How To Stay Productive During Your M.sc / Master’s Degree

How To Stay Productive During Your M.sc / Master’s Degree

To begin with, I will not be talking about any rocket science here. There are a couple of things which you need to practice so that the outcome will not just be positive, it will be rewarding. And you will not just look back and feel like an achiever but also believe in your future. This is why you must read this article on How To Stay Productive During Your M.sc / Master’s Degree until the end to make the most out of it.

College days are one of the most beautiful days every teenager cherish for. During your bachelor’s you may feel like hey, it’s all right not to study! Hey, it’s alright, to bunk classes! Sometimes you will also feel Hey, it’s alright to bunk the exams also! But trust me, if you stay productive during your bachelor’s and master’s, you are going to rock throughout your life.

Proper planning and strategy have helped humans to reach the moon and very soon will be on Mars too. And here you are still struggling in your masters. Why? Because you are not planning to be productive.

So let’s go

through some points which will help you stay productive during Your Masters.

Maintain a daily to-do list

Now, what is a to-do list everybody knows! It’s something that makes you plan for the day and the next day. It helps you chalk out a list of things you want to accomplish for the day. You can always write a to-do list of next day in the night itself Or maybe the next day in the morning as soon as you wake up. There are several apps in the play store which you can use to build a to-do list for yourself. If you have a smartphone you can always use Google Keep.

The idea behind maintaining a to-do list is to make you ready so that you can spend your day efficiently, and take essentials steps day by day to reach your prime goal.

Put away your smartphone while studying

Now when your previous generation used to study, they didn’t have the leverage of a smartphone and the internet so frequently like you. Remember a smartphone is something which can make you as well as destroy you, it’s totally your choice how you use it. If you use it in the right manner, it will help you, but if you use it in the wrong manner, it will hurt you! It will injure you! If you are using the smartphone to research the internet about something which you are studying, No problem! But when you are studying, put away all the apps which distract you like WhatsApp, emails, Facebook, Instagram its a strict NO NO!

Lack of self-study everyday

It is often seen that most of the students do not study on a daily basis, and they keep postponing writing their practical records till the end. Consequently, they will just copy from records of the toppers or their friendly seniors and believe me even the readings of experiments will be copied. But during exams, during Viva sessions, they will fumble and will fail to answer the questions. This is because they don’t study every day, they postpone things, pile up their studies for the end day of the exam.

You cannot grow a plant in a single day by just flooding it with water, it will take its own time. Your brain is like a plant it must be watered with knowledge every day for that you must study every day.

Prioritizing Your Work

Now prioritizing is all about decision making. So if you are very good in making decisions, you will be able to prioritize.

Let’s take up a situation Here: You have a couple of things to do today. One of them is going for a movie other is writing your assignment and another is studying for a crucial test, which is coming next week. How do you prioritize?

Decision making is a skill you need to develop yourself. Most of the students are not able to decide what is important what not. And this is where some friends will come and say, hey, let’s go for the movie and then you will end up prioritizing the movie. There’s no harm in watching movies. In fact, whenever you get bored of studies, you must watch movies. My point here is, you will have all of your life to watch movies but these foundation days of career will not come back.

So before taking a decision look at your schedule, and prioritize things on the basis that how it helps you increase your productivity. If completing that assignment is important when preparing for that exam, which is their next week then strategize accordingly. If you plan properly you will be able to do both in time. Hence Prioritizing and Decision-making skills play a very important role early in your career.

Finish those work first, which can be completed faster

Whenever you have a to-do list, you should try to finish those task first, which can be completed faster. For example, you have 12 chapters to study. And you know that the first three chapters are very long while the last ones are a little easy. So you must finish the last three fast, thus you will end up finishing 25% of the syllabus. By this method, your confidence level will always boost instantly.

Avoid studying late at night

I know I’m getting into a lot of controversies by saying that a lot of students say that, hey, I get peacetime only at night. So I’ll study only at night. You must be preferring studying at night because there are a lot of distractions in the daytime, which directly means you are studying in a crowded environment.

Research has proved that working at night affects & alters your DNA, your hormones don’t work in sync. And that is where you will have hormonal problems in the future. And being a life science student you should know that playing with the hormones is something like a house of cards if one falls the entire system falls. It works similar to a negative feedback loop mechanism. And that is why you should avoid setting into late at night. Instead, look for a place where you will be distraction free during the day.

Make monthly goals and targets

Setting up a goal is very very important. You can have two types of goal- short term goal & long term goal. Short term goals can be weekly goals like I have to finish up by lab record and any particular topic this week at any cost. Long terms monthly goals can be made pertaining to the upcoming tests & exams. Make sure your monthly goal also has tasks like learning new lab skills, networking with your seniors and other members who are already at the peak of their research career.

I have seen a lot of students who do create monthly goals and weekly targets but they do not achieve those because they fail to prioritize their work, they fail to put their smartphones away, they fail to a create a daily to-do list.

Stop Running Away From College After 3 PM

8 out of every 10 students have a tendency to run away from college immediately after classes get over. Well, you need to stop this behavior immediately in order to have a successful career. I know it becomes extremely tiring attending lectures and standing in labs all day. But think once this is the only time when the college libraries and labs will be free of all distractions. Why not use this time to your favor? Spend some time in the library and try to learn something new or at least be prepared for the next lecture in advance, by this you will be able to churn out more benefit from the next lecture. Spend some time in the Lab to work on the experiments that went wrong, figure out the mistakes. These habits will not only make you stand out of the crowd, but it will also lead the foundation for a better future for yourself.

WARNING: By practicing these things, you will be called a NERD by your classmates & friends, but that’s a compliment right! If being NERDY will fetch you a six-figure salary or more in future then be proud to be called as a NERD.

Plan for your future

Freeze certain time slots per day and assign it to study and research about your future, your future career. This means every day maybe one or two hours you should spend time with the internet, searching answers for questions like – What can you do after you complete your masters, What are the companies & institutes you can get a job in immediately after your course completion, What extra skills and certification courses you require to get your dream job, How should you prepare for competitive exams, How you can attend mock interviews and many such questions. This will help you be future ready.

So I hope you understood the above points and the message behind each one of them. If you are still doing your bachelor’s or master’s, make sure it is productive enough and you are future ready.

If you follow the above points you will know, where you have to go ahead in your career and how you have to plan. Once your degree is completed, you will know which company will give you a job and you will know how to take the right decisions. Being productive in your Masters will not just make you successful in your career but will also make you a successful person overall as you will be able to work on your goal on a daily basis and you will be able to achieve what others have not.

So start being productive right away and you will see your career grow exponentially like an urban city.