How To Focus When You Are Studying (March 7, 2024)

A quick recap of the story:

You and your sibling both want the last piece of chocolate, so you decide to compete in an upcoming test you have.

The one with a better score gets the chocolate. If you want to know all the details of the story here. You can also learn how to plan your day for studying while you are at it.

Now you know how to schedule (and hopefully did schedule) your study session, here comes the next problem:

Endless distractions.

To list a few familiar ones: there is an unread message on your phone, friends are calling you to come out, scrolling through Facebook (or Twitter or Instagram or whatever the new trend is), watching that one last YouTube video, a purple bird smacking in your window and distracting you from studying…

Ok, maybe that last one was too unrealistic, but you get the point. If you are already aware (as I am sure most of you are) of these distractions then the natural question to ask is:

How do I get rid of all of these distractions?

Sorry to break it to you, but getting rid of all distractions is impossible. However, getting rid of some of them and minimizing others is possible, so that is what you will be aiming for.

Distractions can be split into two types:

Distractions created by the outside environment
Distractions created by you

You can probably guess that you don’t have much control over the first type, so those are the ones you will try to minimize.

The second type of distraction is created by you. Since you created them you can also be the one to get rid of them.

Distractions created by the outside environment

Let’s start by taking out our biggest enemy: your mobile phone.

With the constant notifications coming from your phone, it’s no wonder why it is considered the biggest enemy. There is nothing worse for me than hearing a “ding” sound when I am in the middle of studying.

Why does one “ding” sound create such a big problem?

I don’t know for how many people is this the case, but I can’t stop my urge to check what notification I got. And if I try to, then I can’t concentrate on studying so I always end up giving in to satisfy my curiosity.

There are two problems with this. The first one is that you broke your focus and it will take some time before you can get it back. The second one is that the notification you got probably won’t be the last one.

Combine these two and you can start to see how a problem might occur. Every time you get focused that dreaded “ding” sound will destroy everything. And not just once, but again and again and again.

If you think that there is an easy solution like turning off your notifications or turning the volume down, you still have to trust yourself to not look at the phone. That is why I recommend taking some extreme measures.

Don’t start studying if there is a mobile phone in the same room as you.

It’s the ideal solution. If there is no mobile phone then it can not distract you. Before I hear any complaints I will say what I always say in these situations:

Just try it once.

Nothing will happen if you try it just once. You can read through everything you missed after you finish studying. And, before I forget, let me remind you not to look at the phone when you take a break from studying. You are just inviting trouble (like endlessly scrolling on some social media platform).

There is also one piece of advice that I give to students in front of an exam or some important test:

Delete all apps on your phone that can send you a notification.

If you think that this is too extreme it’s not. Too extreme would be for me to tell you to break your phone so you don’t have to hear another notification ever again. Compared to that, this method doesn’t seem too bad, does it?

After the test, you can install the apps again and everything will go back to normal, like nothing has changed.

Maybe my hate for notifications is a bit too much, but it is justified, they used to break my focus all the time. If you want some methods that are less extreme here are a few things to try:

lower the volume
turn off the notifications
log out of all applications
remove all applications from your home screen
if you need to look at the phone to see the time, buy a wristwatch

* * * * *

Hopefully, that is enough to keep our (or at least mine) biggest enemy at bay. Although this is a good start there is still one big enemy left (let’s call it a mini-boss).

Other people like your friends and family.

If I think about it, don’t call your friends and family enemies. They can be enemies to your focus (that works I guess). Just like with mobile phones, I was interrupted countless times by other people while I was studying.

First, let’s figure out how to stop our family from interrupting us since they are the cause of most interruptions. The easiest way I have found is a big DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door, which works pretty well.

Why does it work pretty well and not perfect?

Sometimes parents don’t understand the importance of focus and will still barge into your room demanding that you do this and that. At this point, you just have to accept it and move on. I thought about locking my room, but I just know that someone would start knocking and break my focus anyway, so I never do it, but you can try it if you want.

You can try to prevent this by saying that you are going to study X amount of hours and ask that no one disturbs you unless there is an emergency. The problem is that what you think is an emergency and what your parents think an emergency is different.

(X amount of hours means any number of hours like 2, 3, 5 or whatever amount you decide)

If you want to have a perfect study session with no interruptions from your family the only way is to hope. So if they happen to interrupt you, take one deep breath, think how it is inevitable that it happens and continue studying.

Now that the family part is taken care of, how should you deal with your friends?

Well, it depends on the situation you are in. If the most important exam is coming up, saying no to any invitation is not a bad option. Don’t worry they will understand that you want to focus on studying for the time being and everything will be back to how it was after the exam.

In case you need human interaction to feel energized, take out 30 minutes of your day to see your friends and go back to studying after that.

Next situation:

The exam is not “the most important exam of the year”, so there are more laid-back methods. If you how to study the right way you will have enough time for your friends anyway. To learn how to study go here.

If you want to decrease the time you spend with your friends to have more time to study, but not go silent what do you do?

Let’s say you want a better score than what you got last time. Assuming that you are studying the same way as before you will need to increase the time you spend studying. To get more time you have to take it away from something. In the ideal scenario, you would get that time from somewhere else. But if you really have no other options, decreasing the time you spend with your friends will have to do.

You can increase the time it takes to respond to messages. If they ask you why were you so slow to respond say that you were studying.

And, as always after you finish those intense study sessions you can go back to how you were before.

To finish with the section on the “distractions created by the outside environment”, we have to talk about two more distractions:

things that you see that distract you
things that you hear that distract you

I was never distracted by the things I saw (as long as I remember at least), but someone might be so here is how to deal with it. These situations mostly occur because you have a window near your table, where you study.

You can cover up the window so you don’t see anything that is happening outside. If you want some natural light while you study, try moving the desk. You can see which place feels comfortable and try to study there.

For the last part, let’s talk about the noises you hear that cause distraction.

There was a time when I had a test coming up (not something important, but my young self had the “every test is important” mindset). This might not have been a big problem had my house not been in the middle of a small renovation. The constant drilling sounds made it really (and I mean really) hard to concentrate.

Because of my mindset, I tried to study through it, but all I could think about was those loud noises. I then remembered that I watched a YouTube video where someone (I really can’t remember who, sorry, it was a long time ago) recommended that you study using white noise.

After I tried it I was hooked, so now I sometimes study with white noise even without the drilling sounds. My favourite one is this.

* * * * *

With this, we are done with the “Distractions created by the outside environment” part. Next time you will learn how to deal with distractions you create, also known as procrastination.

Remember:

There are two types of distractions: