CAL NEWPORT

Sleeping 8 hours a day and taking a time-out to rest is crucial.

Give yourself time to recuperate, in order to perform better at any task, and to recall better what you have studied.

Make focus a regular part of your lifestyle, by practicing it progressively on a daily basis.

This means making a commitment to stop using your smartphone for a few hours daily, or not checking it first thing in the morning.

A routine will ensure your time is well utilized and you have less unexpected distractions.

Get yourself comfortable in your study table or a cafe where you will not be disturbed, and can tune-out the music or noise to focus on your study work.

Commit to what you want to study on a particular day, or for a few hours. Limit the number of tasks/distractions/subjects so that you keep your intense focus and actually complete the tasks you started.

Get rid of shallow, low-intensity work and stuff like checking social media on your smartphone, while you focus on your study work. Keep yourself distraction-free at least for the few hours you are studying.

While focusing on one topic in a day, it helps to have a weekly plan to organize yourself and map your study hours.

Our brains are wired to work on tasks serially, and not in parallel. This means that we are not wired for multitasking - we are good at focusing on one thing at a time.

The problem is, there are so many distractions these days that we've unconsciously trained our brains to not be good at focusing.