Call us: Email us: success oregonstate. Skip to main content. Toggle menu Go to search page. Search Field. Where Do I Start? You are here Home. Improve Your Concentration.

Choosing a study environment The environment you study in can have a huge impact on your ability to concentrate, and choosing an environment conducive to concentration is a proactive step towards monitoring possible distractions. Consider the following factors when evaluating a potential study location: Are you unlikely to be interrupted or distracted?

Distractions and interruptions Distractions come in all shapes, sizes and sounds. Multitasking When it comes to studying, multitasking is ineffective, and a myth.

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In the late '90s and early s, with the rise of PDAs and other personal productivity devices, we embraced multitasking as a way to keep pace with the new speed of business. We highlighted our ability to juggle tasks on resumes, and bragged about how many assignments we were able to complete at once.

Multitaskers were seen as efficient, high-performing employees. Now we know the truth: multitasking impairs our work. It slows us down, we make more mistakes, and it wears us out both mentally and physically.

But we also know the few key situations in which multitasking can provide some real benefits, so we can indulge our brain's appetite for distraction without sacrificing our mental clarity or compromising our intellect. Emily is a content marketer at Wrike, where she writes about leadership, collaboration, and productivity.

So take a deep breath, go on a break, and: …change your environment Switch the. Hear that? That's the sound of your stomach grumbling. It's 2pm, and you.

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Wrike Blog Productivity. Emily Bonnie. Neuroscience This is Your Brain on Multitasking Trying to multitask actually changes the way your brain works. Try Wrike for free. Emily Bonnie Emily is a content marketer at Wrike, where she writes about leadership, collaboration, and productivity.

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So next time you're doing something simple like writing a document or responding to a lengthy email, try concentrating solely on that one thing. Don't check Facebook, or intermittently look at your Twitter feed. If you have to, exit your browser window on your computer and close down any other distracting applications.

If your mind wanders, use a physical anchor to bring your concentration back to centre. You can invent your own anchor, like clicking your fingers, clapping your hands, whistling or clenching your fists a few times.

This will act as an interruption that guides your mind back to the task you are working on. Multitasking might be a skill worth learning, and if you are good at it, great!

But the truth is, for me and most people, there is nothing more productive and rewarding than being fully present and totally focused on one piece of work at a time; to be fully immersed and giving your undivided attention in the present. That feeling you get when you are in the zone and nothing can pull your attention away from your work is undoubtedly when you are able to apply your full potential; it's when you produce your best work.

Ask yourself how often you really enjoy work when multitasking. I'm willing to bet that more often than not, when trying to juggle multiple interruptions, you feel stressed and unable to give your full attention and apply your full potential to one thing.

I guarantee that if you supercharge your concentration by eliminating distraction and using physical anchors to focus attention, you will not only become ultra-productive, but start producing your best work yet.

But there are also some less-obvious reasons why kids may be particularly hooked. Phones are where young people do a lot of their socializing now , especially as they reach the pre-teen and teenage years, when their major developmental goals are to start crafting an identity separate from their parents and to prioritize forming friendships with their peers — goals that are made for spending hours on social media.

Compared to adults, kids also have a less developed ability to control their impulses. Many adults and kids share the idea that when we are texting or monitoring feeds while we work we are still being productive — we are able to juggle everything at once.

A study out of Stanford in examined how well multitaskers are able to process information. People considered heavy media multitaskers were found to have more difficulty ignoring irrelevant but distracting things in their environment.

As a result they actually performed worse on a test of task switching ability when compared to people who were lighter multitaskers. Cruger explains. While the work might still get finished, multitasking adds up to shallower thinking and more time spent actually working.

At a Child Mind Institute event about how children are affected by technology, Ali Wentworth, actress, comedian and host of the event, described how she found her teenage daughter the evening before: She was doing her homework on one screen, texting on another, with Gilmore Girls playing on a third.

This is how I do my homework. In reality, multitasking during homework can be particularly difficult for kids who have ADHD. That might be because the constant stimulation offered by tech devices is very appealing to kids with ADHD.

Short bursts of attention, with immediate rewards, are easier for them than paying sustained attention. But trying to do both at the same time — juggling homework and Snapchat — would be particularly difficult for them.

These are all skills that are integral to doing homework and they are weakened further when we are dividing our attention across multiple platforms. Given that kids with ADHD are particularly susceptible to the stimulation that tech devices provide, and that focusing on homework is already harder for them, successfully doing both would be incredibly difficult.

Setting up a homework routine that minimizes distractions is important, especially if your child struggles with attention, or seems to be finding that her homework is taking much longer than it should.

Let her know that the goal is to make doing homework easier and less stressful. Removing those distractions should improve her homework experience and leave her with more actual free time. Skip to main menu Skip to content Skip to footer.

Internet Explorer is no longer supported Please upgrade to Microsoft Edge , Google Chrome , or Firefox. How Phones Ruin Concentration by Rachel Ehmke. Get this as a PDF. Enter email to download and get news and resources in your inbox. Share this on social Copy Link Link Copied Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Download.

How Phones Ruin Concentration Multitasking leads to shallower thinking and more time spent working, especially for kids who struggle with attention Writer: Rachel Ehmke Clinical Expert: Matthew Cruger, PhD en Español.

Why are kids with ADHD more vulnerable to tech distraction? How can parents help kids not be distracted by phones? Quick Read. Full Article. Distraction devices. Kids who struggle with attention.

A distraction-free mind. This article was last reviewed or updated on November 6, Rachel Ehmke. If you find that your go-to study space isn't actually all that helpful for your concentration, consider these other options , and keep checking in with yourself: are you able to focus, or are you getting easily distracted?

