Staying Focused | Studying Effectively for GCSE's & A-level's

hey friends and welcome back to our series and studying effectively for gcse's knee levels in this video we will be talking about how we can go about staying focused during our study sessions so let's get straight to the video

so one thing that author near isle talks about frequently is being instructable which is arguably the most important skill for our century given that we're surrounded by so many distractions these days in his book indestructible he talks about how we have both internal and external triggers internal triggers are any uncomfortable sensations we have whether it be boredom stress anxiety and many other emotional states in short the reason we look for distractions is to avoid dealing with these uncomfortable sensations for example it could be feeling stressed over an upcoming topic test because you haven't studied for it and to avoid dealing with this feeling of stress you let yourself get distracted and scroll through instagram or something which leads you to feel even more stressed afterwards and the cycle just ends up repeating or you may be in a study session and begins finding boring and wish to escape that emotional state of boredom by instead playing a game or watching youtube or something in which case it can be useful to perhaps play some music to make studying a bit more interesting or deciding to study for an hour than playing 10 minutes of a game and repeating this process over and over or even studying with friends to make it a bit more fun essentially monitoring your emotional state and dealing with these internal triggers appropriately as they come up with solutions such as the one i mentioned before can be useful for helping you to avoid looking for distractions to begin with if you want to learn more about these internal triggers then you can search for the term indestructible near isle on google or youtube and read some of his articles or watch a video or two of him speaking or even read his book if you want to now

the next and more obvious of the two are the external triggers this may be your phone being at arm's length away or having the television on or having something like facebook open on a tab on your computer and there are a number of ways to deal with these external triggers like turning your phone off and putting it into a room or if you're worried that your parents may have to call you in case of emergency you can put it in silence on your room in your closet or something but good settings to make uh sure that only certain contacts can still call you through silent mode there are many articles explaining how you can set this up on your own phone if you're interested and say that when you're using computer study and you find yourself opening up messenger or going to twitter in a new tab or something like that then maybe install chrome extension stay focused can help you to prevent yourself from going on these websites outside of these certain hours that you block out in your day or if you want to take the extra step then using a program like called turkey can block websites across all browsers and if you pay for the premium version then you can also block individual programs like games during fixed hours of your day and there are many other things that you can also do to reduce these external triggers and i mean sure for most of them you could do something like fiddling around and finding a way around this thing and still get distracted but usually the effort required to do this for most people is too much which prevents them from doing it to begin with on that note

nate isle also writes about something in his book called the 10-minute rule in which he says that he will allow himself to get distracted by something but only after waiting 10 minutes after the distraction comes to mind and usually this is enough to make him forget about the distraction after waiting 10 minutes but whilst i don't do this personally i do something similar essentially i keep a piece of paper or a post-it note with me and any distractions that come to mind when studying i'd write them down on this piece of paper for example when i'm working and i suddenly start wondering what someone i went to school with is up to nowadays or whether a new episode of a show came out that i like then i write both of these down on this piece of paper and just the process of writing it down makes it feel like i've already done the task and after my work session is over then i'm taking a break i would look at the list and realize that i don't really care what such and such a person is up to nowadays and i was just making up excuses to not do work but i do care when the next episode of such and such a show is coming out so i would quickly look that up during my break as well generally i find that for most of the distractions that come to mind i don't care about but some of them i do so i would batch them uh all together and allow myself to quote unquote be distracted briefly during any breaks

what i also tried to do is to make a checklist or a plan for the following day before going to bed generally i find that i'm more likely to be distracted in a day when i don't have a clear idea of what i should be doing and if i don't know what i'm going to be doing that day then i also don't know what i'm getting distracted from anyway which sort of makes sense if your plan is to just study for the entire day then unfortunately that isn't specific enough instead you should try to be specific by saying something like i'm going to make flashcards in topic x do five practice questions on topic y or even do say the 2017 past paper on subject said having a clear idea of what you will be doing and in what order maybe using a daily planning like i mentioned in the previous video in the series can be helpful in reducing helping you reduce distractions and helping you know exactly what to be focusing on that day

now the most useful technique that i have found for staying focused it's called the pomodoro technique it's quite a popular technique so if you have head of the technique before then you can start watching the video and i will see you next one but for those of you who haven't heard of it essentially the pomodoro technique is a system for helping you stay focused for small intervals by having breaks in between basically what you do is you decide on task whether it be doing some practice questions on a topic and then you set a timer for 25 minutes which is called a pomodoro session during the session you try to focus on the task at hand and avoid all of the distractions and then at the end of the 25 minutes you take a five minute break and then repeat for another 25 minute pomodoro session on the same task if you haven't completed it or a different one if you have and then after every four pomodoro sessions you take a longer 15 minute break now this doesn't have to be a rigid structure it's merely a guideline so you can vary the times to whatever suits you whether it be that you can focus for 50 minutes and take a 10 minute break or for even 90 minutes and take a 20 minute break it's really up to you and it's about finding combination that works for you but 25 minutes five minutes is a good starting point because it isn't too long for most people and it's still a good learn from time that you can get a decent amount of work done it but if your time goes off and you still want to work for longer then you don't have to take a break if you don't want to you can continue to focus on the task at hand and but if you find yourself losing focus after say 40 minutes then you may want to use say a 40 minute work and 10 minute break system instead now there are two things i like about this technique firstly it can be helpful to break down launch tasks and smaller sub tasks so they're more manageable for example let's say your goal is to go through the entire topic of electrolysis we may set two 25-minute pomodoros to watch some videos explaining the topic whilst making some brief notes and then spend another pomodoro session turning these brief notes into flashcards and then finally spend two more pomodoro sessions doing some exam questions breaking down large tasks like these makes them seem more manageable and achievable and most importantly ensures that we're taking breaks regularly it's a good idea to step back from our work and allow ourselves to relax as we can often come back and learn the solution to an exam question that we've been struggling with or some concept to understand could finally click in our heads whilst on our break this is pretty much what we mentioned about focus and diffuse thinking before in the video on tackling hard questions and this brings me on to an important point during our short five minute breaks we should try not to go on our phones because we can easily end up spending the next 30 minutes on them i find it more helpful to walk around get some water do some push-ups and read a few pages of a book or even watch a short head-head video basically anything that can help me step back from work and reset my mind but if i wanted to achieve more diffused thinking during the breaks then i would try to avoid doing anything that requires my focus now there are a number of apps that you can use for both phones and computers which i will link down below but personally i avoid using apps because when stopping or setting the pomodoro timer there's a risk of checking instagram or snapchat which is only a few tabs away and the next thing we know we've spent the last 15 minutes scrolling through it because of this fact i prefer to use a physical timer which i bought of amazon and i will leave a link in the description down below whilst it is 14 pounds the return on investment for me has been huge because i no longer have the risk of getting distracted by apps on my phone on my computer when i'm keeping track of pomodoros and i don't have to rely on any devices also the ringing sound it makes when it reaches zero it's loud enough that i can hear it with any music that's being played but the volume can also be reduced and i think the most important thing to remember when using pomodoro technique is to make sure your sleep has a priority which means going to bed and working up at the same time every day and getting at least eight hours if you can i generally cannot function well with anything less than that and remember that doing one pomodoro with a fresh and well-subbed brain is much better than doing two or three with a tied one but yeah that's

basically for this video and i'll see you next one