4.5 Concentration: Make the Most of Your Study Time
4.5 Concentration: Make the Most of Your Study Time
Building upon the notion of scheduling time to study, students need to monitor their levels of concentration during those study sessions. A study session that is filled with distractions and a general lack of concentration is wasted time. It is the responsibility of students to plan their study time and plan to do it in an environment that is conducive for good concentration.
To say that students are “paying attention” is to say that they are aware of certain factors that are going on in the environment. However, attention can wane and requires a process of continual refocusing, in other words, concentration. To determine if you are concentrating to your full ability, you need to monitor your level of concentration and what you are getting out of a study session. However, if you are not concentrating to your full capacity, that is not an excuse to just stop studying or zone out of a lecture; you need to take steps to improve your concentration in that given situation.
ACTIVITY 4-2:
Keep a Time Log (see Time Log worksheet at the end of this chapter) for one full week. Try to record what you are doing to the nearest 30-minute segment. If you are multitasking, you need to select the most salient and intended task to record.
Record and add up the amount of time spent engaged in the following general activities:
| In class | ________hrs. |
| Studying outside of class | ________hrs. |
| Sleeping/napping | ________hrs. |
| Exercising/organized sports | ________hrs. |
| Work/internship | ________hrs. |
| Family commitments | ________hrs. |
| Personal care/grooming | ________hrs. |
| Meal preparation/eating/cleanup | ________hrs. |
| Commuting (school, work, etc.) | ________hrs. |
| Relaxing—watching TV, video games (alone) | ________hrs. |
| Socializing with friends/entertainment | ________hrs. |
| Other (List “other” activities) | ________hrs. |
There are 168 hours in one week. Do your totals add up to 168?
Reflect on how you are using your time. What surprised you about how you use your time? Are you spending as much time studying as suggested by the Academic Work Week formula? Do you need to make any adjustments in how you are using your time?
Figure 4-6. Concentration Capacity during a Lecture
Each person has finite resources that can be allocated toward concentration. You need to determine what you can do to improve your ability to concentrate on the task at hand, which in this case (Figure 4-6) is listening to a lecture. Controlling the distractions is necessary to be able to continually refocus on the lecture at hand. External distractions are those that originate outside of your body, such as a cell phone ringing, people talking, the temperature of the room, etc. Internal distractions are those that originate inside of the body, such as hunger, stray thoughts, emotional responses and thoughts, etc. (Dembo & Seli, 2008). Students need to be able to identify the distractions that are currently det