Study Prof » Study Skills

Four Fast Steps to Fixing Your Focus Issues

sharpbean — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:10:21 +0000

Focus is the big hairy bugbear that stalks many students. Twenty minutes into their two hour study session they find themselves talking or texting or trimming their toenails or doing absolutely anything rather than studying. So how can you deftly dodge the distraction of friends, phones, Facebook, food, etc.? Follow this simple formula and become the awe-inspiring focus fiend you always knew you could be.

1. Get on your blinders. Way back in times gone by, when your great granpappy was still in knee pants, coach horses wore blinders. Blinders are small shades or screens, mounted beside each eye, that focus the horse’s attention forward and keep them from being spooked by every little thing they trot by. A skittish animal can’t be spooked by what it doesn’t see.

Your brain is a skittish animal, so get it blinders. Make a list right now of the things that tend to distract you when you’re studying. Really. Do it now! Bust out your big fat pencil and your big chief pad and get to listing.

What did your distractions include? Friends? Your computer? Your phone? Hunger pangs? Now come up with some ways can you blind yourself to those distractions during focus time. You might go to a study carrel way back in the aging spotty bowels of your university library and turn your phone off. Take an apple and a small bottle of water so hunger and thirst won’t lure you out of your study hole. Go to the bathroom on your way in, so you can be at peace with your bladder.

This step is a roundhouse kick to the tender mid-section of future distractions. Put on those blinders before each study session, and most of your current focus woes will wilt like a supermodel at a spelling bee.

2. Set your focus goals. Actually write down those goals and watch your willpower swell to rideeekulous proportions. Here’s how. Track yourself for three days and get an average for how long you usually focus before distraction descends to reek havoc on all your study plans. Set a goal to increase that by 10% per session. Then set a final goal; the goal that represents your entrance into the ranks of the focus demi-gods. For example, after three days tracking, I find that I usually lose focus after about 20 minutes on average. My next goal is to get 22 minutes without losing focus. Once I meet that goal, I will go for 24 minutes. This process stops once I’ve reached four hours straight of laser-like mental cutting-torch intensity. YES!

3. Spur yourself on with rewards. Establish a reward for completion of each goal; small rewards for small goals, and one massive honkin’ ecstasy-inducing hunka-hunka-burnin-love reward for completion of The Final Goal. “Once I’ve successfully maintained my focus for 24 minutes, I get a ten-minute reddit fix. When I achieve four hours, I will order the never-ending plate o’ nachos at Mi Familia Taqueria and eat until my jaws cramp.”

Don’t neglect the rewards step. The rewards are what turn this whole process from horrible mind-numbing drudgery into a romp through a mystical land full of edible rainbows and beer-sneezing unicorns.

4. Track your progress. Psychological studies in abundance have proved how helpful tracking is to behavioral modification. Bottom line for you: write down your progress as you work on these goals. It functions as a regular source of concrete feedback that will keep you cranking out longer and longer focus times. Don’t worry about downloading special apps or using a fancy daytimer to do this. That’s just an excuse to procrastinate. All you need to do is keep a piece of paper in your backpack or notebook that lists dates and times and maybe

some comments, like this…

1/12/12 -Focused 22 min.

1/13/12 -24 min. – treated myself to cafe latte,

1/14/12 -23 min. – Aaargh! Curse you brain. You shall not win!

1/15/12 -28 min. – Nyah, nyah! Reward; 10 minutes of “special attention” to the voodoo doll of my biochem prof.

Tracking progress as an aid to achieving behavioral goals has been proven effective for everything from curing phobias to quitting smoking. Put it to work for you by simply taking a few seconds to track your progress after each study session.

So put on your blinders, set your focus goals, spur yourself on with rewards, and track your progress, and you will soon find yourself a jedi master of forceful focus. Be gone foul distraction demons! You have no power here!

Follow this link for more on building your ability to focus.

