weren't necessarily overthinking the situations in their head like what they needed to do, the dates that they were planning for coursework and all that other stressful emotional stuff. It's important to have that down on paper, so actually, having a brain dump on a routine basis is so valuable. So, guys, let's first talk about milestones, milestones of very important. And of course, I know a lot of people who went to university didn't actually know what they wanted to do outside of university. But the great thing about university and college and high school even is actually make sure to take advantage of the time to experiment with a lot of the different things you could be doing. So your opportunities are really endless while you're at university or college, and making sure to take advantage of the time is valuable. So the first thing that we recommend doing is setting out some milestones is setting out some goals that you want to achieve in the next five years. Now, five years might seem absolutely ages away, and I can guarantee you it will be a different plan to this. I remember when I did find the amount stone planning when I was in my first year in Indiana University. When I look back at it now, I'm like, OK, I'm doing something totally different, but you can naturally creep along and test different things walls to at this stage of your life. Good thing is, is you're not necessarily tied down to anything. So it is an opportunity for you to fail some Prigioni for you to grow an opportunity for you to learn to, because you can take advantage off a lot of the different learning abilities. You have a university. So what we recommend doing is getting a bit of a three paper and starting to plan of where you would like to see yourself in five years. This could be very general. We've got a few examples below, but also, if this seems a bit overwhelming, you could do the exact same thing with a 90 day period of time. That's three months. Where do you see yourself in three months? Where would you like to be in three months? On what opportunities would you like to take? That could be absolutely anything from learning Japanese or taking advantage of a course or a new career opportunity that you like to see or even an internship. This is opportunity for you to write down exactly what you want to do in the next three months. Now the more specific you are with these goals, the better your results. For example, let's say you come back to that learning Japanese. You're not gonna learn Japanese and three months, but actually having a goal is important. So maybe you want to learn and speak within native speaker for 50 minutes. That's more of an actionable goal. So instead of writing learning Japanese put, I would like to speak with a native speaker in Japanese for 15 minutes. That is a nice action will go on. We'll set you up with more of a definitive goal at the end of the thing, which means you've got to organize a core with a Japanese native speaker. Honestly, I can't tell you enough how valuable having milestones is. And even if the worst comes to worst, you don't hit these milestones. You can change an update these every three months and also yearly if you want to, providing yourself with a window of what you were thinking in that period of time will also help your progression. For example, I looked back when I was at university to the previous year and I went OK. My goals were a lot weirder, and I got the opportunity to really evaluate how was making progress and also see how I was doing if I was still on track with one or two of those goals. OK, so now you've got your a few of your milestones down and a few of you goals down, then it's absolutely fantastic. And remember, it can span all across the board, whether that's grades, finances and even professional goals to now you're moving on to your next month, your next month really important. Next 30 days were really put you in good stead and organize yourself in a bit of a batter. Fashion is so important now we recommend the note taker last time, so you have a no take already. Hopefully, Evernote or one drive are fantastic. Options have included a link to a video. We've done about 10 other no takers, which could be very useful. You've also got Google Drive and one driver story backups and creating documents that's going to be very useful when it comes to collaborative work at university or college. Now we're onto planning your next month ahead. So grab that bit of paper that you did brain dump on and open or download in the application called to do it. The likes of tick tick Google Task monks off to do are all popular alternatives, and you can find them listed below, and they will provide you with the ability to start tallying what task you need to do per day. So, for example, what you need start doing it. Start adding a few of the task that you put in your big brained up. Get everything organized for the next month ahead. Now I've done a full video in. To do it. You can find a new tube, so if you want to go a bit deeper on this or any other to do this application, you'll probably find a video there. I can't tell you how valuable a to do this application has been to many of the students I've spoken to. They've actually downloaded it and being able to plan and organize all of their stuff, whether they're overdue on some items or whether they're getting stressed out, they can it alter to do it, store another such application and provide them with a little bit more clarity. It would take the mental stress of reminding yourself to do a task to actually really take it to the next step in terms of putting it down on paper and proving your odds of completing it. So guys, in the next section, we're gonna talk about the actual act and techniques that you can use four doing things in your daily routine. So, guys, I'm excited. Let's dive into that picture. 