How to stay focused while studying

I know that seeing this word that starts with R and ends with E is a pain in our eyes.

But creating an environment that will make you stick to your priorities as a student will go a long way!

Creating a planner for your daily or weekly activities can block your time and help you properly assess your priorities.

Sticking to your planner, clocking in and out of those tasks will create a habit that will soon become your routine.

Study Goals will be your North Star and help you navigate the jungle of learning.

Rewards will supplement the achievement of your set goals, thus keeping the fire burning for more plans to smash!

Use a working calendar to manage your time. This will not only let you count down the days until your exam but it will also empower you to evenly spread out review sessions.

Use your calendar to jot down assignment due dates and other important milestones so you stay on track.

If you already know what you need to get done each day, it’ll be much easier to stop procrastinating and start studying.

If planners don't work for you (like me), a checklist is your best buddy!

You can easily navigate and cross out tasks or things that you already accomplished.

EASY PEASY.

Then after you cross it all out, move on to the next day.

AMAZING!

Who wants a messy study table?

Who wants a noisy neighbor?

LOL! 

You want to create your own environment free of loud noise and clutters.

You will definitely stick to a routine if your surrounding is quiet and clean.

Wanna level up the studying field?

Set up a Mood Board! It is a game-changer.

Distractions are the main culprits why we can't achieve anything or are delayed in hitting those goals.

To be a successful student, you’ll need to leave behind sources of distraction. One of the most useful tips for avoiding distractions while studying is to turn your smartphone off and put it in another room.

A grumbling tummy can be really distracting when you need to focus on your schoolwork. Bringing healthy brain food to your study session is helpful if you want to stay motivated and energized.

Stay away from high-sugar snacks that will make your energy levels spike and crash. Instead, choose snacks that help your brain function at its best. Nuts, seeds, blueberries, dark chocolate, carrots, avocados, bananas and other healthy foods can all leave you feeling awake and energized.

This is so damn hard, right?

Especially on those days, you are burned out and just want to lay on your bed and scroll your phone to look for funny cat videos.

Nobody can help you, but yourself.

In these super hard moments, knowing why you are studying, will help you get motivated. List all of those!

Or create a poster out of those thoughts and put it in a place where you can easily see it whenever the fuel for motivation runs out.

For social learners, study groups can be a motivational environment for staying focused on complex course material. Studying with classmates can also help make test preparation a little more manageable.

Get your peers excited to study together by sending out invitations. The more people who can join, the more brains there will be to share ideas, notes and knowledge with.

Different learning styles, but same end goal.

TO STAY FOCUSED ON LEARNING AND GETTING THE MOST OUT OF WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO LEARN.

So if you are:

Visual Learner (like me)

Auditory Learner

Kinesthetic Learner

Create your way of learning; gone are the days that we must be uniform on the way we learn, or you will be an outcast / plain stupid.

I learn more by watching, outlining, or looking at infographics as a visual learner.

This might be time-consuming but rewriting what you learn in your own words is beneficial.

You are creating connections in your brain cells which will give way to comprehending the topic at hand.

Less stress on neurons because those are your own words without the chemical symbols or jargon.

Personalize the learning, and you'll unlock your memory bank 100%.

If you are a visual learner like me, try making mind maps, aside from making motivational posters to pump you up!

It's a cool way to organize your thoughts and create connections that will give clarity and context to what you are doing.

Start with your main subject, then branch out with vocab words, subtopics, characters, formulas, important dates, and other related pieces of information. You can build mind maps on your own or use them as a warm-up activity with your study group.

When you need to memorize key dates, facts, names, words, or other information, memory aids like flashcards are perfect retrieval practice tools. Write a question or prompt on one side and the answer on the other side.

Quiz yourself and spend more time reviewing the flashcards you don’t know the answers to immediately.

Worksheets can be useful tools for assessing your knowledge and staying focused.

Create your own that include questions related to your school subject matter, leaving space to write short answers. Once you've graded your own work, it can be rewarding to see how much you've learned.

Plus, your finished worksheets can be repurposed as study guides later on.

There are gazillion ways how to be an effective reader, here is a step by step example:

1. Warm-up your brain
2. Sweep the chapter
3. Write as you read. 
4.  Look up words you don’t understand.
5.  Ask questions. 
6. Look for answers. 
7.  Turn chapter titles and headings into questions.
8.  Understand what you are reading. 

If you are a student, #8 is so hard to achieve right? But following these steps, you can easily create a system that can make way for you to understand things fast.

So you've stuck to your study routine, memorized the flashcards, finished your worksheets, and powered through thanks to a few energizing snacks and motivational quotes.

Now it's time to check whether you know what you need to know to ace that upcoming exam.

Using practice tests is a great way to test your knowledge and mentally prepare for an exam setting. You'll be proud of yourself when you see how well you're doing and how much all your studying has paid off.

Design a report card and keep track of your practice test performance and what topics you need to improve.