The end of your time limit could mean different things depending on what you want to accomplish, whether it’s a set number of problems or paragraphs. Some words of caution: A homework shot clock shouldn’t be used to rush your work. That’s not too shabby, especially right after a week in which the most intellectual thing I did was read the back of a cereal box. Although I couldn’t quite bang the whole thing out in under an hour, my time didn’t look bad compared to the two- to three-hour baseline. In this instance, however, I had a heightened awareness of how much time a detour would cost me. Using that as a baseline, I began a timer for an hour at the moment I started on this piece, making sure I had a clear view of the countdown as I worked.Īs usual, nothing kept me from scrolling through Spotify or cleaning out my inbox. On average, it takes me about two to three hours to write a single column. The first step toward curing a back-to-school slump, therefore, must be to reintroduce yourself to the concept of time constraints. You get a couple of days to complete homework, which might lead to the illusion that you can take as long as you want on it, even when you might only need an hour or two to finish it. The difference? Of course, one assignment may be worth less than 1% of our final grade, while the other might be worth as much as 40%.Ī point that supersedes grades, however, is you only get an hour or so to finish an exam. On the other hand, we’ve taken tests so draining they make us forget our phones even exist. We’ve had days when we can’t stop checking our phones long enough to finish one sentence for an online discussion response. This is true year-round: we can all agree, for example, spending an hour on homework is very different than spending an hour on an exam. My theory - perhaps a little unscientific - is our productivity reflects the level of urgency we allot to our tasks. Research has shown even when classes are in full swing, these same activities during study breaks can be beneficial to productivity (using social media, however, can have the opposite effect). Many of us may feel as though our habits themselves lead to a clunky transition back to school: It’s hard to redefine certain habits as distractions - napping, exercising or just simply lounging around - when they’ve become our daily rituals over the long break. Maybe we can come closer to solving this problem if we redefine the problem itself: What if we didn’t need to re-establish focus as much as we needed to re-establish urgency? For a lot of us, it still feels like summer, even when our brains desperately need to kick it into autumn gear. We’re a little rusty as students it’s not like there were any deadlines on the beach, nor did our vacations gave us any take-home assignments. We can’t answer that question easily after having spent three months without classes on our radar. As another semester falls upon us, so does the eternal, burning question: How do we get back to focusing on school again?
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