4. Optimizing Your Time at College/University: so so far, we've talked about de cluttering your space, getting yourself digitally organized with Google Drive on Evernote, and that can really save you time. We've also recommended to get a to do list application, which will help you to plan your next month ahead. And now what we'd like to do is dive into how to optimize your to do this application and also introducing another application, which brings together three of the apse that you use on a daily basis. So naturally recommended your to do list application. There are plenty off them. You could even use an app like Apple Reminders or other acts like Task Aid, which will provide you with a great boost application. But when you're actually planning ahead, it's important to actually see the events and activities that you have. So to begin. Let's talk about how to optimize your to do list application that to do this application honestly is one of the most valuable things in your daily routine. You can literally plan hourly how you're going to spend your day and ticket off and get a bit of dopamine release once you progress for its now, it's very important to keep your to boost application regularly updated with tasks, whether they're social, academic, professional or personal. When you've got introduced application and let's say you have a report that's drew in next Wednesday and, for example, the essay is 1500 words, and you're like, Okay, if I'm right 1500 words on this week or actually said it today on do Day, I'm gonna freak out because I'm gonna have to do that all at once. There's nothing saying that on this to do this application, all any two duce applications. You can break it down, for example, breaking into 250 words or 500 words or 750 words. Whatever it is, it will provide it with a chunk herbal approach to your work, and also you feel less stressed in advance to the deadline. Now, for example, let's say from Monday to Friday you ended 250 words or 500 words per day. You could get it done by the end of that week versus actually doing it for the deadline. So when you're adding tasks, use a due date area as your start date, so that the actual task appears on the day that you need to do it on now. Naturally, a to do list application will take your time to get used to. We highly recommend spending time with it, learning how to use it to the best effectiveness for your daily routine. Now you can even add habits to a lot of to do this application. So, for example, let's say you go for a run every Friday at 3 p.m. You can add that inside of the Judeh every Friday at three PM and that will repeat, and you could take off that task there. Now, the second part of this, I want to dive into a calendar application. Now, of course, we have our note taker. We have our task manager are note taker, helps us to organize all of our notes and also reference information. A task manager helps us to get all our to do lists and two DUIs or listed out, ready for the week ahead when you're planning ahead. But a calendar applications would just help you see what's coming up. Now we recommend a host of different calendar applications. You could use a simple apple calendar, which is also called aikau. Or you could use an alternative called Google Calendar. Now Google Calendar is great because if in the future you want to use it for work, that's going to save you a lot of time and effort. Because a lot of actual companies use Google Calendar and you can still send invites through your Gmail account. So what you need to do is take that brain dump on all of the events and activities to your calendar. Okay, so now you better understand your to do list application and your calendar. It's important to look at your techniques when it comes to studying, revising and also doing work for professional situations. Now you want to make the most of your time at university, so actually spending it in study and focus study is very important and study our revision that isn't necessarily effective will lose you time. For example, I remember getting copious amounts of visits to the library where I would spend not enough time studying on more time talking. Where is those? Times were good and we did enjoy yourself. It lost time when it came to actually revising and making the most out of the grades. Now. One thing I recommend doing is to be a bit more focused when you go studying. Now there is a technique that you canoes that will use 25 minutes of focused work on also five minutes off. This is commonly referred to as the Pomodoro technique, and it was something that was developed in the 19 eighties by Francesco Chile Law. Now, this technique allows you to do 25 minutes of focused work, then have a five minute break. And these Air Corps Pomodoro cycles it will allow you to be focused, allow you to keep focusing on your work during that 25 minutes. But as soon as they're up and he's organized, uninterrupted periods of times as well as breaks will help me to work towards your golf. So that's just one of the many methods and techniques you can use. So hopefully it could take you with your studying to a new level. Okay, guys said that next feature, we're going to be talking about the talk it that you can go away with. We're gonna recommend you are hosted different amps. Then we're gonna don't live into super student and how to really supercharge your time being a student. So guys join me in a neck segment to talk all about that. 5. Your Core App Toolkit: All the Software You'll Need: Okay, guys. So we are into the talk. It's segment and all scores were going to recommend plenty of APS for you to go away