(Un)Productivity: Observations and Fixes

Note: I am writing this article as a 15 year old, from the perspective of a 15 year old. I originally wrote this for my AoPS blog, where the readers are mainly middle and high school students.

For the past two days I have done about 4 hardish physics questions per whole empty summer day of studying (think ~12 hours). These questions should take around 30–60 minutes each.

Obviously, this is not good. Like really not good.

I have tried to combat this by turning in my electronics to my parents, using only my iPad for study streaming on Twitch. This was an attempt to hold myself accountable by simulating the feeling of being watched. The intention was to encourage myself to be more productive while studying. I shared the link with my parents so that they can yell at me to focus from across the house if I zone out.­ But unfortunately, it didn’t work as well as I hoped. However, I definitely think staring out a window is better than staring at a screen. ­

So I thought about why, and how this could possibly happen.

Humans are inherently lazy, and it’s definitely much easier to not-think rather than to think. That is why, on my streams, you may find me just staring at the wall or out the window instead of doing actual physics. It’s so difficult to use your brain muscles and focus, especially when they’re weak like mine.

The only way to strengthen your brain “muscles” is to exercise them; take them to the brain gym. However, the difference between strengthening your skeletal muscles and your brain muscles is that there is no “getting a lighter weight.” Doing 100 easy problems will not help your ability to focus on a hard problem. It may help your physics/math/subject skills, as well as your computation time by forming and strengthening neural links by noticing common patterns, but it won’t make your brain any stronger. To do that, you must do “weight” overloading. Pick one hard problem and FOCUS. Keep thinking about it for an extended period of time. The intensity doesn’t always have to be 100%, because sometimes, stepping back and looking at the whole picture helps to a lot (just like for art!) But whatever you do, the important thing is picking one hard problem and solving it.

The more you do, the stronger you become.

On the contrary, the internet, especially short videos such as TikTok and Instagram reels, will significantly weaken your brain muscles because of the instant gratification they provide. Delayed gratification is the key to self discipline and being successful at anything in life.

And that, my friends, is the secret to becoming truly successful. The key phrase is extended focus.

Once you fix your ability to focus, one thing I have observed to boost productivity are schedules and deadlines. Unless you have absolutely god-level productivity skills, I can probably safely say that we get a lot more learning done during school than during the summer.

If I have a graded homework assignment of 4 physics problems, given 12 hours to do it, I will unproductively complete it during those 12 hours.

On the other hand, if I only have 2 hours, I will productively finish those 4 questions during those 2 hours.

If we have a strict school schedule, we will be getting up and going to class like normal people. ­

If we have college style classes with recorded lectures, even if they have less class time, the college students will likely procrastinate and be less productive than the grade school students.

Obviously, in the summer, we only have ourselves and our parents to tell us what to do. But sometimes, it’s not enough. We allow ourselves to delay our tasks and become too lenient, then beat ourselves up for not being productive enough. This puts ourselves in a dangerous positive feedback loop, spiraling out of control. Our brains get worse and worse at focusing, which makes ourselves more and more stressed.

Making yourself a schedule with specific tasks to complete or things to work on during a specific time of the day definitely helps, though it is quite easy to cheat.

There are a few ways to combat this tendency to “cheat” your schedule.

1. Schedule study sessions with your friends. In the summer of 2022, I would meet with a friend in the mornings for 3 hours to do math practice study sessions. That whole summer was mostly wasted with me being online wayyy too much, and doing this was the only thing that prevented me from losing all of my braincells.

Alternatively, you can schedule an online study session while working on the same problems. I’ve found that working on different things will lead to me going onto different websites and getting distracted, when I wouldn’t have otherwise because I would’ve kept my computer away from me because I know I will 100% get distracted.

2. Plan any concrete event(s). Even if you don’t have an academically inclined friend to study with, something like planning a phone call or tennis practice match at exactly 11am will help, because your brain will think “oh I’m gonna finish the rest of these problems before 11am!” Sometimes we get lazy and don’t finish, but one concrete event on your schedule will (hopefully) motivate you to get things done before it.

This is why I think (online) summer camps make me so much more productive. Zoom meeting at 3pm? I better get my work done before then!

Unfortunately, this is a LOT easier said than done. I sure am quite the embodiment of that.