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Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

Tags: focus, focusing, goal setting, procrastination, Study Skills

Beating Procrastination in 100 Words (or Less)

sharpbean — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:48:57 +0000

~~The “100 Words (or Less)” series gives you a super-short summary of what you need to know about the subject at hand and does it in 100 words or less. Check the link at the bottom for more detailed info about the topic.~~

Break it Down. Take a big task and divide it into smaller sub-tasks. Sub-tasks should be small enough that you won’t procrastinate about them.

Assemble Your Materials. Then there are no excuses not to get started.

Schedule the Sub-Tasks. A date. A start time. An end time.

Commit Publicly. Tell everyone who will listen how you WILL have it done by time X.

Do it. Putting it off? The sub-task was too big. Go back to step one.

Reward Yourself. Small rewards for completing a sub-task. Bigger rewards for a series of sub-tasks. Huge reward for total completion.

See more on beating procrastination.

Tags: procrastination, Study Skills

Superior Notes in 100 Words (or Less)

sharpbean — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:18:25 +0000

Superior Notes do four things.

C – They Capture the information you need AND none of the fluff.

O – They Organize the information, making it easier to see the structure and easier to understand and recall.

P – They Process the information going beyond the information to it’s implications and the questions it raises.

S - They make it easy to Study the information. Superior notes are laid out in such a manner that they can easily be used to self-quiz, without having to make flashcards, retype, etc.

See these posts on better note-taking for more on each of these.

Tags: note taking, Study Skills

Give Yourself a Mind Like a Steel Trap!

sharpbean — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 21:02:47 +0000

Take a look at Unforgettable, a short pdf ebook on memorizing vocabulary easily and effectively. A quick read will give you the inside scoop on…

The quick and simple way to learn vocabulary for language classes and standardized tests like the GRE and SAT.
How to soak up that tricky vocabulary like a sponge! Save time. Slave less.
How to make those memories uber sticky. Memorize it once and it sticks for days (without more review).

A few short excerpts …

Does rote memorization work? Yes … eventually, but compared to the other type of learning we’ve been talking about—“car wreck memory” we might call it—it’s like cooking steak with a candle. Let’s learn how to turn on the gas.

We’ll look at four different keys to making the most of your memory…. If you apply these four keys, you will be a memory master … a black belt in brain fu … a wizard of wiles … a (fill in your own cheesy alliteration here). Let’s get to it.

___________

We know that “car wreck” memory occurs when something is emotional and unusual. We also know that it’s multi-sensory. So how do we take something, like the definition of the word “turbid,” and make it multi-sensory, unusual, and emotional?

You aren’t going to believe me when I tell you. It’s actually very easy, and it doesn’t seem real, but it absolutely works! Here it is in a nutshell. Ready? …

The short ebook will set you back $2.00 US. You can take that two bucks and buy a sugary drink and a bag o’ Funyuns and what do you get? Temporary taste bud titillation and diabetes.

OR you can take the same two bucks and purchase this handy quick guide to maximizing your memory, and make studying easier for the rest of your life! Oye! Such a deal! Click the link below, pay via Paypal, and you’re off to the races…

Unforgettable .pdf eBook

Tags: ebook, GRE, SAT, Study Skills, tool

Read and Reap: Suck the Facts Out of Your Texts

sharpbean — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:18:55 +0000

Holy-frikkin-mooses. I just read three paragraphs in my Whirled History book, and I don’t have clue one on what it was about. How can I fish the beefy info chunks outta the steamy cesspool of facts that is my reading assignment?

If that’s your main pain, then consider this simple drill to make your mind into a magnet for important points in your reading.

First, mark up a (disposable) copy of your reading assignment. Take a red pen or marker and start eliminating non-essential words. Get all guvmint-censor/evil-english-teacher on it. Your goal is to mark out as much of each sentence as possible while still retaining the overall meaning. It should look like you tapped a vein and bled all over the paper.

Next, rephrase what’s left as needed to clarify the meaning and summarize the info. Again, try to minimize the number of words while keeping the meaning.

