Revolutionise your concentration!

Última actualización Lunes, 18/01/2021

As a greater part of our education goes online, studying at home by ourselves may be a bit of a challenge to our capacity to focus. Whereas we may think that this can be a calm space where it is easy to concentrate, we may encounter distractions everywhere. Our phone, for example, is one of the biggest obstacles to efficient, productive periods of concentration, but that is far from being the only reason. Who has not stared through the window and magically the clock has advanced by 20 minutes without you noticing? Here we give you some ideas to improve your concentration and make the most of your study time at home.

The first advice while studying from home would be: stay away from your phone! Lock it up in your closet! But since we want to stick to realistic and useful proposals for you, one easy proposal we might suggest is turning off as many notifications as possible or mute them all while studying. This would avoid unnecessary distractions, especially those with sound notifications!

However, if you are not ready to turn off or hide your phone, there are useful things you can do with it for your concentration and productivity.

Turn off your phone unless…

You get an app to boost your concentration! Some apps block notifications during the time you set in the timer and if you don’t try to use your phone during that time, the app grows a nice forest on your phone or feeds a (virtual) pet. You can create different sets combining study and rest time to help you stick to your tasks when it is a “study set”.  

Watch me study!

A popular trend to boost students' motivation and concentration is watching people studying on YouTube. Yes, that’s right you study while watching someone studying at the same time.

Some YouTubers who record themselves use a timer to break out the sessions and include 5-10 minutes break between study blocks, depending on the length of the session. Whereas it helps the person watching the video, so it does for the person who is recording him/herself because they feel some accountability to their viewers and grow a sense of community with other students. Plus it gives you the feeling of being in a study group just as if you were in the library. Why not give it a try and study with someone from anywhere in the world? You could propose it to your fellow students and organise study groups with coffee breaks to debrief and chitchat. 

The classic technique which never gets old…

They say… Music is the medicine of the mind; and it can be a great ally in pursuing your goals! Scientific studies have shown that music helps to release dopamine in our brain and thus relaxing and makes tasks more pleasant - including studying.

Although you can use any genre of music, it is best to concentrate on using smooth instrumental rhythms without lyrics, so you don’t feel the temptation to follow the lines. Lo-fi beats, classical music, jazz or even soundtracks are a good option to play in the background while you study.

Don’t forget that these are some options you can try out, only you know what works best for you to concentrate and achieve your goals! If you don’t, just try out different methods to find the one that suits you best!

Try your best but don’t be too hard on yourself!

While it is great to set objectives to help us achieve our goals, we also need to be aware of our daily circumstances. There is no day like another, so we cannot demand of ourselves the same productivity level each day. Some days we may be feeling more tired or stressed and we cannot expect to work as if it was a cheerful day. Be kind to yourself and before making use of an overwhelming amount of tools to increase your concentration or productivity, check on your mental wellbeing before getting started on your to-do list for the day. The improvement of self-awareness of mental wellbeing is a key goal under the point of mental health and wellbeing in The European Union Youth Strategy 2019-2027.