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So as soon as the material becomes boring or difficult to comprehend, your brain seeks the easier novelty available through these other mediums
And then you jump to another subject in which you think it will be easier to accomplish something at the time.
Is what I'm saying correct?
Sounds right actually
OK, so the first item of business is to limit distractions. Here's my advice for that.
If all your study material is online, that's a big challenge. It's much easier to focus on printed material.
If you can obtain printed material, I highly recommend it. But it's not a necessity.
What you have to do is, before you sit down to study, make a list of what you want to accomplish in each course.
So in today's Python session you're going to understand the concept of generators and write some example code or complete the exercises.
And that's **all** you're going to allow yourself to do once you start
Everything else gets turned off. Use a stripped-down browser, remove all other devices from the area.
If you cheat, you're only cheating yourself.
Once you check it off, take a break. Fifteen minutes is usually ideal. Get up, walk around, rest your eyes, check your various social media, then knock out the next item.
When you context switch frequently, you don't allow yourself to build up a foundation for learning, understanding, and retaining material. It all gets flushed out as soon as you switch to some other distraction or task.
If you have an old laptop laying around, it might be worth it to do a fresh install of your preferred OS on it, and ONLY install the bare minimum you need to use it for your coursework
and take it somewhere quiet, like the library or bookstore
that way you're in a place that's not as comfortable to you. That actually improves focus in my experience.
I never studied in my dorm room. I always went to the library. But all my material was printed back then (2000-2004).
It may be a good idea for me to print out what I can for studying purposes as well, and the 15 minute break seems good, actually
going for a walk was the secret sauce for me
It's going to be very difficult at first not to get distracted, but that's where the checklist will help you.
The checklist says "This is the only thing I'm allowed to do right now."
I recently studied for a math test for 12 HOURS... still did not do well on the test itself. We live in a pretty cozy neighborhood, so I could go walking.
I really like this checklist idea actually!
Right, but did you really study?
If you're checking your phone every 10 minutes, you're just treading water.
(I have two STEM master's degrees, I've been in exactly the same situation 😃 )
quick anecdote: when I was in calculus, I "studied hard"
Taking notes on all of this good information, also that is impressive my dude!
We have a library that I can use, and maybe normie starbucks might work, too
I appreciate all the advice you've given mate!
but I didn't strive to understand what I was doing. As soon as I got a rudimentary understanding, I immediately went on to other subjects or distractions
needless to say, I got rekt later on in the course because I did not have the prior fundamentals down.
So that summer, I went back through the text. I worked graveyard at a factory, and we got a few breaks every shift.
So on the first break, I would very slowly and deliberately read the explanation at the beginning of the section. Then I would write down some practice problems.
When the line went down (which happened a lot that summer), I would pull out the practice problems and work them on the scrap cardboard
so that fall when I took the next course in the calc sequence, I did just fine because I took the time to get a full understanding
it didn't take much time, but it did take full concentration. you'll see once you eliminate distractions that concentration matters much more than time spent.
I would be happy to help with mathematics (calc 2 and below), also EMT-Basic and Nursing Assistant questions as well.