and download naturally. Absolute solve. Everything is really your technique and approach to everything. One Stan was at university. I used a lot of APS to help, but really, the things that helped me was making sure I invested my time effectively. That's where the super student area will help in the next second. So let's start with the apse. We've already recommended you a personal note taking application. We recommended Evernote or one note it's so important to have a note taker. Digital note taker will help you to provide all of the information you need to meet at a glance. So, for example, if you're using evidence on the go, you can take notes for no matter what area it is. Now you can organize your notebooks inside of that to appear as personal, academic, professional and social until you have a better organization system. You could, for example, organize your modules that you're studying in class in two different notebooks, and that might help you get started. But honestly, as a student, previously unused Evidence Round University to help organize my work. And I know many people who used one note because of the many effective sketching abilities and also other organization abilities that saved them huge amounts of time. And the great thing is, you don't necessarily have to put all off the academic stuff inside of there. You can put, for example, and had had health house information. Financial information also had, you know, for example, electoral information that was part of the area so I would actually make advantage and take advantage off the notebook. Storage now Ever know provides you with 16 megabytes per file. Evident provides you with Muchas you need, I think, to get started. But they do have a student plan if you're interested. So the second thing was having a task manager. When it comes to university or college, having a task manager will save you valuable time, and there are so many of them you could use from to do ist, tick tick task aid and even Microsoft to do or even Google task. There are so many out there and will include useful videos below and also as a final piece of the puzzle. We recommended Google Calendar or Apple Calendar as your calendar application. You can use all of these in tandem every single day, for example, notes to take notes, elections task to start action ing stuff or taking stuff out off pieces of work that you need to do and also finally, to organize any events and activities where that social or with your lecturer So some of the additional laps we'd like to recommend our Pomodoro APs. You confined most of these on the APP store so you can actually search Pomodoro and find some useful Pomodoro apse, which will get you started with that technique and process. So we also recommend you find some distraction free blockers as well. For example, if you'll tend to buy social media, you could use, for example, Apple's own IOS 12 AP limiter. So, for example, you can say applicants to each of the apse that you use, which will save the huge amount of time, I promise, especially if you regularly visit Instagram, Twitter or Facebook during the time you study or provide. There are other and plenty APS that help you to distract. Then you can find them a lot of them on the Google Chrome Web store or in Firefox. There are someone safari but mawr on the likes of Google, Chrome or Firefox. So guys, there a few APS We'll put together a full list. Um said Do not worry. There will be available below. Now is the time to talk all about super student in the next segment. This will help you to really take advantage of your time and hopefully help you think outside of the box when you're a student. So, guys, I look forward to you joining me, then I'll see you guys in a sec. 6. Become the Super Student with these Helpful Tips: Okay, guys. So this segment is reserved, really? For those who want to take their student experience to next level. Now, I know this isn't for everyone. I know a lot of students in university who just want to do enjoy their time, get the grades and come out of it. And that is definitely an achievement. Of course you're coming out with a grade on. Naturally, if you're applying for anything that you want, where that's a job or something else you're working on, that's fantastic. And I definitely applaud that. But for many students, sometimes that three year period can go very slowly and you want to take more advantage of your time. So the first thing I would recommend doing is to double up on your milestones. What do you want to do? What do you want to experiment with? I remember when I started university within the first year I created a business on we were actually involved outside of university on this business that was actually developing contracts for different workshops for other universities. And honestly, I would take that getting myself out of that comfort zone and of that university or college nests that they build for you is very important. Taking yourself out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. That doesn't necessarily have to be for starting a business, But it could be. For example, let's say you have a creative passion and you are able Teoh tied. I close or or you're able to create small necklaces or bracelets. Whatever you do, you can actually go outside of the university network. For example. I know Meet Up is a very popular, useful group sites. For example, you could find a group that shares an interest with you that you could go and join. There's also a Ben Bryant for any events that you could attend outside of that. And you gotta read, Take advantage of that time that you have. I remember attending a lot of stuff that I thought wouldn't make sense. But in like five years, it actually has makes sense. I also