Finally, abbreviate words and phrases to eliminate excess letters. Imagine you’re sending a text message and you’ll be charged by the letter. How much can you boil out the non-essential and keep your meaning? Feel free to use texting shortcuts, like “gr8″ for “great.”

Here’s a zample using a paragraph from About.com…

The American Revolution began in 1775 as open conflict between the united thirteen colonies and Great Britain. By the Treaty of Paris that ended the war in 1783, the colonies had won their independence. While no one event can be pointed to as the actual cause of the revolution, the war began as a disagreement over the way in which Great Britain treated the colonies versus the way the colonies felt they should be treated. Americans felt they deserved all the rights of Englishmen. The British, on the other hand, felt that the colonies were created to be used in the way that best suited the crown and parliament. This conflict is embodied in one of the rallying cries of the American Revolution: No Taxation Without Representation.

Now let’s put it through our power drill. You feed in the paragraph above, do your funky red marker magic, and here’s what comes out the other side. A leaner, meaner mass of rock-hard facts.

Amrcn Rev (1775 start) – war btwn 13 colonies and Gr8 Britain. Trty of Paris ends war n 1783 > Colonies indpndnt. No 1 evnt causd, but mainly disagrmnt abt how colonies shld b trtd by Brit. Amrcns wntd all rts of Englshmn. Brits felt they were 2b used 2 suit crown. Colonist’s cry “No Txtion w/o Rprsntation.”

What’s the point? How does this help? This exercise is a step-by-step analysis of what’s important in the paragraph. Repeatedly practicing this sort of procedure will train your brain to automatically look for the key words. You will have built a high-powered fact magnet between your ears.

Bonus: Now try to sum up the whole thing in one phrase as short as you can possibly get it. This time you aren’t trying to capture all the key information; rather, what was the purpose of the paragraph?

Who, what, and why of American Revolution.

Bingo! That’s what the author was wanting to get across when she penned this paragraph.

Again, this is an exercise that, when performed repeatedly, will train you to quickly focus in on what’s really important. Practice makes perfect, and although the exercise is fairly simple to perform, it takes LOTS of practice to achieve super mac-mastery. I personally really began doing these exercises in earnest at the start of my sophomore year in college. By the end of my first semester I could really tell the difference in my ability to spot key points in a passage while reading at a normal speed.

Tags: comprehension, focus, GRE, reading, reading comprehension, SAT, Study Skills

Simple Way to Boost Reading Focus

sharpbean — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:00:09 +0000

Anyone who has ever tried to bulldoze their way through a narcolepsy inducing SAT or GRE reading comprehension passage will know just how hard it is to maintain focus when reading. No matter how hard you try to feign interest in scintillating topics like “The History of Corn Prices in 19th Century Dubuque” or “An In-Depth Look at Catatonia in Clams” we just can’t seem to keep our gray matter engaged. We end up like that dog in the movie Up. “Squirrel!”

I’ve got an easy fix to help keep your wayward brain on track and boost your comprehension.

Don’t be like Saint Ambrose.

Saint Augustine noted that when he went to visit Ambrose–then the bishop of a hoppin’ 4th Century Milan–he often found him reading silently. No lie. The guy read without saying the words out loud! I know. Weird, right? “When he read,” noted Augustine, “his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud.” Although there is some reason to believe that others had read silently before Ambrose, it was considered very out of the ordinary! Most people in the ancient world read out loud apparently, and in Europe this persisted up until the 10th Century (Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading. New York, Viking, 1996).

Ancient students knew something most of us don’t. It sometimes really helps to read out loud. In fact, reading aloud not only ratchets up your focus, it increases your comprehension. The Summary of the (U.S.) National Reading Panel Report noted the positive effects of guided oral reading on many reading skills including comprehension. My own experience as a teacher has borne this out. It’s amazing how often my students struggle with GRE reading comprehension questions who, two minutes later, are slapping themselves in the forehead when I read the same question to them out loud. What was confusing and tangled when they read it in the silent caverns of their cerebelum suddenly makes perfect sense when they hear it read out loud, slowly, with pauses for punctuation and emphasis on key words.

