For many of us exams are much closer than we’d like to think, and I, like most people, am very good at avoiding revision at all costs. However, whilst on a binge-read of internet articles, I actually stumbled across something helpful: a technique that makes homework and revision slightly more manageable. Now I’ve read my fair share of “how to be productive” articles in the hope that merely scanning over them will somehow transform me into a crazy workaholic, but this technique does actually sorta work.
Its very simple, you set a 20 minute timer, revise during those 20 minutes, and once the 20 minutes are up you draw something. You can draw anything you want (I like to draw items of food), the only purpose of it is to give you a break and a way to measure your progress. Then you repeat this process until you get bored/have to eat lunch/fall asleep, and at the end of the day your collection of doodles will show you how productive (or lazy) you have been!*
I like doing this as it gives me a measure of how much I’ve worked. If I’m in an especially academic mood I will set goals of how many ice creams/cupcakes I am going to draw. I also find that the act of setting the timer is a bit like the countdown to a race: you know that after that you have to run, there's no going back. Therefore whenever I set the timer I go into complete work-mode. Finally, the technique is effective in my opinion because 20 minutes is a very manageable time period.
*This method actually has a fancy name, “The Pomodoro Technique” so called because you’re meant to draw tomatoes. When visiting the website, it actually says 25 minutes, but I stick with 20 because that extra 5 minutes is too much.