Productive Unproductivity | when you're in your finals slump

Eunice Lai shares her strategy for finals week: "productive unproductivity," doing low-stakes tasks like making coffee, knitting, or cleaning your room to rest and reset so studying actually works. Small actions beat the mental fog and study-culture pressure.
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It's finals week. I'm sure your brain is absolute mush. My bed is a mess, the laundry is undone, and I frankly just feel like booty cheeks. I've been staring at the same pages for three days straight and the words on the screen are starting to scramble and look like ants crawling across a vast white wasteland. It's almost as if being too productive is making me unproductive. I'm out of here. I love coffee. I love drinking coffee, smelling coffee, exploring coffee. But my little coffee pods will have to do for now. It's always been a dream for me to be a barista. So why don't we give it a little shot right now? I recently impulsively bought a milk pitcher because I just wanted to try latte art. And I thought today would be a good time to just take some time out of my day and like attempt. Let that milk drip and you come backwards. It's kind of like that because it lands. I think I already failed step one. I used the wrong coffee base. I used an espresso and I think I need to use a lungo or at least a double espresso shot because this is not enough. But there's definitely three main issues. Firstly, wrong coffee type. Secondly, the cup is wrong because I feel like coffee cups have a wider base. I guess I don't know what it's called. And thirdly, yeah, that was my first time, so. Still tastes good. The most cinematic trash bags South. Bella. I sometimes like to come down to the Pit Cafe and just hang out here because it's really great to see people not stressed and depressed all the time. So I just picked up some yarn for even more productive unpro. Dx. This is a mouthful to say. Productive unproductivity on another day. Oh crap, I gotta clean my room. Don't forget, your environment matters too. I'm not much of a study in the library kind of person, so my room being a productive environment is very important to me. Not to accidentally diss you, but you're not gonna get any work done with all your day old takeout sitting next to. Sometimes it may seem like such a waste to make your bed and clean your room cause you're just gonna mess it up again. But I've learned to find these small tasks therapeutic. You can even make it a good time if you put on some good music and just it's by doing nothing on purpose that helps you recharge yourself to do something. At your best, it's easy to forget to take breaks because you're cramming for exams, but let's be honest with ourselves. How productive is your studying when all you can think is wanting to? Productive unproductivity. It helps you rebalance yourself and relax. We don't always have to be on and that study hustle culture can wait for just a bit. I told you, doing nothing helps you become more productive.
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