attended a lot of live webinars and useful courses online. You may have found this course on skill share, but there are plenty more out there like this that will touch on the subject or topic that you're working on it university. The second thing I like to talk about is thinking outside of the box. Many students go in with the approach that they do everything the university tells him to come out with a competitive advantage. And that's not necessarily true. When you're at university, you are in a pall of students that going to be competing for the same job. And even if you don't think the chap next to you is gonna be the competitive chap or you're fighting against your friends, that's not necessarily the case. That's the argument, and it's just a perception. But the thing that you need to do is to make sure that you're taking yourself well beyond the standard that they set. The standard they set is, I would say, fairly low at university level and college level. You want to take yourself far above, and the way to do that is to take yourself out of the picture on actually do things that not many other students do. So, for example, during your university time, you could create your own side project, whether that's your own blawg or your own YouTube channel, or even something outside of this, you could be learning about how to sell on eBay or Amazon or many other resources that are digitally available to you Now, even if you want to follow a more traditional academic route, you could be scoring internships with solicitors or internships outside of it. For example, if you wanted to go to animal care or zoology, scoring an internship or part time work with the local zoo, making sure that you're thinking ahead and trying to take more advantage of your time is so important. No, naturally, all of this stuff can be pretty stressful, like you maybe have listed a few things in its course that you're like, Actually, I want to do that, actually want to get ahead, actually want to take advantage of all my time. But it's not necessarily all about that. During my time for university, I spent a lot of time missing out on a lot of social opportunities that I can't get back now. But the thing is, you have to work out and balance up okay, social time versus time that I could be investing in my professional life, and I definitely got enough time to enjoy myself university or college. But its that important weighing up. So you want to be able to feel happy but also doing it. So make sure that you do dedicate time to social life because that's very important and also time to mental health as well. This is a topic that not many people cover during university and college. I did spend a lot of time meditating on also getting enough sleep and some periods time I wasn't getting enough sleep, and that definitely had an impact on all of different aspects of my life. So what I recommend is really take your mental health into appreciation. You, of course, might be a really motivated person. If you found this course, chances are and you're actually doing this one. Chances are you're actually maybe a bit ahead of the curb when it comes to stuff. But you really need to make sure you you're playing the long game in terms of like resting your body, making sure you have enough time. Personally, I remember university being very pale looking in my first few years because I wasn't focusing on my diet and actually taking more time into the longer term. Things can really save you time, so putting your time into the long term. Things like your health and die in all of that stuff will actually pay huge dividends in the future. On will really help you win above many other students. So, guys, I have a few recommend reads. I think you'd like the 1st 1 I'd recommend is Linchpin by Steph Golden. I think anyone can read this and really take advantage of all the learnings from it, it tells you and shares with you. How do you really take yourself outside off university life? I also recommend that you watch a lot of YouTube videos from people who were doing things and actively working on companies doing the thing that you love. For example, if you want to go and work as a solicitor research and see who is talking about it on YouTube because that's a very popular network for that on also attend this many networking events is you can, although make sure they're very specific and important to the area. Your focus in on one of things that I'd say is well, is a Steve Jobs quote that always helped me is you can never connect the dots looking forward, but you can connect them looking backwards. And that's important because when you do look back and when I look back At the time of university and college, I had a generally look back and go OK, I actually made some good decisions versus during the time I was like Stressful didn't what decisions I was making. And when I look back, it all looks like it tallied up fine, like I was doing it professionally. But you can only do that when you look back. So don't be too stressed about whether you're making decisions as long as they're stepping forward. Thank you so much for taking its course. Guys, I really appreciate you stopping by lemon. Oh, in the feedback How you found this course. Maybe I'll be doing a part two very soon, digging into more detail, digging into tools and also something that might be value. So feel free to leave any feedback you want. If you want to describe one YouTube, you can describe that to and also enjoy all of the other courses that we have here on school ship. So guys really appreciate it and thank you so much. Email me any time at Francesco keep productive outcome and unhappy reply and hear out your story. So, guys, thanks very much. I don't see you guys very seen.