By Ranthilini Vithanage

With most schools closing down and moving into online education at home, the question of staying focused while studying has become one of the major concerns every student has to tackle at the moment. With an exorbitant amount of real-time and recorded lessons, students are forced to be responsible for their own learning process. And having to study at home is not helping.

With so many distractions seeking to grab your attention, staying focused looks like a real nightmare, right?

But worry not. We see you and we hear your worries. And that is why we compiled a guide to help you stay focused while studying. We guarantee you that these five tips do work! They have been tested by students themselves and rest assured, you can have an interrupted study session if you follow them.

1.     Arrange your working space

First up, arrange your work space. If you do not have a clean and tidy work space, you are not going to get any work done.

 Messy rooms and disorganized desks are a big No No when it comes to staying focused. And that is why you have to clean up your room and tidy your work space. Stack those books up. Get some fairy bulbs and decorate the edges of your workspace. Buy a cute table lamp. Get some motivational quotes printed and hang them on your wall. Make a picture board that can make you feel calm and serene. Get a potted plant to add that extra touch of zen.

It really doesn’t matter what kind of arrangement you go for as long as it makes you feel good. The goal here is to trick your brain into feeling accomplished and organized so that you are motivated to keep going. Once your work space is in order, you will find that studying and staying focused is not that hard.

2.     Create a pre-study ritual

Routine is a big thing in staying focused while studying. It helps you get in the mood. When you create a pre-study ritual and follow it every day, your brain automatically gets accustomed to the fact that ‘we study after the ritual.’

And a pre-study ritual is not hard to create. All you have to do is complete the same tasks every day before you head on to the actual study session. For instance, you can create a routine by doing the following every day:

·       Lighting up some scented candles

·       Choosing your playlist and getting your headphones

·       Bringing some snacks and a water bottle in to you room so that you don’t have to leave mid-session

·       Making sure all the chargers and other devices are at hands length

·       Making a to-do list

And once you are done with your pre-study ritual, you are good to go!

3.     Choose a study plan

Choosing a study plan can be very helpful in terms of staying focused. What is key here is understanding your attention span. Some of us can stay focused for lengthy periods of time while the rest of us simply suck at it. So, if you are someone like me, with a very short attention span, something like the pomodoro technique will be great for you. The pomodoro technique is where you study for 25 minutes at a time, uninterrupted, and then go on to take a very short break of 3-5 minutes. You repeat the same study session for another 2 and half hours, and voila, your homework is done!

4.     Make sure to minimize any distractions

While it is practically impossible to find a place with zero distractions, what you can do is try to minimize them. For example, if you have siblings running around screaming or a dog whose sole intention is to do a barking concert, investing in noise-cancelling headphones might be a good idea.

And also, make sure that you do not look at your phone while studying. This is tricky business and let me tell you, it is not impossible to do. All you have to have is a strong will. And, on the side, stopping certain background apps from consuming data during your study session will be a great idea if you are worried about those bing-bong notifications.

And if you work on a laptop or a tab, you can always block distracting sites or apps by using a tool like freedom. It will temporarily block the sites that demand your attention so that you can focus on your studying.

5.     Make use of tools available online

The last but not the lease, make use of the tools available online. Yes, we know this is a leap from what we just said, but tools available online can be a highly valuable study assistance when used in the right manner. For example, if you have access to YouTube, you can make use of live-study with me sessions. It will make you feel like you are studying with a friend.So, that is it from us! Hope you will be able to have a fruitful study session with this guide! And if you ever feel like you need a little more motivation and some winning spirit in your life, do check out this course by Growth Central. It is all about winning and feeling successful!