Improving Concentration
by Kristen Putch, beat blogger
It’s that time of year. The weather is slowly getting better, the days are longer and we all seem to be a little less focused (senioritis, anyone?)
So what can we do to prevent slipping grades and daydreaming in class? Improve our ability to stay focused and improve our concentration. Just a few tweaks in your day can do wonders for your attention span.
1) The rule of five: Setting small, easily obtainable goals can help keep you focused. For example, if you have 30 pages of reading to do, and you’ve only completed 10 pages, tell yourself that once you finish five more pages, you can take a break. It’s easily attainable, and also makes you feel accomplished so that when you return from the break you’ll be more apt to finish up the work that’s left.
2) When doing work, avoid distractions. Turn off your internet (if possible) which keeps you off facebook, and it’s equally distracting cousins. Also, in class, turn off your phone. If you don’t have the distraction of text messaging or games, you can actually pay attention to what your professor is talking about and improve your grade on the next exam!
3) Time management: making a schedule or a to-do and putting EVERYTHING you have to do into it, even the most miniscule things, will help help reduce the tendancy for your mind to wander because you won’t have to try and remember the million things you have to do. Keep the schedule or list with you so that you can add things as they pop into your brain.
4) Do one thing at a time: Some of us are great multi-taskers and can tackle several projects at once. But multitasking can potentially lead to forgetting important information, leaving something out of a project, or doing something completely wrong. When it comes to major projects, focus on them, one at a time.
Remember:
·Attention is among the most important components of our mental life,
cognitive performance and quality of life.
·Reduce your stress to improve concentration and reduce distractions.
·Focus, take breaks, and elaborate in order to remember and focus.
Kristen Putch is a senior newspaper and history major. She is the former editor-in-chief of The Student Voice and managing editor of 360 Degrees magazine. She has written for The Daily Orange and is currently a freelance writer for www.Suite101.com. Based on her personal experiences with balancing work and everything else, she is very familiar with the college student’s tendency to talk themselves out of doing what’s right: what’s healthy. She wants to encourage those to be proactive and prevent it with her column “Interruption.”
Her contact information is kristen.j.putch@gmail.com.
