take the pebble from my hand, grasshoppa
It’s that time: every single paper and project is due in the same week. It seems like the professors could coordinate their syllabuses a little bit better, but they never do. So what is a poor, hard-pressed college student to do? Well, a little focus couldn’t hurt.
Organize your web browser
If you are doing a lot of reading or research online, there are some really easy things you can do to help yourself focus.
- put YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, email, and any other distracting web sites in a window of their own, and put your research and school work in another window.
- close anything that is not necessary. If the social media you have open are too distracting, just close them! Don’t open YouTube before you start your paper, or you won’t get started for another 30 minutes.
- organize your tabs to help you think. You know yourself better than anyone, but it helps me to move my tabs around so that they make sense. If I’m doing a search for one thing, I’ll open the pages I want to check out in new tabs and look at them after I find the websites that seem most interesting.
Remove distractions
If you are doing some reading or preparing for a project, remove the stuff from your desk that will make if difficult to concentrate.
- don’t study on your bed. You sleep there, and so your body will think it’s time for bed if you study there. Or vice versa, if you always study in bed, you may have a hard time falling asleep because it is your study space.
- check out this study environment analysis that I found on Virginia Tech’s website. Pretty nifty. Try studying in your primary place, or your secondary place. For some reason, my room came up as more distracting than the on campus cafeteria, and this is because my roommate and I talk a lot when we are both home, whereas people leave me alone in the cafeteria for the most part.
- turn your phone off, or put it on silent. Even getting text messages distracts me and I have it can break my focus while I’m reading. If you have some intense studying to do, then put it away, and I promise, the quality of your studying will be better, you’ll get more done, faster, and your friends can wait…if they really love you.
Check out this article on creating a study space…it might help!
Another thing that some other articles suggest is coming to your study session prepared: bring food and drink and all the books you’ll need so you won’t have to get up.
I think what you’ll find is that a few hours of focused study time are so much more productive and useful on exam days than three or four times as many hours of unfocused study time. Being focused can leave you with more time to relax and spend time with your friends too.
#Campuslife 