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Christopher the Coherent
@coherent
Get More Out of Your Study Sessions
- Break up your study sessions rather than try to cram it all in the night before the test. By studying information in increments, you will be more likely to remember it until test day.
- If you are struggling to memorize something important, momentary interruptions might actually work to your advantage. While you are focusing on other things, you will find yourself mentally returning to the information you were studying.
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Holden Y.
@holyy23
This bizarre phenomenon can stop you from procrastinating
The Zeigarnik Effect
It suggests that not finishing a task creates mental tension, which keeps it at the forefront of our memory.
The only thing that will relieve this tension is the closure brought ...
The Zeigarnik Effect for beating procrastination
The phenomenon proposes that making a start on something, no matter how big or small, keeps it ticking way at the back of your mind until you reach the end.
Thus, getting the ball rolling might be a good antidote to procrastination.
Carson
@carson_61
The brain is obsessed with unfinished tasks
When we have unfinished tasks, we think about them continuously. But the moment they are completed, we forget about them. If we have unread email, we constantly wonder what it says. But once it...
Incomplete tasks: What happens inside the brain
Once our brain receives information, it temporarily stores sensory memory (sight, hearing, smells, taste, and touch). If we pay attention to the information, it moves to our short-term memories.
If the task is incomplete, our brains can't let it go until it's done. That is why TV dramas use cliffhangers to end episodes.
How to capitalize on the Zeigarnik effect
- Reduce your tendency to procrastinate. If you have a task you've been avoiding, begin with the smallest thing to be done. The desire to close the loop will help you take small steps to get it done.
- Get people to take note of what you're saying. Try using ellipses instead of a full stop in your headline so that your reader will feel like "there's more to this."
- Memorize more information. Break your information up into parts. Or spread your learning over several days.
- Remember difficult names. Learn one part of the name, then come back to the second part when your done memorizing the first.
Valerica Dragomir
@valerica
Context Switching: Why It's So Hard to Avoid & How to Prevent It Anyway
Use tasks lists and trackers
Designate a place to add and organize your tasks that’s not your head: a pen-and-paper to-do list or a digital task manager like Todoist . By capturing tasks to come back to later, you can free your attention to focus on your immediate work, not remembering what you need to get done in the future.
Organization methods
Once you know what you’ll focus on, you’ll need a daily structure for staying focused on it. You may not be able to eliminate context switching from your day entirely, but these strategies will help you cut down on the number of times you have to shift your attention:
- Task batching : Grouping and performing similar tasks together. For example, answering all of your emails at the same time so you’re not bouncing back and forth between your work and your inbox all day.
- Time blocking : Dividing your day into blocks, such as “meetings,” “email,” and “deep work”. This method goes a step further than task batching and requires you to physically block off time on your calendar for a designated task or group of tasks and only those tasks.
- Theme days : Designating different days of the week for different types of tasks. This is a more extreme version of task batching and time blocking that allows you to focus on certain types of work on certain days and postpone other types of work that don’t fit with the day’s theme.
- Time boxing : Setting a limit on how much time you spend on a task. Similar to time blocking, time boxing requires you to designate boxes of time for specific tasks. The twist is that you must finish the designated task within the time box. The time constraint creates a sense of urgency that sharpens your focus.
- Pomodoro method : Setting a timer while working on one task and taking regular breaks. This is a variation on time boxing that calls for 25-minutes of focused work on a single, clearly defined task followed by a 5-minute break with a longer 30-minute break after every four focused sessions.
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