General Tips To Help You Focus When Studying

Unlike my previous article on how to deal with various factors that cause you to be unfocused, this article is less situation specific and more on general things that you could do or try.. However, since the tips here will be more general, they might not be as helpful. They could however help you when you haven’t yet figured out your problem and you just want quick solutions.

1. Choose to study in the public such as a library, coffee shop or empty classroom. Sometimes trying to study at home can make you less focused because you have more privacy. Studying in public takes away the privacy and forces your mind to focus on things you could only do while you’re in public.

2. Use the 5 Minute Rules or something alike to help you get started. The 5 Minute Rules is telling yourself to start on something such as reading the assigned readings or doing your practice questions and trying your best to stay focus for as long as 5 minutes. 5 minutes is really short so it should motivate you to get started on something you may dislike.

3. Reward Yourself. Think of something that you would like to do instead and tell yourself that only once you finished what you are supposed to do are you allowed to do the preferred thing. This tip will work well if you have something else on your mind and need to put it aside to stay focus.

4. Study at a good time. When is a good time for you to study? When do you find yourself most productive? Do you focus better at night or in the day? Do you study better when you are fully rested or just moderately? Knowing the answers to these questions could you determine a good time to study. Sometimes, we study when we are feeling less into it and that’s not a very efficient way to go about studying.

5. Use a Timer. We are generally really poor at estimating how much time we need to get something done. We overestimate the amount of time we have and we end up procrastinating. If instead, we just set up a timer to like work for an hour, we are more likely to want to hold true to our words and see what we can accomplish. A part of achieving our goals is to set up a deadline for when certain tasks are needed to be done.

6. Break Larger Task Into Smaller Ones. Sometimes, we feel like we have so much to do that we procrastinate, because we dread. Instead, we can avoid this by doing what we’re able to do first and slowly build our way up. Furthermore, it helps if you seek help for the tasks you can not accomplish so you don’t get stuck on one place and becoming frustrated.

7. Use a state of flow to your advantage. The state of flow is when you most productive and focused on the task. When you take notice of this state, you want to keep working on what you’re working on to make the most use of your efforts.

8. Listen to certain music can help you focused. If you have a playlist of music that helps put you in the mood to study, you might want to try listening to those musics prior to when you study. However, once you are focused, you might want to turn the music off since listening to music can also reduce your ability to absorb information.

9. Study where others are studying. Sometimes it’s easier to study when we see that others are studying so you might want to try a library or classroom.

10. Find ways to put yourself in the mood to study. Sometimes, you might feel tired or unmotivated to study, but if you warm up, it could help. Some things you could try are listening to music, talking to friends to ease your mind off other things, or just finding a quiet place to sit still.

I think it’s important that our heart wants and desires something before we can fully commit to an activity. If we don’t find joy or meaning in what we have to do, we don’t really want to put in efforts. It is important that we really want something. You guys know how there’s a saying in my Tumblr that “Look where your mind wanders when you are distracted and that’s usually where your heart is” I think it’s true when it comes to trying to focus as well. We tend to focus on things we actually have feelings for where it’s effortless for our thoughts to wander to those places. When it comes to school, your heart has to be thinking about it first before you can truly focus with little efforts.