Let’s look at how to optimize your study time. In this article, we cover the main obstacles to effective studying, and in the following one share the top six habits you can install to become a rockstar of study.
If you’re having trouble studying effectively, the first step is to remove the obstacles that stand in your way.
Obstacle 1: Social Media
If you’re a Gen Z or Millennial and find it hard to put in solid study time, it’s very likely social media is the main culprit.
Do you reach for your phone as soon as you have a spare moment? Do you feel lost and anxious without it? Are you spending hours scrolling through social media feeds and instant messages?
If this is you, you’re addicted to your smartphone, and you’re wasting precious time and energy that you could invest into your studies.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
Herbert Simon (in 1971!)
On a basic level, when it comes to study, you have to set aside your phone to work on your projects. You can’t be working and keeping up with your friends at the same time. Well, you can, but you need a smart method for it – and we’ll look at that.
But it goes beyond this. This addiction to quick, stimulating content is a disaster when it comes to getting things done because it affects your entire mindset. Sorry to break it to you, but working on projects is often slow paced, repetitive and monotonous.
But by transforming how you obtain pleasure, you’ll find working on your own visions and projects to be fulfilling for its own sake, despite its drudgery. And working on your projects gives you an outlet far away from social media, filling you with inspiration and purpose, so simply committing to them is a huge step in the right direction.
2: Multitasking
You might wonder why I’ve included multitasking as a main obstacle to studying. Doesn’t multitasking mean I’m working 2x, 3x, 4x more efficiently?
If this is your attitude, you must realize that multitasking is a myth. Though it sounds pretty to effortlessly shift our attention among various tasks, the truth is that our perception doesn’t work that way. Instead, attempting to multitask leaves us giving partial, broken attention to several items. Here’s why.
Compelling research at Stanford has shown that the brain does not focus on many tasks at once, but rather switches rapidly from one task to another. And when our attention switches back to the main task, its strength is diminished, requiring several minutes to return to normal.
What’s more, the same research shows that heavy multitaskers enter into distraction more easily in their ordinary lives. Training themselves to mix noise (unnecessary tasks and stimulation) with signal (crucial tasks), they fail to prioritize important tasks and become prone to distraction. When these heavy multitaskers try to focus on one crucial task, many more areas in their brain activate than necessary.
So multitasking means diminished attention in the moment – both in quality and length – and causes lasting damage to our working skills as a whole. In short, when we’re responding to messages, watching Netflix or browsing social media as we work, we’re seriously jeopardizing what really matters: our studies.
Obstacle 3: Aversion to Boredom
As we saw in Obstacle 1, the aversion to boredom is an obstacle to studying. Forget what you see in orgasmic, climactic ads. When you master a subject, most of the journey is vanilla-flavored. You’ll encounter hard times with self-doubt, procrastination and fatigue. If all you can bear is fast fun, you’ll never produce anything of note.
What’s worse, our allergy to the mundane leads us to adopting stronger and stronger vices to bypass it. And our boredom-combatting strategies follow the law of diminishing returns: they only produce more boredom and the need for a more potent solution. So over time, we become so used to stimulation that everything else seems depressingly mundane in comparison, and we’re caught in a vicious cycle.
What’s worse, these anti-boredom measures are usually junky and addictive. Social media, gaming, junk food and TV are all addictive substances that produce momentary satisfaction but slowly wither away our body and mind, leaving us lazy, unhealthy and overstimulated.
Essentially, boredom is caused by habituation. The more we’re exposed to objects, images and people, the less attention we pay to them. Eventually we tune them out altogether, and our life becomes dull and plain. How often do you notice the pleasure of drinking water? Probably very little – you have become habituated to the experience. The antidote is to boredom see the magic in the mundane.
4: Other People
It’s fun studying or working with friends, and it can be tempting when we feel unmotivated. Sure, it has genuine upsides. You have company, support, and accountability.
But I’ve found that unless your companions are as committed as you are, the results are usually poor. You essentially end up multitasking, switching between work and play every five minutes. Our friends start telling us about a million things that are completely unrelated to the task, and before we know it, they’ve hijacked our attention.
If you do work with friends, make sure they have high standards and are more interested in getting things done than socializing.
Now we’ve covered the main obstacles to studying effectively, let’s turn to the six essential habits we can adopt to that end.