Removing boredom while studying

By Bishal October 01, 2020

You’re not getting lazier; you just aren’t transitioning the activities well. The solution lies in knowing how to shift from one task to another in a way that you take advantage of the energy & stimulation deficits from the task you were doing before.

First of all understand this that to be able to perform any focused work (like studying) your mind must in a state of low energy stimulation; the state when you’re able to concentrate easily as your focus isn’t drifting or continuously fluctuating.

Let’s group all those activities such as social media surfing, or watching movies and series, or anything that you may get addicted to do in seconds as easy activities; as they don’t require much (or any) effort to do but also give you exponential satisfaction (and pleasure perhaps;)

And let’s call those activities like studying, going through notes, doing assignments, and practicing as focused activities; as you need to constantly maneuver your thoughts and mental strength to execute them.

Now, just understand these cases:

When you first indulge in an easy activity your mind is in a state that makes it wanna stay only in that state of high (kind of), it’s like it got the pleasure chemicals without even working for them. And who doesn’t like that? Now secondly if you try undertaking any of the focused activity your mind is restless, it can’t stay still, it wants the momentum that you were freely giving it earlier. Hence the result is, you get bored, and you feel lazy, which is not your fault, it’s simply how your brain works. It just wants to free food which you were liberal with, in the first case.
However! If you reversed the case above; what if you first took the focused activity and then on completion moved to the easy group. Let me tell you what happens; you’re mind is not tuned to high energy, it’s neutral (considering you actually are undertaking this first), so you’re able to do those without feeling lazy or bored, why? As your mind is already in that low- energy stimulation state which is actually that level where you really can focus on any material fastidiously. And this is the obvious simple hack!

Consider this, if you’ve been binge watching addictive sitcoms then any focused activity (like studying) would be pretty “boring” after that. It’s not that you’re turning into a sloth, it’s mainly that your mind likes inertia too; it’s easier for you to continue watching a show, or scrolling through your feed rather than focusing on something that would not provide the dopamine rewards comparatively as much. And if you’re accustomed to getting the spikes of the chemical in a short span of time, with slight or no moderation of effort then any focused activity after that would seem seriously boring and thus would give you the illusion that you’re getting lazier, when actually you’re just being careless about the way you go about your tasks.

Just begin by channelizing your routine: try not to indulge in the activities that supposedly would make “studying” boring afterwards, on the other hand I’m not asking you to be completely anti-social or not to enjoy your day at all. Just make sure you do activities that require conscious concentration like reading, or practicing solution sets( focused activity) before undertaking the dopamine busters like social media or any form of entertainment which provides you satisfaction without any effort.

The way you go about the chain of activities you have at hand, along with the sequence in which you’d do them is all that makes the distinction between your response to focused work as either ‘boring’ or ‘manageable’ (or interesting for some ;) This should supposedly make your ability to deal with distractions easier in a sense that it wouldn’t be difficult for you, as you didn’t entertain yourself before studying.

Result:

Easy activity(1) → Focused activity(2)= Boredom, Unenthusiastic nature, Laziness…etc. which leaves intensified bulge of energy deficit during the transition.
Focused activity(1)→ Easy activity(2)= Successful completion of both (primarily the first one) without strain and pain : ) As you’ve got no energy deficit in this transition.