Study Tips: 3 Easy Study Tips to Keep You Focused
People mostly ask for study tips and tricks because we have to admit, studying sometimes is a chore. It is a constant challenge to keep one’s attention, mostly because we’d rather go out and do something else. We have already covered a lot; examination preparation tips, easy memory techniques, and interesting ways to do homework are just some of our contributions. Now, here’s 3 easy study tips that could help us re-focus when our attention falters:
Study Tip #1: Re-live the experience
Sometimes when we’re poring over our notes, we tend to read them as if they’re new to us. Remember that we were the ones who wrote these in the first place, and there’s a lot that we could capitalize on this information. For example, we generally make lecture notes more interesting by creating ways to engage our thinking while writing them down just as a way to create memory pegs for us to recall the content easier. Now even if we don’t use those particular strategies, we could always try to recall the experience of taking the notes. For every text that you’ve written down, try to remember your exact feelings as you were writing it. Were you bored? If you were, what’s the reason? Why did you write this particular note and no other? If you were only copying from the blackboard, why did the lecturer write it down? Was this outlined in the material? What’s the reason for the summarization? And so on. Asking yourself these questions let’s you go back to your material and engage your interest, a definite trick to keep your attention.
Study Tip #2: Use a timer
Or use an alarm. Set your alarm for the next 5 minutes, then read and study the material that was presented to you. After the alarm goes off, take a break for a minute, then set it again for 5 minutes. Remember to always stop every time the alarm goes off, no exceptions to the rule. Do so for the rest of the hour.
If you did the above instructions as we suggested, you should be experiencing something interesting. Do you feel a bit irritated that you need to stop every time the alarm goes off? Did you feel that time is too short? You may have also thought to brush off the alarm and just work, and you may be you actually did brush off the alarm. This is actually what the exercise is all about: it forces your attention to what you’re studying because you rebel at the thought of following an alarm. This simple deception actually trains you to extend your attention span through the use of operant conditioning, and a derivative of this is also used for children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder. Pretty neat, and it’s easy to boot.
Study Tip #3: Distract yourself
Or focus on a different matter altogether. Observe your breathing. Count in multiples of 11. Recall the Fibonacci sequence. Sing a note then keep it. The point of this exercise is to re-focus your attention by letting you experience the feeling of being attentive. If you think that this is some kind of meditation then you’re right on track; to focus on one particular, repetitive thought is the first phase of meditation. Now we really don’t have to explain the benefits of meditation, but the crucial thing to it is that it makes you easily recall the experience of attention and focus. If you’re feeling particularly inattentive about what you’re studying, do this simple exercise and feel the results.