Distractions come in all shapes, sizes and sounds. External distractions can include things like general noise, other peoples' conversations, TV or movies, music, phone alerts, app alerts, and anything else that diverts your attention from the task at hand.

can interrupt your concentration as much as external distractions. As much as we may sometimes like to, we can't just shut our brains off or put them in a drawer so they can't disturb us. And every time that we're distracted, it takes precious energy that we should be using to study, memorize, and master content to refocus and return to our work.

To minimize this energy suck, and to make the most of your study time, do what you can to remove your external distractions. Take time to recognize what those distraction triggers are for you, and then take action to remove them from your workspace.

Shut off those alerts. Turn your phone to do not disturb mode. Let your friends know that you'll be working and unable to reply until the time that you're finished.

For your internal distractions, consider having a piece of paper nearby for you to jot things down. If you're worried you'll forget, make a note so you don't. If you can't stop thinking about something that's happened, maybe take a break to walk around, or write about it, or do something to help lessen its presence in your head.

And don't forget to have snacks and water. Learning is hard work, and you need to feed your brain. When it comes to studying, multitasking is ineffective, and a myth.

While it may seem like multitasking would be a good thing, research has shown that people who are multitasking are actually not doing two things at the same time. Instead, they're switching back and forth quickly between tasks. The result is that performance on both tasks suffers, and those who do this task-switching are less likely to remember information later on Dzubak, While there may be other areas of our lives where multitasking is useful, studying and problem solving are not one of these.

Learning and mastery require deep concentration, and the interruptions and distractions that come from trying to do more than one thing at once make it harder to focus and decrease your chances of recalling that information later.

What's your typical study session look like? Check out the ideal study session below, and then consider the tips that come afterwards. What are you already doing to increase your concentration, and what do you want to try? Tell us how this is going — we want to talk with you!

You don't need an appointment, just stop in and see us:. Mon-Fri, 9am to 5pm PST.

Multi-tasking has a bad name. Some studies give people two tasks to complete simultaneously. The problem here is something known as attention residue. Experiments have demonstrated that when you switch your attention from one task to another, a bit of your mind is still focused on the previous task.

Each time you switch back again you have to remind yourself about what it was you were doing, while dealing simultaneously with the slight distraction from the other task. This can increase your cognitive load. You need to employ attention, working memory and executive function, and the harder the tasks are, the more likely you are to exceed your limit.

Then your performance will suffer. Many studies over the years have found that in general people are slower and less accurate when they do two tasks at once. When people were given a tough deadline, they are forced to narrow their options and to make decisions which are cognitively less complex.

This in turn decreases the hangover from that first task, allowing them to put it behind them and get on with the next job. Multi-tasking is hardest when the tasks are similar to each other, but a bit easier if they are different.

If the tasks are different enough then multi-tasking can even improve your performance. A study conducted in at the University of Florida surprised even its authors. People were asked to sit on exercise bikes and to cycle for two minutes at a speed they found comfortable.

Later they cycled again, this time with a screen in front of them which presented them with 12 different types of cognitive tests, some of them quite hard. They completed similar cognitive tests while sitting on a chair in a room and the researchers compared the results.

This is a case where distraction seems to be useful. The authors speculate that anticipation of the tasks might have increased arousal in the brain, which also made the people more efficient at cycling. This special group was discovered quite by accident by psychologists at the University of Utah.

They spotted what they thought must be a mistake in their data — one person who was just as good at driving, whatever the distractions. Two people in every hundred are supertaskers, able to divide their concentration effortlessly without their performance suffering.

The same psychologists found that the better people believed they were at multi-tasking, the worse they performed on a test which required them to memorise a list of words while also doing maths problem. Kelvin Lui and Alan Wong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong gave participants a computer task which involved searching for visual information while also responding to certain sounds which could help them with the search.

They found people who regularly used three or more different media at a time were better at integrating the information that came in through their ears and their eyes. Since real life involves a lot of integration of different senses this could be a good skill to have.

There are other studies which show that people who use lots of different media at once might have worse working memories, but with these and the Hong Kong study there is always the same problem. Which came first?

The phone rings, an email notification pops up in the corner of the screen, an SMS beeps, someone's asking me a question, and I'm trying to write! It might be just me, but when I try multitasking, all I end up doing is starting things, getting distracted and finishing nothing quickly— or not producing my best work.

For a long time I was knee deep in multitasking hell. Multitasking has become so popular that it's featured on many job requirements, so it's no wonder those who don't thrive in its clasp feel a little despondent.

The concept is simple enough, work on many things at once, dance effortlessly across the tasks completing bits here and there and as and when, then, in one spectacular whirl, miraculously complete all the tasks, one by one, in perfect succession.

Here's the typical scenario I used to get caught in. I'd be working away on a challenging document. I'd get a few sentences in and up pops an email notification. I ignore that one, but I'm a little distracted.

And then another comes in, followed by another. I have to take a look, if not just to appease my inquisitive mind. Okay, back to the document. This time I get two paragraphs in and bleep goes my phone with a Facebook notification.

I can't continue properly because part of my brain is anxious to see what the notification might be, even though it's probably just someone saying what a nice photo that is, or commenting on someone's cat. So once again, my concentration is destroyed. And in the meantime, the work isn't finishing itself.

You need to remove mental and physical distractions and concentrate solely on the task at hand. Start by switching off your phone, or at least putting it on silent, moving the clock out of sight and turning off the TV and radio.