“It’s time to get serious” I’ve heard many teachers say in their pep talks to students.

But as one student said to me earlier this week –

“What do they mean by this? What do I need to do to get serious?”

Firstly, here’s what I think your teachers mean when they say, “It’s time to get serious” –

Upper school is different from your other years of school in the sense that what you do now impacts on your future career and education choices. Want to go to university? Then, it’s time to knuckle down (i.e. get serious).

Bear in mind, even if you fail all your school subjects in Australia, there are other backdoor ways of getting into university and you can get a second chance (don’t expect many teachers to tell you this though).

But here’s the thing, why waste 2 precious years of your life faffing around? Get on with things I say. Give it your best shot.

This doesn’t mean that you need to walk around looking glum 24/7 with your head buried in a book. In fact, I firmly believe that you should have as much fun with your studies as possible. Why? It will make for an easier, more productive year and more effective learning.

At the same time, concrete action is required to move you closer towards achieving the things you want in life. To put it simply, if you don’t take action then expect mediocre (if not poor) results.

So if you want to get serious about your studies, here are 5 practical things you can start doing –

1. Boost your productivity: no more multitasking

Want to get more done in less time and boost your intelligence? Then focus on doing one thing at a time.

If you have a tendency to do two or more things at the same time (e.g. homework, Facebook and television playing in the background) you’ll find yourself feeling frustrated and anxious. Research indicates that you may also be up to 40% slower to complete the task at hand. In addition, you can expect to experience a drop in IQ more than twice that found in people who are high on smoking marijuana.

2. De-junk your environment

Being disorganised and working in a messy, overly cluttered environment can cause unnecessary anxiety, tension and heightened levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Do yourself a favour, clear as much of your stuff off your desk as possible before you start your homework or study. This will allow you to focus intensely on what you need to do, which means you’ll be able to get your work done in less time.

3. Invest in time management tools

Managing your time more often than not involves managing yourself better. I highly recommend investing in the following 3 time/self management tools.

a) A diary: A diary helps you to capture all the things you need to do and when you need to do them by before you forget them. Let’s face it, there are limits to our short term memory. Research tells us that we can only hold 7 (plus or minus 2 bits of information at a time) in our short term memories and we can only hold it there for an average of 20 seconds. So if you overload your brain with too much information or don’t write it down witin 20 seconds, chances are you won’t remember it.

Have your diary (or a notepad) and pen close by so you can capture your ideas and the things you need to do when they come to mind.

b) A wall planner: The beauty of a wall planner is that in one glance you can see what you need to do for the week, the month and year. For this reason, you’re able to plan ahead and be prepared for particularly busy periods and make the most of quieter periods. They only cost a few dollars and will help you feel more in control of your life.

c) An electronic timer: These devices can help you track your time and allow you to easily work in focused sprints for set periods of time. If you tend to have trouble getting started with your work, use your timer to work in 8 minute power bursts. All this involves is setting your timer for 8 minutes, taking out your work and saying to yourself “I’m going to focus on doing this for 8 minutes. No distractions”. When the timer goes off you have two choices: 1) Go take a break (only if you’re really struggling though) or 2) Keep going. Most of the time you’ll want to keep going.

4. Be kind to your mind and body

If you don’t look after your mind and body, you won’t be able to study effectively. Being well rested with a good nights sleep (8.5 – 9.5 hours of sleep each night), having a good low GI breakfast and exercising to clear you mind and energise yourself are all pathways to study success.

5. Develop true GRIT

Grit is defined as the ability to persevere in the face of challenges and setbacks. In other words, it’s the ability to keep going when things get tough. Most of the time, when things get tough, what we tend to do is give up and do something easier and more enjoyable (e.g. go to the fridge to get a snack and log onto Facebook). However, if you have grit, you don’t do that. You feel the discomfort and you keep going. You push forward.

Grit has been said to be one of the major factors of individuals success in a variety of fields (sports, academia, chess, etc). It’s been suggested that it’s more important than an individual’s level of intelligence.

So want to become grittier? Practice working on a task with complete focus for 20 – 30 minutes (no distractions). When things get difficult, stay with the task. Don’t try to avoid it. Push through the discomfort. You may just find that after a short period of time, the discomfort subsides.

So next time your teacher tells you it’s time to “get serious”, consider asking them exactly what they mean by this or what practical actions you would need to take to achieve this state. At the heart of it I believe they are trying to say that they want you to do your best by engaging in the things that matter most and will move you forward towards a positive, bright future.

How times have changed!

One could argue that thanks to word processors, the Internet and online journals, today’s students are able to research and write assignments with relative ease. Checking spelling, getting definitions of certain words and gathering information can be done within a matter of minutes, even seconds (depending of course on the speed of your computer and Internet connection).

Despite these incredible technological advancements, are students today any more productive than people were in the past?

I don’t think so.

21st century students face new challenges to getting their work done – overcoming distractions and not succumbing to the myth of multitasking.

Instead of wasting hours writing up neat notes for a typist, nowadays it’s highly likely that we will waste our time surfing the net, chatting online to our friends, looking at photos on Facebook and reading blogposts (Don’t feel guilty, keep reading!).

When was the last time you checked your email, had the television on, burned a CD for a friend and received a text message all at once? It seems to have become the norm for many of us to do several things at the same time.

Once we distracted ourselves with Spider Solitaire but now when we are bored we find ourselves being lured by sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and/or we feel the need to text message a friend or two.

A Kaiser family foundation study found that young people (8-18 year olds) are now spending an average of more than 7.5 hours a day, seven days a week consuming media (e.g. watching movies and television, surfing the net and playing video games).

Without a doubt such a sedentary lifestyle is likely to negatively impact on our physical health. Research indicates that since 1985 the rate of obesity in boys has doubled and the rate for girls has tripled in Western Australia. According to the Premier’s Physical Activity Taskforce, one quarter of all Western Australian children are overweight or obese.

Whilst the physical impacts are obvious and have been for some time, until relatively recently there has been little discussion on the psychological and intellectual impacts of living primarily in virtual worlds and distracting ourselves with online sites, video games and other gadgets as we work.

A study conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London found that people who were distracted by email and phone calls suffered a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.

Another study at the University of California found that workers took an average of 25 minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering email and return to their original task.

So whilst you may feel like your being efficient as you type up that email and chat to your friend on the phone at the same time (Aren’t you so great? You’re doing all these things at once!), don’t be fooled. You’re actually being less efficient in the long run. In fact, researchers have found that you can be up to 40% slower to complete something when you multitask.

In addition, it has been found that multitasking prompts the release of stress hormones which can lead to us feeling frustrated, more aggressive and impulsive.

Professor of Psychology and Neurobiology, Russell Poldrack states -

“There is a cost to the way that our society is changing. Humans are not built to work this way [multitask]. We’re really built to focus.”

Some researchers have even gone as far as saying that constant engagement with sites such as Twitter, Bebo and Facebook may be causing changes in our brains that result in humans being more self centrered with shorter attention spans.

“We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist…My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment” states Baroness Susan Greenfield (British Scientist).

The good news is that you can change the way you work. Just like some people choose to give up smoking, drinking and eating junk food after becoming more aware of the physical and mental health effects, you may now feel compelled to practice focusing on one task at a time and spend less time online.

Recently, I’ve been testing out various strategies and programs to help me practice the art of focus and kick the habit of distracting myself with Facebook, etc. I’ll share more about these strategies in my next blog post.