concentration
How and Why to keep that ‘Back to School enthusiasm’
Well, it’s about 2 weeks until I go back to school after the long summer break and so I thought I’d share my thoughts and ideas on this brand new, exciting and very often terrifying time.
I always looked forward to the start of a new school year as a younger kid. I’m not sure exactly what it is but there is something oh-so-irresistible about the blank canvas before you. It’s a chance to re-invent yourself to a certain extent and to make a positive impression on your teachers and peers. Inevitably, it all starts a week or so prior to the start of term when you go out and buy the best stationary, coat, shoes and lunchbox possible in an effort to make the best impression you can (dare I say it, on the opposite sex).
The new-found enthusiasm contiues when you get into class. You write as neatly as possible (with your new pencil, I might add), lay out tables with all the care and attention of a master craftsman, and colour in diagrams like a young van Goch.
Everything would go so well for about a fortnight and then you’d have a late night, feel a bit tired in the morning and standards would begin to drop; it was inevitable.
via flickr
A lot of things have changed since those days of primary school but for whatever reason I still haven’t been able to shake this terrible habit of mine.
To make sure I don’t fall back into the old ways I have devised the following routine to keep me in tip-top form for class.
- Get into bed by 9:30 on most school nights. A very difficult decision for me as I have always been an evening person (writing this post at 8:45p.m.), but I think it’s possible to reverse this and I’m sure I will reap the rewards in the long term. This is doubly difficuilt as it may mean compromising my social interactions a little, which is why I am aiming only for most and not all nights.
- Shower in the morning. This is another new thing to me as I have always showered in the evenings. Although it means getting up a bit earlier it will help to wake me up further (plus I think my hair looks better after a shower, which is a bonus).
- Keep well nourished. A mistake I’ve been making for pretty much the past 5 years is not eating during the day. I did have lunch. But through the whole morning I was working on a near-empty stomach which distracted me and caused me to lack energy in classes. Breakfast is equally important and though I never skipped it, I normally only had time for a small bowl of cereal. With my new found love of strawberry jam and toast though I hope to get the day off to a much better and nutritious start.
Why bother with all this? If you’re feeling tired you can just catch up after the lesson.
This point of view is a common and foolish one. There’s always someone in class who is falling asleep or just doesn’t want to concentrate; they don’t think they need to because they have a textbook at home. This is such a waste of everybody time and resources. Firstly the student themself, who is wasting their own time, secondly the teacher, whose knowledge and expertise is being squandered, and thirdly the time and attention of participating students which is being wasted by unnecessary interruptions and breaks in teaching.
This goes to show, if just one student is not on form the entire lesson can be less productive for everyone concerned.
Imagine you failed to concentrate in one lesson every day for an hour. That’s five hours a week and more than 100 hours a year. Wouldn’t you like that time back before an exam?
So, I’ll give that a try and report back soon. What do you think, will it work?
How to escape the internet
We all love the internet, at least you don’t hate it because you’re using it now. But there are definately times when this multi-billion page cyber highway can get in the way. But no matter how hard we try, there always seems a reason to go back to it, is it possible to escape?
Yes, of course: as long as you can stop yourself becoming too reliant on it. This might sound like a big change to make, as though you’re going to undergo a big mentality shift but all it takes is 3 simple steps which, if continued, will help you increase your productivity and maybe help you even more.
- Collect your information: a huge mistake many people make is to do their research and their work simultaneously. This is such an easy mistake to make nowadays thanks to Google and Wikipedia and it seems like you’re saving a lot of time but be careful; this approach can lead you to misread your information and mis-copy it. Furthermore your writing can also suffer as a result of losing concentration between research and writing. Get all your research out of the way before you start. If you’re not sure exactly what you need to find out knock up a draft of your piece and then fill in the gaps as you look up the answers. Remember to re-write afterwards though.
- Organise it: you now have all your information but most of the time it’ll be in a number of locations including web pages, textbooks and in your head. It’s important to organise all this knowledge before you forget/lose it. There are so many ways to do this and the only way to find out which works best for you is to test a few techniques out. If you’re more comfortable working with a computer I would recommend Microsoft’s OneNote, this is a fantastic program which I use to gather information (particularly from the internet) every day. A similar program for Mac OS X is EverNote which is part of a broader service including a web app and iPhone app, there is also a Windows version which is a good (but not quite equal) competitor to OneNote. If however you prefer to work with paper a Moleskine is a great notebook to use [see my post on them], or just a plain piece of A4 for the ultimate in customizability.
- Turn off the internet: the most important and theoretically simplest thing to do is very often the hardest. Undoubtedly you’ll be tempted to trust yourself and leave it on but in most instances this fails and ends up wasting you even more time as you mess around on myspace. Turn off your router and computer (unless using OneNote/Evernote or typing) and try your hardest not to think about it.
Sound easy? It’s probably more difficult than you think. Just try this once and you’ll notice that your writing improves and that you remember a lot more of what you’ve just worked on.