“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.

To join such a group indicates that these people have hit rock bottom. They are desperate. But just like any recovering addict, at least these people have taken the first step by acknowledging that they have a problem.

I have a sneaking suspicion that they are not alone and there are many other Facebook users who would easily qualify for such a group but wouldn’t be willing to expose this by pressing the ‘Like’ button.

Afterall, who wants to be viewed as a Facebook Junky who prefers to spend more time in virtual worlds than out in the real one?

After being disturbed by the voyeurism Facebook imposes and his strange obsession for following the profiles of people he didn’t know very well, a fellow blogger recently took the plunge and deleted his Facebook account. He shared -

“While there’s the appearance of connectedness and networking in the Facebook environment, I perceived a huge gap between the real world me and the real world friend with whom I was suppose to be interacting….It [Facebook] is a communication strategy that is neither satisfying nor effective and which is, to my mind, not particularly healthy”.

Whilst I admire this man’s decision to delete his Facebook account in pursuit of more meaningful connections, I still can’t bring myself to delete my profile. I like Facebook too much.

So if you’re like me and you don’t want to give Facebook the boot just yet but you find yourself getting easily distracted by it and you’re keen to reduce your time on there, then keep reading.

Below I discuss a number of strategies that can help you eliminate distracting sites such as Facebook when you need to and develop single minded focus so you can be truly productive and effective when you work.

I have broken down the strategies into four main sections: 1) Training your mind to focus, 2) Preparing your mind and environment for work, 3) Kicking your Facebook habit and 4) Ways to sustain your ability to focus throughout the day.

1) Training your mind to Focus

Meditation appears to be a great way of training your brain to focus on one task at a time. Neuroscientist Dr Lazer and her team MRI scanned the brains of a group of non-religious Westerners who meditated regularly and a group of people who had no previous experience with meditation. What they discovered is that there was increased development in the regions of the meditators’ brains associated with sensory processing and attention than in the non-meditators brains.

Whilst meditation isn’t rocket science, it does take a little practice and patience. If you’re new to meditation or just getting back into it after a long break, find a quiet place to sit and focus on your breath for just 3 – 5 minutes. Alternatively, you can start by focusing on an instrument in a piece of music (Note: Avoid heavy metal or techno music). When you feel ready, increase the amount of time you meditate for.

Another way of training your mind to focus is to use a Distraction card. All you need to do is take a palm card and every time your mind starts to wonder or you succumb to checking your email or Facebook, tick the card and then return to your task. This is a simply way to help you gain greater awareness of just how distracted you are and can also provide useful baseline data.

It may also help to write down any distracting thoughts and revisit them at a later time in the day. Some people even keep Worry notebooks. Basically, whenever they start to worry about something that is unrelated to the task at hand, they jot down the thought and tell themselves they’ll deal with that at 5:30pm or whatever time works for them.

Let me just emphasise that all of the strategies listed above take practice. You can’t expect to have the focus of a longtime Buddhist practitioner of meditation after one meditation session! But after a few days of practice, you will start to see a difference in the way you work.

2) Preparing your mind and environment for work

If my desk is covered in dirty dishes, books and papers and the television is turned on, it’s highly likely I’m going to be distracted and feel agitated whilst I work. This feeling of discomfort is likely to eventuate in me logging into Facebook, Youtube, etc.

On the other hand, the simple act of cleaning my desk and emptying my intray sends a strong signal to my brain: it’s time to get some serious work done.

Stella Cottrell in her book “The Study Skills Handbook” asks us to consider the following –

What kind of study environment suits you best for different stages of the study process? Make a conscious note of what it is that enables you to begin to study: is there quiet or music or background noise? Do you need to be at home or in a library or with friends? Do you need a clear table? What else is needed?

At the beginning of your study session, set clear time limits for how long you are going to work on a particular task for. It also helps to be clear on what you want to work on and accomplish during that time.

3) Kicking your Facebook habit

You may be mentally prepared and your optimal work conditions may be in place (e.g. clean desk, study plan, right equipment) but none of this will make much of a difference if logging into Facebook every 30 minutes has become an ingrained habit.

Similar to a smoker who goes cold turkey, you need to rid Facebook from your system when it comes time to work.

You have a few options in regards to how you go about doing this. I recommend that you either go to a location that doesn”t have Internet access (e.g. a local library or cafe) or download a program that will lock you out of Facebook for several hours during the day (e.g. Freedom, Ez Internet Timer and Times Up Kidz). The programmers of Times Up Kidz offer a 30 day free trial which may be all you need to break your habit of checking Facebook regularly throughout the day.

4) Sustainable focus

If you’ve been working on something for an extended period of time (1 hour plus), your ability to focus and concentrate can significantly diminish. To sustain your focus, make sure you give yourself regular breaks.

Avoid the energy drinks (you know they’ll just make you feel terrible) and drink plenty of water to help you to stay fresh, focused and alert.

If you’ve got any strategies for enhancing focus and concentration, I’d love to hear about them!