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Most of us have something to study always. It is something don’t end with our college (formal schooling).  You might be preparing for a competitive exam. You might be studying a new topic of interest to your career.  Or you might be interested in doing a research of your own and have lots of reference materials to skim through.

But many times we face a problem that we cant focus well on studying. If you are among the above categories, then here are few tips to increase your focus on studying. I divide this into two categories.

Mind Focus:

Most of our mind are untrained and thus lots of thoughts - good and bad - always go through our mind. Bad thoughts actually drains energy and this will effect our study process. You can use heart of rose technique to get back your mind focus.

Positive affirmation and Visualization:

You should write this in a paper “Everyday I am moving one step closer everyday towards my dream score”. Then you need to read this every morning and evening. This technique is called “Positive Affirmation and Visualization” technique and is a technique taught by all personality development trainers in their workshops and books.

I have a set of 5-6 similar statements I read every morning once I get up and before I sleep. These few words not only give a special power to your brain to help you achieve what you say, but also keep your inner mind in a very peaceful state - ideal for you to focus on what is most important for you - your upcoming exam.

Environment:

1)  “zero distraction” zone :  This is a zone or place where you do the following

(a) Turn off the mobile phone or put them outside your access.

(b) No access to internet (unless you need internet for your study. In this case, only those website relevent to your study)

(c)  “NO” source of distraction : television, or anyother source that could disturb you.

(d) The place you sit for studying should be totally quite. No shouting or talking, as they would distract you very easily. Libraries are excellent places where you can study with almost no distraction.

2)  Lighting and Sitting arrangements: Adequate lighting is very important while studying, since your eyes could strain very easily in improper lighting setting. Also make sure that your seating arrangement is proper. Some people like to study while lying down the bed. This is not a good practice as this wont help you to maintain the best physical position. Also studying while lying down cause you to feel sleepy easily.

Study Time:

Each of us are more productive at a particular time of the day. Some of you might be very focused at the evening/night, some people are highly focused on early morning.  Schedule yourself to study the most hard lessons during these special times. Because these are the times when you are the best focused and can learn more in short time.

Many people comment that getting up early morning and spending 2-3 hours in the morning helps people to do more productive things than the entire rest of the day. So, you might be interested in trying to learn during these special hours.

Before sitting for a session, decide what exactly you would study in this session. And get up from that place only after you have completed them. You can start taking small “blocks” and try to complete them. Once you are comfortable, you can increase these blocks. But it is very important that we know what are going to study, and “lock” ourself inside the zero-distraction zone.

Finally, few important techniques which can really improve your exam score :

Start Preparing early

Most of the time, the day of exam is already announced. So, if we start early, we can avoid cramming ourself before the exam.  Start slowly as early as possible, and then while the exam time comes closer, we can push ourself more harder.

Action Oriented or Result Oriented approach

There are two kinds of approach to study. Action oriented approach - where you decide to spent two hours of time without any distraction and complete how much you can during this time.  The second is result oriented approach, where you decide to complete one chapter before you get up. Each person can choose which one works best for him/her, and decide to study on that.

Thinking about Rewards

A great way to keep your focus on studying is to constantly think about the rewards waiting for you once you successfully complete your exam, and get the score you wanted.

One of my friend who is preparing for an exam said to himself - if you get this much score in your exam, I will get you an iPhone. This reward system helps to stimulate out brain to focus on tasks - and it will do anything to get pleasure and avoid pain.

Keeping this reward in our mind is a great motivator for us complete our study sessions successfully.

Practice Sample Question Papers

This is very important while we study for exam. Doing sample question paper will help you to know the kind of questions you can expect during the exam, and prepare accordingly.

Preparing summary notes

When you study some topics or chapters, if you can prepare short notes in a separate book, these notes would come really handy during your revision time. Because, you don’t need to read the entire book these times, as you have your summary easily available in your hand.

Study Buddy

Get someone with you to be your “study buddy”. He/She is someone who is also looking towards the same exam, and have the same goal (to get a top score). So, partnering with your friend helps very much to discuss topics and review materials. Also a study buddy helps you to be focused on the upcoming exam, and not to get distracted by other non-priority distractions.

Enough room for leisure and Play

This is something very important. Don’t fill your complete week with schedules and assignment. Give some room for leisure and fun activities. Go for an outing. Go out for a dinner or visit places you never seen. Believe me - after you come back from them, your mind will be so fresh that few hours of study time gives you long hours of results.

Finally - Quality is better that Quantity

Don’t think that large quantity of study time is what will fetch the result. It is actually the quality which matters. Combining quality study time with quantity study hours is what you need to get the dream score you are looking for.