Conquering Distractions for Academic Success
This week has been particularly hard for me, life has taken its toll and distractions were at an all-time high. As you’ll notice from my visualizations, I kept getting exponentially more distracted by the similar distractions as the week carried on.
As a full-time student, it is already hard enough for one to sit down and give their full focus to their homework, especially while going through things in our personal life. The new digital age has accelerated these distractions and made the modern-day student more susceptible to losing focus.
Completing a homework assignment can be a challenging task, particularly for those who frequently get distracted. I am one of those many who lose focus so quickly on a variety of different distractions. Our phones are our best friends, but often, they can also be our enemies, with each new pop-up being more demanding than the other.
While tracking myself for a week, I’ve started noticing that most of my distractions were caused from just scrolling through social media and texting my friends/boyfriend. When our phones are on the tips of our hands constantly, I find it hard to fight the urge to check my phone, and this is a battle many of us can relate to.
The machine that we call life has been churning away at my emotions over the past couple months, and I find myself on a downward slope every week, getting more distracted as the week goes on. There has been a lot going on in my relationships, so even though I try my best to not get distracted, I just can’t help it.
Not to mention I also struggle with a lot of anxiety, so once I have something in mind I can’t help but to think about it, and that makes it even harder for me.
I really enjoyed creating this visualization of “My distractions while studying” because I never really realized how much time I spend checking my phone and social media. I found myself using my study time on my phone or laptop, instead of using this time to get a step ahead on my assignments and focus on my studies.
It really helped me think about ways I can minimize my distractions and come up with a solution. Especially this semester because I am currently taking six classes to be able to graduate in April. If I need to make changes, now is the perfect time to take action and focus on what really matters in my life, rather than get distracted with temporary things that aren’t going to help me succeed academically.
We can all get distracted while completing tasks, and it’s completely normal, but I’ve realized after looking at my visualization that I could actually save so much time if I made an effort to try and prioritize my schoolwork without getting distracted from every notification I get on my phone.
I have made a decision to once again track myself this upcoming week and try to make an effort to reduce my distractions and analyze how it differs from the prior week. By doing so, I can really gain a larger understanding on how distractions really affect my studies.
