It is a well known saying in business that those who fail to plan, plan to fail. There is some truth in this. Arriving at the end of your course with only hours to spare to start your dissertation is a fairly certain way to fail. At the other extreme, planning your life inflexibly and in detail, and then beating yourself up for not sticking to your rigid timetable is equally self-defeating. Forget charts of precisely what you will do when, simply work out how long at a minimum that you intend to spend on everything, map this out, allow a little leeway, and then focus on what you need to do first. Don’t waste time choosing, pick something urgent and start!
Have clear short-term goals and sprint towards them. Try to beat your own deadlines. Check that you are still on track, that you are answering the assignment question and not what you would like it to have asked, and then get your head down and sprint some more. You will work best in short, exciting, focused sprints than idling away at projects in the comfortable twilight of procrastination.
Try achieving something over 25 minutes, then change what you are doing and thinking about completely for five minutes, and then resettle. That five minute break is a great opportunity to go to the toilet, refill your water bottle, get up and stretch, fetch the next book you need, catch up on text messages – anything really. It is the change of pace that will reset your concentration and help you make it through the next bout of intense concentration.
Everyone needs to eat well, and regularly. Balanced meals including wholegrains, fruit and vegetables to fuel your brain and lean protein to keep you feeling full and support your muscles, are even more important at those times when it feels like you don’t have time to look after yourself. There are a selection of quite healthy foods available from the Library Cafe, the Co-Op is next door, and the University has 
Mealtimes and snack breaks are also a great opportunity to chat to your friends, share your worries and talk about things totally different from what you have been thinking about. This is also important. We are all social beings and not talking to others for long periods makes us feel bad. Take any excuse between work sessions to make contact with your friends.
Do you do music? If so, you should check out 
By the time you start to feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Thirst is your body’s emergency alarm bell ringing to tell you that you are already stiffening up in all the wrong places, feeling worse and thinking less clearly than you would if you were sipping water. The usual response is to upend a can of energy drink into yourself and carry on. The minor drawback of drinking a lot in a short time, particularly a lot of a chilled drink, is that it then tends to rushy through the body without touching the sides, prompting an urgent trip to the toilet. The body absorbs drinks best that are sipped regularly over time and are close to body temperature. That means that the best hydration you can get is from a bottle of luke warm water, or failing that water at room temperature.
It is easy to imagine that it is only you that is experiencing problems with your referencing, has just realised the work won’t comfortably fit into the time remaining before hand-in time, or is getting stressed about something else entirely or as well.
Spending much more than about 20 minutes sitting still leads to postural collapse and is generally bad for you. You begin to stiffen up, feel lousy and your concentration wanders. Yet every time you think about wandering off for a quick walk or a trip to the gym, you feel hungry eyes fixed on your study space and you find yourself settling back down for another seated stint.
There are few things simultaneously as relaxing and gently stimulating and reinvigorating as a walk through nature. The varied smells and shades of green, breeze, sunshine or drizzle, the feeling of soft yet supportive ground underfoot and the pleasure of feeling the act of walking shake loose stiffness hidden in the body and allow the mind perspective as it comes to refocus on things outside of the self.
Recent Comments