How to use breaks THE RIGHT WAY during study

By EJ Poier

 

I used to hate studying, it took me forever to get any work done, I just couldn’t do it. It got to the point where I thought I had ADHD due to how little I could focus. However, I found out that my methods of studying were terribly inconsistent and didn’t benefit me in the least. I began to research, I found ways to study and how to properly use breaks in between. This feature article explains all I’ve learnt, that has helped me concentrate and essentially, got me the marks I get today.

The first method that I will be explaining, is how you take these breaks between study. It’s important to have a break depending on how long you can personally focus. For example, if my attention span allows me to only focus well for 50 minutes at a time I only work for that long and take breaks at every 50 minutes. Having more frequent and short breaks (within reason) is proven to improve productivity by 20-40% according to a UCID study done in 2014.

 

Another just as important aspect of taking breaks during study, is to make sure that during the time you’re meant to be working, you’re as focused, intrigued and productive as you can be. It’s usually quite hard to stay totally focused but placing your phone turned off and in a separate room, not listening to music and having a clear desk are all proven to help your focus exponentially. Those things are not essential and as an infamous man once said,

“The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential.”

And now you must be Focused and intrigued as that quote was from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In addition, completing work in a productive fashion gives you a hit of dopamine as you just completed a task and being as productive as possible gives you even more incentive to keep working.

 

In addition to making your work time as productive as possible, you need to remember to spend your breaks in a similar fashion. While taking breaks what you definitely shouldn’t be doing is laying down or go into your bed as it will just end up making you tired and sluggish causing work to be harder to complete. Instead you should get up and do a small amount of physical activity, not too much to make you physically exhausted but enough to get your blood pumping. Keeping active is very important and goes hand in hand with productivity as it improves your mindset which makes small amounts of activity the perfect thing to be doing during your study breaks. As well as active breaks, a very important aspect of break taking is trying to cut out screen time especially if your work is predominantly screen based. It’s important that you take a break and do something active which isn’t screen based as this helps with eye damage, fatigue and will boost overall focus.

 

A final tip on how to take breaks effectively and maximising productivity during study is to be in the right mindset. Being in a good, productive mindset is super important as it directly affects how much work you get done, as the way you choose to think dictates how effectively you work. You can use this to your advantage by during the breaks you take do something you really enjoy that will put you in a good, uplifted mood making you happy as you go back to work on your previous task. If you didn’t end up using this tip, it could have the opposite negative affect making it even harder to be productive.

 

Though in the end, the amount of work a person gets done really just depends on if they’re willing to do it. Now, choosing to use these tips is solely up to you but personally, I wish I had found out about these tips sooner and as Santosh Kalwar said,

 “It does not matter where you go and what you study, what matters most is what you share with yourself and the world.”

Hopefully what I have shared in this feature article will help, as much as it helped me.