Thanks for passing that on Merlin. Parts of it look eerily familiar to a post I published on 9/10 called 10 Ways to Make Your Study Sessions More Productive.

…but it’s hard to concentrate at work, even with all tips in the world when your office-mate insists on listening to Ozzy/Sabbath all day.

Oh what I wouldn’t do for some good (and affordable) noise canceling earbuds.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go “bark at the moon”.

I really have to agree with the recommendation of water over caffeine. Caffeine tends to turn my “mind like water” into “mind like percolator”. The effect is really noticable since I gave up coffee and cola about a year ago.

Now, I always start a study session with a full bottle of water or juice. If you’re drinking enough, it has the added benefit of forcing you to take breaks.

I particularly like the idea of a bit of meditation before starting a large period of concentrated work. Even 5 minutes can help. Calms the mind by slowing the “pinball” focusing that can happen.

Our lives are informationally noisy and strategies like these can help. Thanks.

I teach at a cooking school in Chicago and I have the hardest time getting the cooking students to concentrate while they work. We have a concept in classical cooking called mise en place, everything in its place. I think that some of the concepts in the article can help even the most Rockstar/Red Bull addled students. Thanks Merlin!

Chef Tom

The advice I’ve gotten for “Do not tell yourself off or tell yourself to concentrate” has been, when you see your mind wandering, gently bring it back like you would gently put a child to bed. If you notice your attention wandering, just correct it and don’t get involved in a story about it, such as “there I go messing up again”, etc. (Granted, the person I got this instruction from had never had a sleep deprived night from a child, so do it in the idealized fashion.) This is surprisingly effective if you apply it with discipline.

I find spending a few moments thinking and stating to yourself clearly what you want out of study/work session to be useful (on the rare occasion I actually have the discipline to do it). If you aren’t clear about your intent it’s easy to wander off without focus and not meet your objective.

For example, you might say to yourself, “In the next 2 hours want to develop a good conceptual understanding of threading in Ruby”. It should be tight and focused. Something like, “I want to learn some more about Ruby” is less useful.