Nine Simple Steps to Boost Your Productivity

Regular exercise has been shown to result in improved concentration, faster learning, and enhanced creativity. A morning run is a straightforward and flexible way of keeping fit but the low cost of entry means that it can be difficult to remain committed. Instead, it may be worth investing time and a little money in joining a sports team or class to ensure you secure the bene fits of exercise for the long term.

Studies have shown that exposure to natural light improves your workplace performance as well as your overall quality of life. University libraries don’t tend to be great for this, so maybe consider moving to somewhere with more windows and fewer florescent lights.

Studies also suggest that listening to music can help you concentrate. As neuroscientist Dean Burnett explains, the reason for this is that “we appear to have two attention systems: a conscious one that enables us to direct our focus towards things we know we want to concentrate on and an unconscious one that shifts attention towards anything our senses pick up”.

The problem is that our unconscious attention system doesn’t like being ignored. This means that whenever we sit down to engage our conscious attention system, our unconscious attention system looks for a way to distract us. Fortunately, listening to certain kinds of music can keep our unconscious attention system busy. It is, as Burnett puts it, much like giving a child a new toy to get them off your back.

What type of music? Many people argue video game soundtracks work best. As Burnett says, “this makes sense, when you consider the purpose of video game music: to help create an immersive environment and to facilitate but not distract from a task that requires constant attention and focus.”

Spending too much time on low priority tasks is a sure -fire way of ending the day feeling like little has been achieved. Scrolling through and responding to emails, for example, can be a major time - killer.

Avoid being sucked into the wormhole by setting aside two times a day to check emails. You might also find it useful to use an important/urgent task matrix . This involves separating your tasks into four categories and working your way down through the groups.

If you haven’t heard of it already, the pomodoro is a famous productivity hack. The process is simple: you work for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break. Each 25-minute session is called a pomodoro. After four pomodoros, you take a 15-20-minute break.

The idea is that frequent breaks keep your mind fresh and focused, and that working to meet a timer can spur you on to get your current job done quickly. Large projects can be broken down into multiple pomodoros.

A great app to use in conjunction with, or instead of, the pomodoro technique is Forest, which you can download for free. The app allows you to set the length of a work session, and when you press ‘plant’ a countdown timer will appear beneath a cartoon picture of a seedling.

If you can ignore your phone for the duration of the session the n the seedling will grow into a tree, which will be added to your own personal forest. If you open the phone to check on the progress of your tree, the app will tell you to get back to work. If you exit the app to check your messa ges or use other apps, the tree will die.

As your forest develops you can unlock new and evermore fantastical trees. Users have found that the visual representation of success, as well as competing with their friends for the best forests, really helps motivate them to stay focused.

Oliver Hurcum writes for Inspiring Interns, which specializes in sourcing candidates for internships and graduate jobs, including digital jobs.