The Healthy Approach To Productivity

Today we are discussing about healthy approach to productivity based on the book "Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need" by jade which has become a number one Best Seller. So The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need is everything I wish I had been able to read during secondary school. So it's a combination of revision methods, evidence-based techniques for studying, productivity tips, all these things that you don't really get taught in school but are pretty essential to getting that information in your head and being able to do well in exams. But it's also kind of more holistic. So it looks at things that affect you as a student, like perfectionism, fear of failure, mental health etc. I think how the internet would probably define productivity is anything where you get tangible output, which is, you know, economic activity. It's you studying, it's you putting in time for a better grade, it's making more money. That's often classically seen as productive, but we want to redefine productivity, right? productivity is just spending time well. And that's something I dig into in some book that could be spending time with friends, that can be self-care and recharging. If it's, you know, if it's spending time well, even if that just means enjoying your life, then that's also productive. Also I think of productivity as doing more of the things that matter to us. And so to me, hanging out with friends or having dinner with friends or playing board games, I consider productive.

It's when I want to be doing something else, but then I'm not doing that thing. That is when it becomes unproductive and that's when I start to feel a bit like a waste man. This book tells us about a very interesting equation about productivity. the classic productivity equation is output over time. But this book and the author shows a way for you to be the most productive in whatever activity you're doing is to add three Fs. So these three Fs are focus, like, deep focus, getting in the zone. Forethought, so how you plan your activity, and fun, enjoying what you're doing. We're going to dig into strategies for each of these three Fs, the three most interesting components of the productivity equation. Let's start by talking about the first F, which is focus. Now, you've got a really good tip in the book, which is sanctity of space. The idea is that when you're doing activities, you tend to do them in a certain place. Like when you go to the kitchen, your brain is thinking, "I'm going to cook or I'm going to eat. When you're on your bed, you're thinking generally, "I'm going to go to sleep." And so when I'm doing certain activities like studying, or like writing this book, I try and keep a sanctity over the space I'm doing it in. So you kind of have a choice. Like when you're at your desk, you can make that a place where you scroll on your phone and go on social media, or you can try and commit to making it a place where you.

About the second F for forethought. Forethought, so it's bit of a mouthful that one, but the whole idea is planning and how essential that is. Because so often we block out a time to sit and study, but if you haven't planned what you're going to study or how to study it effectively, you might just end up kind of wasting time. So you sit there and, you know, you know you need to

learn this information, but you don't really know how to learn. So there are some things discuss in the book, one of which is a framework to understand how we learn andplan better revision techniques. So the idea is that, you know, if you're sad, when you're revising, you can change it to the mnemonic, SAAD. The S stands for spaced repetition. If you look at the forgetting

curve of human memory, you can put it somewhere on screen.

When you are learning something, you actually exponentially will forget that information if you don't go over and review it. And so the idea is, you

know, you just review that information at regular intervals. You're more likely to retain it. And then the second one is active recall. So I think what's so, so hard and what feels often productive for people is to spend more time revising, but doing passive activities. Like highlighting or rereading a textbook, you know, you're just staring at information so it feels like you're spending your time well, when in reality, giving it a bit of forethought to plan an active recall revision technique is what is going to give you the most benefit. So the idea is you're pulling information out of your mind. If you're trying to recall a process you actually going in and bringing it out of your head, is you going over that information. It's better than just reading it. So that's spaced repetition, active recall, we've got an A and a D, what do those stand for? So the third one is association. So the idea is that when you're learning, you tend to build it off of the foundation of things that you already have in your head.

And lastly, the D is for desirable difficulty. And this is the idea that you should be doing revision practices, which are hard, which challenge you. And if they're not feeling hard enough, then you can put in more active recall, or you can go to more application methods like testing. And so this SAAD mnemonic is basically a set of questions you can ask yourself when you come to revise, just to make sure you're doing something, which is actually effective.