How to Study for Long Hours with Concentration
1. Prioritize your schedule: take up difficult topics early in the day
Take up the difficult material in the forenoon when you’re at your best, energy-wise. (For most people this is the time when they’re most productive. If somehow you’re an exception to this, feel free to take up the difficult material at a time that works for you.)
2. Exercise
As far as academics are concerned, physical exercise boosts learning ability and long-term memory, and controls anxiety and depression. But the benefits of exercise go beyond: it also improves concentration.
3. Steal a nap
To quote John Medina, a leading authority on brain study and founding director of two brain research institutes, from his book Brain Rules: People vary in how much sleep they need and when they prefer to get it, but the biological drive for an afternoon nap is universal
4. Eat to maintain energy levels
Although your brain constitutes just 2 percent of your body weight, it guzzles 20 percent of your daily energy intake. Studies have shown that non-pleasurable mentally exhausting tasks – academic learning will fall into this category for most.
5. Conserve your mental energy
Because your brain is an energy guzzler (2 percent vs. 20 percent), it’s important not to dissipate your energy by letting your mind wander into debilitating, irrelevant thoughts.
6. Take regular breaks
You should take breaks for two reasons. It not only relaxes you, but it also restores your waning concentration. Your concentration starts dropping after 50 minutes or so, and if you keep powering your way through, you’ll be studying with lesser concentration.
7. If possible, study/ work in daylight
Well, this may be a luxury that most likely you can’t afford, but if you can, then read on. Research has shown that studying/ working in daylight makes you less drowsy, and more alert in the afternoon
8. Exercise for 10 minutes in the evening
At Naperville Central High School, Illinois, known for its physical exercise program, students report that exercise, besides other benefits, also helps them preempt dozing off in class.
