They teach you about the importance of studying, but they really don’t teach you much at all about the process of studying. Sure, they might tell you that you need to eat healthy and take regular breaks. But do they teach you how to get past procrastination and actually get study done? Doubtful. But you’re about to learn how.
Some of you may think that you have good willpower, and will be able to use your computer while studying but avoid visiting Facebook, Twitter, or any other distracting websites. If any of you can honestly do that, I congratulate you, and you need not read further. But for the majority of us, it’s all too tempting to click on these websites “just for a second”. Nek minnit… Half an hour has passed and you remember you’re meant to be studying.
A single application will solve that problem for you.
It’s quite aptly named – called Concentrate. You can download it and use it for free for 60hours, but after that you’ll have to pay (it costs $29 – very cheap for how much it’ll help you).
Here’s how it works. Concentrate lets you create a “Task”, and then create “Rules” for that task. So, for example, I created the task “Study”. Then for that task, I created rules like “Block all social network websites”, and “Block applications: Twitter, Mail”. When you then activate the task, all those rules will be applied to your computer until you end the task. So, for the duration that you have the task activated, you won’t be able to visit any social networking websites or open the Twitter or Mail applications (using the above example).
You can create an endless number of rules, from opening and closing applications and websites, to changing desktop backgrounds and setting personal reminders and playing songs.
With Concentrate, that quick click on Facebook becomes impossible. And you really are forced to concentrate. After a while using Concentrate, you might find that your brain has been trained to not even click on Facebook at all – and maybe you truly will be able to study for an hour without being distracted. But, Concentrate is the first step in getting to that point.
Do check it out. I guarantee that it’ll help you study ten times more effectively. And in fact, you should even recommend it to your teachers – they might find it useful in concentrating while they prepare classes. Because no one is immune to distractions these days.