Pointers:

Take it slow and easy. Read as slowly as you need to in order to think carefully about what you’re reading (but see my notes on speed reading below). I find most students try to read too quickly, especially on knotty GRE and SAT reading passages or dry, academic gristle. They bull their way through only to find themselves having to go back and reread more carefully in order to answer questions. Those of us in the know read slowly and carefully so we only have to read it once.

Imagine you’re reading to a group of fifth-graders and you’re trying to make it exciting. Emphasize key words. Pause for commas. Pause longer for colons. Just deciding how it should be read encourages you to uncover the author’s meaning.

When you read orally, you don’t have to be loud; just loud enough. If you were sitting next to me during a GRE or SAT, you would hear me quietly muttering to myself as I read. I can hear myself, but others can’t.

Reread. Was that last sentence confusing? Read it again. Rephrase it, and translate the less clear words into words you understand well.

Comment and argue. Have a running conversation with the author. Do you agree or disagree? What’s their real agenda? Why did they phrase that last line the way they did?

“But what about speed-reading?” you may ask. In speed reading they teach that verbalizing the words–even silently in your head–actually slows you down. Yes. It does. But I’ve found that speed reading is helpful mainly on very straight-forward clear texts when you are just going for capturing facts rather than trying to tease out nuanced arguments and hidden agendas. I do use speed reading for some things, but if I really want to understand and evaluate a grisly piece of science writing or a bony bit of philosophy, I have to slow down and chew thoroughly. You can eat oatmeal fast, but a lobster takes slow steady effort and special tools.

And now we’re back again to focus. This whole process of reading out loud–slowly, steadily, with pauses and emphasis–is interactive. We lose focus when our reading takes on the numbing cadence of a mindless recitation. Mindlessly reading the words in succession is not reading; it’s just a recipe for boredom. Engage with the text by reading aloud in the way I’ve described and focus is no longer a problem.

Tags: comprehension, focus, focusing, GRE, reading, reading comprehension, SAT, Study Skills

Assignment Calculator Helps You Schedule the Steps in Major Projects

sharpbean — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:29:17 +0000

The library at the University of Minnesota has provided a nice tool for helping you schedule out all the steps in larger projects such as term papers and presentations. As you may recall from earlier posts, breaking that monstuh project into bite-sized bits is a key way to give procrastination a swift kick in the put-offskies. Take a look here.

P.S. Pay special attention to the different template choices at the bottom of the page that allow you to tailor the results to the type of project your working on.

Tags: procrastination, projects, schedule, Study Skills

Wired Study Tips Has a New Home

sharpbean — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:45:42 +0000

Thank you, Engineering Student Services & Academic Programs Office at Texas A&M University! They have taken over the hosting of my Wired Study Tips podcast on iTunesU. If you haven’t already done so, bop on over to Wired Study Tips on iTunes and take a listen.

Tags: GRE, link, SAT, Study Skills, tool

Focus Booster App

sharpbean — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:44:31 +0000

On my study skills video and in my study skills ebook I discuss the importance of taking frequent breaks during study sessions to boost recall and focus. Studying for 30 to 45 minutes and then taking a short 5 to 10 minute break can really boost your brain power.

Try this handy FREE online focus booster app to help you make sure you’re taking regular breaks and squeezing the most out of your brain’s capacity. Click on the “i” tab in the upper right to change the timing.

Improve your study focus with this free app

Tags: focus, focusing, Study Skills, tool

Sleep Late for Better Grades!

sharpbean — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:55:44 +0000

Take a look at this spiffy infographic to see oh-how-many-ways sleeping more can make you into the man, woman, or non-gender specific being you you always knew you could be! Sleep Infographic

Tags: link, sleep, Study Skills