How Can I Focus on my Studies on Laptop? | 5 Tips for Long-Term Success
How to Completely Avoid Distractions While Studying | 5 Action Steps
Are you tired of having absolutely no ability to focus for more than 30 mins? If that?
Would you like to become a competent individual who can simply choose a task and work extremely efficiently at it for one hour, 2 hours, plus?
That’s what we’re exploring today.
ROBOT work efficiency.
Here’s 5 tips:
Strategies for building deep work habits
Working in dedicated blocks, rather than haphazardly.
Also, using the “Pomodoro Technique”, which basically just means work for a short period of time (25 mins to start) and then resting for another short time (5-15 mins) and then start.
There’s also a book called, “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, that looks at strategies we can use to make creating deep work habits relatively easy.
Examples are “Habit Stacking”, specification and cues.
Here’s one way that you could start performing deep work sessions TODAY, using these strategies:
Identify an existing habit: Such as eating breakfast, making a coffee or brushing your teeth in the morning.
Add a specific, existing habit right before this. It might look like eating breakfast and THEN brushing your teeth.
Make these two habits cues: Breakfast would trigger brushing your teeth, which would trigger your new habit. For example, you can choose to sit down at your desk, in your room, with your drink bottle to start working, right after you finish brushing your teeth.
Define your new habit: Your new habit should be specific and focused. For example, you can decide that you want to focus on a specific task for the next 25 mins.
Stack the habits: Begin the work or study session by clicking start on a Pomodoro timer and closing all tabs irrelevant to the work you’re about to do, as SOON as you sit down at your desk.
Have a 5-15 min break after this time is up. Then, back to it.
Repeat consistently: Repeat this process every day or several times a day, at the same time, and in the same way. Stick to the cue, do the new habit, and reward yourself for doing it.
Deep work sessions also lead to “Work-Flow”, which is basically an increased focus due to your mind getting into an intentional flow state.
This is why merely checking your phone every 20 mins or so is actually quite a bad idea, because you’re interrupting the process of your mind getting into a flow state.
“I don't have any energy to study”
To get energy to work efficiently and study, maximise your energy levels in these ways:
Don’t eat too much
Don’t eat 3h before bed
Get sufficient sleep for you
Do intermittent fasting if your doctor says that you’re allowed to.
I’ll explore some nuances of energy in the coming weeks, but there’s some general stuff.
Supposedly one of the most significant traits of a person who’s achieved objectively great things or attain great wealth, is high levels of energy.
They don’t really burn out, or need many breaks.
They just get into the workflow and do not stop.
But, you should at least stop for your 5 minute Pomodoro breaks!
Should I make a to-do list the night before?
Let’s take a look at what I do specifically.
I do my work in “segments” (segment 1, 2, 3, 4) each with two 1-hour long work sessions.
I’ll focus for an hour, do something like respond to messages for 5 mins, then another hour of the next work that I’ve put on my to-do list.
And that’s another thing…
MAKE A TO-DO LIST the night before.
This gives you intention and prevents you from feeling like you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing throughout the day.
Because you know EXACTLY what comes next.
Here’s an image of mine today:
Hehehe… This isn’t all of it by the way.
Creating dedicated spaces for productivity
Another strategy that “Atomic Habits” outlines is dedicated spaces.
At my desk, I only work (and watch ASMR at the end of the night…)
If I wanna watch something entertaining, I’ll go sit on the couch.
If I wanna relax on my bed, I can only do it when it’s bedtime.
“How do you ensure that you abide by these dedicated spaces? “
For me, I practice my deep work habit stacks (from my first point) so often that it became easy to just work efficiently and acknowledge when I wanted to be entertained, and then move into the lounge-room.
Associate waking up with putting a selection of stuff on your bed where you’d normally lay down, as an incentive not to lay on it throughout the day.
How to align work with personal values and goals
One other thing that’s huge for me is working with internal drive.
I talk about how important it is to find what you truly want and why you want it, and it’s just as important in this discussion.
I enjoy all the hard work that I do, because I know that doing it is aligned with the person that I want to be and the “Desirable Outcomes” that I’m moving toward.
Your teachers, professors and parents DO tell you this, but they’ll often point out the “great long-term reward” of simply getting a good grade or working at a certain job…
Or living a certain life that you don’t even NECESSARILY want to live, presuming that you haven’t taken the time to excessively question yourself like I advocate that you do.
How do you excessively question yourself to make sure you’re working for the most meaningful reasons?
Two ways:
1) Answer the questions in this digital download.
2) Learn to reflect on your thoughts.
I touched on this second point a lot in my last post, so go check it out.
Basically, you can learn a lot about yourself by observing your thoughts without judgement, reflecting on every conversation that you have and identifying how other people’s words and actions affect them and the ones around them.
This is something you should incorporate into your way of living for the long-term.
It’s something to do in addition to answering the 10 Questions to Find Your Purpose.
Do that once, and you’ve built yourself an asset to refer back to WHENEVER you feel lost.
And that’s it!
But here’s a bonus tip:
Like I said in the first point about deep work and getting into a flow state, you should be doing similar kinds of work back-to-back.
For example, if you’ve been watching videos on stuff and have still got more work/study-related videos to go through, watch them.
Don’t suddenly switch to a writing task.
Then once you’ve watched whatever videos you need to, you can now get into a writing flow-state, because doing that one kind of task is easier to focus on than doing multiple different kinds of work.
Done!
I’ll probably do more on these in the future, but those should be enough to help you work at optimal efficiency when researching, doing online business or studying on your laptop.
Join the Peaky Pines Email Community if you wanna see more of this kind of stuff.
Stuff about becoming an efficient and competent individual.
And building faith in your abilities.
Talk soon,
P.S.
