Strategies to Increase Focus in Work and Learning Part 1

Every student knows that absorption and internalization of learning and quality of output depends upon the amount of concentration and focus you can bring to bear upon your work. However, one of the most common causes of frustrations for law students is the inability to focus on work due to non-conducive environments. For many, the library is usually a safe refuge to do work without interruption. But it does not work for everyone. Like every other part of the world, law schools too, could have their own shares of unsavory characters and surroundings. While you can feel in your guts that it is imperative for you to free yourself from distractions and focus on your work at hand, the level of focus or concentration that your require may be eluding you. This article would help you with some tried strategies to reduce distractions and increase your ability to focus.

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Control your surroundings:

First, make sure that your surroundings are conducive to the task at hand and would not interrupt your focus. Surroundings that make you comfortable can include both physical and mental factors. Using a desk and chair combination that does not make you feel comfortable is not going to help you focus on your until you find a situation where you can sit and work comfortably.

Build Toffler’s zones by placing personal objects to claim stake to space and turn it personal. People turn spaces into personal comfort zone by placing objects with which there is a personal attachment, or an attachment may be developed. Leaving your hostel room unadorned is going to affect your mind if you just continue using what you received. Putting up pictures of yourself and your near and dear ones, posters of things or people you love, using objects that are personal helps to create a personal comfort zone and mark out territory. It is essential that a person should feel that a space belongs to him or her at an immediate level to be able to use that space for residence and focus during work.

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Shutting out distractions is essential and small things like listening to music or white noise producers can help you concentrate. By putting in place background noise that covers other distracting noise, you essentially mark your “audio” surroundings with something under your control. This helps to build your personal comfort zone and increase focus.

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Control your body:

Influence your body with time tested techniques.

Drink lots of water – the human brain starts performing at less than peak efficiency due to dehydration much before we actually start feeling thirst. If you are learning and working, don’t form the habit of drinking water only after you feel thirsty. Drink water at scheduled intervals so that thirst never hits you, and you always remain hydrated.

Eat properly and at scheduled intervals – improper intervals and upsets in the timing of food can disrupt biological cycles in your body and lead to many ailments besides loss of focus. It is imperative that to have the best use of your personal faculties you need to maintain a disciplined regime of food and sleep. Keep snacks at hand while studying or working. Intellectual work burns calories at a rate five times faster than physical work. The difference is that when you are physically tired you would be able to quickly ‘feel’ it, but it might take a long time to realize that you are tired due to mental work. Snacks do help in studies.

Don’t neglect physical movement. Many students become couch potatoes and barely move from their ‘seats of power’ most of the time. However, to remain intellectually active, it is necessary to remain physically active. Get up, walk around, take a breath outside, and come back to focus again on your work.

In this article we dealt with what you can add to the equation to increase focus. In the next part of this article we would be dealing specifically with how to handle common distractions and focus your attention on the work at hand to the exclusion of everything else. Remember, studying is like meditation, if you are really studying then you would lose track of everything else. So, it is important to inculcate the habits of drinking water, eating, and sleeping on time to get your productivity working at its peak.

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