{"id":32994,"date":"2017-11-28T11:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T16:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=32994"},"modified":"2017-11-27T15:03:21","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T20:03:21","slug":"productive-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2017\/11\/28\/productive-breaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Productive Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"Our assignments and tests seem to be on a never-ending roller coaster ride. Just as quickly as the semester began, it is also coming to an end. We survived the post-summer blues, midterm season, and are currently going through that end of the year assignment-dash. Seeing how quickly exam season is creeping up on us, it\u2019s time to get our game plan ready \u2013 that is, to figure out when to sleep, to figure out time to take a break. But why must the idea of breaks be\u00a0considered unproductive? There\u2019s plenty of ways to remain productive where your mind and body will thank you for.\r\n\r\nTo come up with a range, I surveyed a few of my friends on what their de-stressing strategies are \u2013 by survey I mean I posted an Instagram story and waited for responses. The first and foremost task before attempting any of this is to organize our time based on importance of the task and date it\u2019s due \u2013 and always setting plenty of extra time aside in case our study sessions don\u2019t go exactly as planned. The next step is the smaller goals you may have in your life \u2013 taking enough steps that day, buying a plant, doing your laundry and so on.\r\n\r\nI got a lot of responses from friends about exercise-related activities they do when they\u2019re stressed. These vary from playing a favourite sport like basketball, going to the gym for a little while, going outside and biking, or dancing around for a few minutes to get your blood pumping and your brain ready to work. Others preferred calmer activities like going for a 10-minute walk, taking deep breaths and practicing mindfulness, doing some yoga, and praying. These would improve circulation within your body and put you in a more relaxed state of mind by channelling out stress in a calm manner.\r\n\r\n
\"View<\/a>
I live in the suburbs so I take quite a lot of nature walks & short hiking trips with these views.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nSome people, including myself, like to get some chores done. It\u2019s important to get a break from staring at a screen, so just go put in that load of laundry you\u2019ve been ignoring or take out that overloaded garbage bin. Also, clean your room. I\u2019m guilty of actually really enjoying this one. I feel like there\u2019s some correlation with clutter in your physical surrounding and your mental ability to function well. Or maybe your mess is comforting? Who knows, we\u2019re all different.\r\n\r\nNext up was eating. Who doesn\u2019t love food? Despite that love, sometimes we forget to eat during the day and this is where you need to set aside time to be present in the moment \u2013 focus on your food, not on the screen. Also, the survey concluded that tea and chocolate were the obvious top runners in this category, but the options are unlimited. Why not go try out a short new recipe instead?\u00a0 That\u2019s getting dinner ready and<\/em> learning something new.\r\n\r\nAnother way to stay productive without losing your mind is by doing the small things you love \u2013 whether that\u2019s reading, writing, taking pictures, making art, playing video games (take the stress out on the game!), playing with your pet, driving around, or even just spending some time with your friends or family. Shopping can also be therapeutic at times (caution: your bank account may cry). A friend of mine said, \u201cIt helps\u2026I bought my modern renaissance last year when I felt all bad about exams and stuff.\u201d <\/em>For those of us not familiar with what that is, it\u2019s a highly sought-after eye-shadow pallet from Sephora.\r\n\r\nMost importantly though, sleep.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nOur assignments and tests seem to be on a never-ending roller coaster ride. Just as quickly as the semester began, it is also coming to an end. We survived the post-summer blues, midterm season, and are currently going through that…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Productive Breaks”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Productive Breaks”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":32995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,7204,58,67,68,77],"tags":[1836,78,9685,193,1733,1439,1734,262,85,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32994"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33000,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32994\/revisions\/33000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}