10 Productivity Habits for 2021📚👩🏻‍💻 | Med School Diaries 👩🏻‍⚕️

Hi! It's me, Dre. Today we're going to talk about 10 habits to incorporate in 2021. So, let's get started. I'm looking at my iPad, so if I'm looking downwards, I'm just looking for my notes that I made for this video.

Okay, so the first one is "me time." Start the day by giving yourself some time. Lots of people focus on physical health but actually don’t focus on mental health. If you're talking about being healthy, we cannot separate those two from each other. In 2021, we're going to share about our physical health as well as our mental health.

Wake up earlier than you usually do in order to be productive. You don't necessarily need to wake up early, but if you are living with someone—whether it's your parents, your kids, or your partner—whoever it could be, it could be pretty hard to take time just for yourself. So, waking up earlier than them will make things easier for you.

After waking up, move your body a bit. I'm not talking about crazy cardio for about an hour or something. Just go for a walk for about 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or do a stretch or just some morning yoga that you can find on YouTube. There are tons of them! Wake up your body without a coffee; wake up your body naturally.

After moving your body, give yourself a bit of time for your thoughts. Maybe do a meditation. But when I talk about meditation, lots of my friends are like, “Meditation? No thanks.” Just give it a try! There are tons of guided meditations on YouTube or meditation apps that you can find for free. If you don't like guided meditation, you can always do simple breathing. Just close your eyes and breathe.

Let your thoughts come in. Meditation is not about stopping your thoughts but loving your thoughts to come in. And afterwards, have a healthy breakfast. If you're practicing intermittent fasting, then it's fine—don't eat breakfast. But if you're not, have a good breakfast. I tried intermittent fasting, but it was personally not for me. I feel much more energized and much more concentrated when I have a good breakfast.

So that was for habit number one. We are moving to number two, and number two is time blocking. For example, I usually use a Google Calendar to time block. As you can see, I block out the time for the events or the tasks that I'm going to do. I usually do three-hour blocks of study two times a day. In those blocks, I don't do anything other than studying.

I don't check my emails; I don't check my phone; I don't reply to messages or calls that are not emergencies. It's really easy to get distracted by other people, so blocking out time really allows you to concentrate on that task.

The third one is to separate your to-do list. I actually came across this tip on the internet—I forgot the website, sorry for that. It's basically creating to-do lists for different things. If you're not creating to-do lists, then I would recommend you to do so because I usually forget things that I have to do in that day.

So, creating a to-do list is a good one, but separating them is a better one. One for things you have to do, one for things that you want to accomplish, and one for things for yourself. We easily forget to do something for ourselves, for our mental health, for our physical health.

One thing I have to do is to study. One thing I have accomplished is to film a YouTube video, and one thing for myself is to meditate, do yoga, or take a longer hot shower. The fourth one is learning to say no. Energy management is important—just as important as time management. You can manage your time perfectly, but if you don't manage your energy, then at the end of the day, you will be so overwhelmed and so tired.

Say no to phone calls, meetings, invitations, messages, direct messages, or any sort of thing that won't bring you anything in the future. So, just learn how to say no. The fifth one is listening to audiobooks. I actually really love to listen to audiobooks. Audiobooks are such a great way to use your time productively while you're driving, cleaning up the dishes, or hanging out. You can listen to an audiobook!

If you cannot find time to read, then please give audiobooks a try. The sixth one is using Notion. I mean, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Notion, but Notion is my favorite personal note-taking app. It's actually not only for taking notes, but basically, I use Notion for everything that you can possibly think of. Notion is a free app, so give it a try!

There are tons of templates that you can try from them. You can use it as a calendar; you can use it as a note-taking app. You can actively recall with Notion; you can do spaced repetition—I mean, study techniques with Notion. You can basically do whatever you want in Notion! So download Notion, give it a try. There are tons of videos on YouTube showing you how to use Notion, so use them.

I will link some of them in the description below that helped me, so please use Notion. I mean, you can use another app as well, but I would highly recommend Notion. The seventh one is to use social media wisely. Don't waste your time on Instagram or YouTube to learn new things. I mean, if you're having fun scrolling through Instagram, then it's totally fine.

But personally, when I scroll through Instagram, after finishing my surf, I always feel like I wasted time. I could do something much better than that, such as reading books or watching a YouTube video that will bring me something—not like what plastic surgery Bella had done, and evidences, and all that stuff. If you enjoy it, then it's fine. But if you don't enjoy it and feel like you're losing time, then maybe don’t use Instagram that much.

And if you truly want to use Instagram, follow people that will bring you something. Okay, the eighth one: getting good sleep. Exercising, anything healthy is very basic, but these basic things can boost your productivity so, so much more than you actually think. I am using Auto Sleep to track my sleeps. I use my Apple Watch to do that, but you don't need a smartwatch to do that.

You can just put your phone near your bed. I don't think that it's healthy, so it would be better if you have a smartwatch. But I would recommend Auto Sleep to see how much you actually slept last night, and you'll realize you’re actually not sleeping enough.

So, next habit: use dental floss. It's so important! My brother is a dentist; he always told me to use dental floss, so I started just to floss my teeth, and it's amazing. You realize that you actually weren't brushing your teeth well. Use dental floss!

So the last one is to eat healthier. It's so hard to eat healthy; I know that because I struggle with it as well. But eating healthy is important for our brain function, for our body, for our mental health—actually, for our everything. I will be trying to eat healthier in 2021 as well. It’s a real struggle, but we have to do it.

We're going to eat healthy, we're going to care about our mental health, we're going to care about our physical health. 2021 will be our year, hopefully! I hope so. I guess I'm kind of scared after 2020 to say that this is going to be our year, this is going to be my year. We cannot do anything about the past, but we can work for our future. So let's work for that! Thanks for now, bye!