Improve Productivity And Efficiency!! (My Personal Growth Story As A Student)
Channel: Practical Inspiration - Personal Growth & Success
Date: 11/08/2021

We look at how to improve productivity and efficiency, using my personal growth story as a student, as a story time lesson! The purpose of this storytime is to understand how to increase productivity and improve your ability in problem solving. Many people want to improve productivity and time management and it's something I accidentally found some productivity hacks for back when I was a student. So by watching this you will learn how to improve your productivity and performance and some study tips (or productivity tips) that you can apply yourself!

So listen in on this story on a productive day in my life at college, and get be more productive with Practical Inspiration!

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Here I want to tell you about a story from my time at university. While arguably one of the most stressful and difficult experiences I remember in my life, it was one where I felt I learnt more about how focused effort influenced productivity when under pressure than any other. 

It was in my final year and students had to write a dissertation and on my course you also had to create a program on which your dissertation was based. 

Despite being on track, an overload of projects put me under immense pressure.

As a result I was working around the clock trying to juggle all of the projects and while I progressed through the others using methods of chunking and time blocking, completing my dissertation was proving to be a challenge. 

I'd got to a point of exhaustion and honestly couldn't solve one last problem in my code.

Then...I had the strangest experience. While sleeping the answer came to me, and it felt almost like a transcendental moment as I remember seeing my code floating in front of me and everything just aligned perfectly. The solution was there and I could see it!

I went straight to reworking my code and lo and behold...it worked!

So why did this happen?

Reticular Activating System

The Reticular Activating System, or RAS, is a bundle of nerves at our brainstem that filters out unnecessary information to allow us to focus on what's important to us. If we didn't have it, then we'd be overwhelmed by our senses at any given moment.

Our reticular activating system allows us to maintain focus on our work rather than get distracted from the little noise in the background.

Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex plays an important role in higher level cognitive processing, including planning, decision-making, self-control, acting with long-term goals in mind and problem-solving.

It's the last point that is of particular importance in this instance, as when you learn to focus your mind on a particular goal, then the combined efforts of the RAS and Prefrontal Cortex can help you find solutions to complex problems.

So learn to get focused efforts on those things you want to prioritise, learning and writing about the subject and keeping in the forefront of your mind what you intend to achieve. In addition to this give yourself rest and make sure to get high quality sleep to allow the brain to process the information you learn.

References...
Reticular Activating System - 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/veterinary-science-and-veterinary-medicine/reticular-activating-system#:~:text=The%20reticular%20activating%20system%20(RAS,awake%2C%20desynchronized%20cortical%20EEG%20patterns.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK549835/

Prefrontal Cortex - https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/2014/5/16/know-your-brain-prefrontal-cortex

REM Sleep - https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/stages-of-sleep

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