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Part 1: “The More Busy I Am, The More Productive I Am”
Imagine this:
You’re a college student and aspiring doctor willing to work hard to reach your goals. As you are getting ready to leave your apartment, you take a quick look at your academic to-do list:
Re-read chapter 4 of textbook (1.5 hours)
Look over key terms in notes (2 hours)
Glance over lecture slides (2 hours)
Review all emails and Slack (1 hour)
Join 3 hour study group chat
You already feel exhausted realizing how much of the day you will have to spend working, but—conversely—the concept of being busy also cheers you up; you feel important and “in demand.”
What you fail to understand, though, is that after completing all of these tasks on your agenda, you will still feel exactly as prepared for upcoming exams as you were the moment you walked out of your apartment.
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You will likely forget everything – or at least the important, testable facets – of the 20+ page textbook chapter a few hours after your re-read.
You will assume that you “know” the key terms even though you never tested your active recall of their definitions (the real skill needed on the assessment).
You will overwhelm your hippocampus by attempting to stuff 5+ hours of lecture information from various subjects into your brain in less than half the time of the presentations.
Your review and response to messages is necessary, but not a contributor at all in terms of academic success and your future goals.
A “study” group chat is destined for failure; you will likely get less work done distracted with friends for three hours than you would with deep focus for half an hour.
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Busyness is measured by how many boxes we check off of a list. Productivity is measured by how well the actual outcomes of those boxes aid us in our long term goals.
This to-do list serves as proof that no matter how “productive” we might feel after a day of work, our amount of time spent working never immediately equates to our actual progress.
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You might argue that your tasks involve more deep, meaningful work. But this isn’t the only scenario where our schedule can be deceptive. In fact, in some cases, tasks that are truly productive on the surface are still ultimately counterproductive…
To be continued :)
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