I will preface this by saying that until you do the basics of focus well (Good diet, exercise, and sleep), these tactics may not have much of an effect. So before you do this module, finish the earlier modules first. 1. Listen to brown noise while you work (through headphones ideally). This has been scientifically shown to improve focus, and I find it very useful. I usually work listening to brown noise lately, so as soon as I turn it on my brain realises it’s time to focus and I get going with the work much quicker. This can be part of your pre-study routine, something which helps a lot with procrastination. 2. Pre-study routine: Making a routine that you do before you study is not necessary, but if you struggle with procrastination, it is extremely helpful. Instead of looking at studying as this huge dreadful mountain you have to start climbing, instead, it can begin with filling up your water bottle. Here’s a sample routine, in order. You can copy it or adjust it based on your preferences: 1. Fill your water bottle. 2. Make a cup of coffee 3. Get your headphones and play brown noise. 4. Sit at your desk, turn your chair away from it, and focus on a point in the room for about a minute. 5. Turn around and start working. This step-by-step routine eases you into focus. It’s not that hard to fill up your water bottle, is it? When you’re procrastinating the work, you just start your routine. It is very important, again, that your task has already been picked the day before, or hours before at least. A helpful tip is to leave the book you’re using open on the table so once you go through the routine and start, there’s no friction. 4. Breathing. Deep breathing is one of the best things I have ever learned about. It helps you relax, it helps you focus, it’s amazing. ACTION STEP: Take a deep breath. Bonus super secret productivity tip: Take a cold shower and drink a coffee before a study session once per day. This is guaranteed focus.

Your beliefs influence how you act every second of every day. They are the reasons for your failures and your successes. My beliefs allowed me to perform the biggest, fastest academic comeback I have ever heard of. In Ireland, we prepare for our final exams for two years. For the first year, I did no work. I believed that school was a waste of time because I was learning much more valuable information by myself. I didn’t pay attention in class unless I had a chance to argue with my teachers and I didn’t study or do homework at all. For the second year, I had the same beliefs, but I made the decision to use the year as practice. Practice for working hard. But for the first 7 months, I did the bare minimum. We do mock exams 7 months in, and I averaged about 50% in these. Then I decided to really work. I had extremely strong belief in myself, belief that I could do well with only 5 months of studying. Even with those beliefs, I had a massive amount of self doubt. At times I didn’t think it was possible to even get an average result in my exams. But I persisted. I put in 8 to 10 hours of fully focused work every day for 5 months. Working to my full potential. And my grades started to increase. I went from 50 to 60 to 70 to 80 and then got stuck on 89, but through violent effort I got over 90. When I told people this was my goal when I started, they laughed. Didn’t think it was possible for anybody, never mind me. But I had belief. I know that I would not have made this transformation without believing in myself. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have even tried. The huge goal made me work hard every single day because I knew I needed every hour I could get. Working on your beliefs will give you a higher return on investment than anything else. It will change the course of your life. How exactly do you develop beliefs that serve you? Develop an ego. Every chance you get, prove to yourself that you are a hard working intelligent person. This will force you to hold yourself to a high standard.

Pre-game routine: Athletes have used this for decades, and it is super effective when it comes to studying. Create a short routine that you go through before you study. When you look at studying at this big scary task that you have to just start, it’s too much for your brain so you procrastinate. But when you have a routine to go through where each step is easy to do, it eases you into it. When all you have to think about to start is playing a certain song, it’s easy to avoid procrastinating. This is my routine: Make a cup of tea/ coffee. Put on headphones and play brown noise. Fill up my water bottle. Go to the bathroom if I need to. Sit at my desk. Face my chair away from my desk. Focus on an object for 60 seconds while breathing deeply. Turn around and get started on the work. Schedule: The other thing that is really helpful is pick the tasks you want to do the night before, and pick the time you’ll start it and finish. When you know exactly what you’re going to do it makes it harder to procrastinate. Start your routine about 5 minutes before you start the task. Remember that you’re not immediately going to drop into a state of full focus. It should take 5-15 minutes depending on how motivated you are. The things in my pre-game routine make it a lot easier to get into that state of focus.

I used to feel totally mentally drained as a student after a few hours of work. This meant I could get very little volume, so I had to no energy leftover to study after I finished my homework, and the quality of even my best hours was very poor. Here’s how I drastically improved it: 1: I stopped eating 99% of carbohydrates. Most people won’t want to go this far, but every reduction you make in the amount of carbs you eat improves your focus, reduces brain fog, and allows you to work for more total hours throughout the day. Cutting out the processed and sugary foods is by far the most important for this, but I also discovered that even when I eat a lot of foods like rice or potatoes I get severe brain fog and lack the energy to start work. I used to think that it was a physical impossibility to study after dinnertime, but turns out I was just going through a crazy carb crash every day. 2:I put strict limits on how I use social media. I use scrolling apps like instagram for thirty minutes on a Saturday, and I have two times during the day when I can use messaging apps. I didn’t realise how mentally draining your phone can be until I limited it like this. Now, if I’m super undisciplined and I open youtube during a break, I can feel that my brain is not resting, it’s being forced to put in overtime. 3: Sleep. I know you’ve heard it a million times. That’s because it is the most important thing. It is not worth sacrificing sleep to study, no matter how much you think you have to do. You’ll get it done twice as fast if you’re fully rested. Pro tip: Sleep in multiples of 90 minutes, so 7.5 hours/ 9 hours. I personally alternate from 7.5 to 9 depending on the time of year. 4: Do your cardio. A few months ago while I was studying for my final exams, for three days I was struggling with really bad brain fog even though I was doing everything like diet and sleep right. I realised I wasn’t doing cardio, I wasn’t running anymore. I put on my shoes and went for a fast run and after I came back and showered I had so much clarity. Even if you do everything else right, if you neglect this, you’ll get mentally drained quickly and you will suffer from brain fog.

Gamifying a subject will motivate you to work harder at it and even make it fun. 1: For subjects like maths, where the most effective study strategy is practicing questions, draw a roadmap for the number of questions you get right. Make it up to 1000, and have a mini reward each 100, like you get to have an ice cream, or whatever you want. Each 250, a big reward, like four hours of video games/ a movie night. At 1000, have something you’d love to do, plan a trip with your friends, something you would really look forward to that would actually motivate you to do more questions. 2: Subjects with essays: Use the grade you get in the essay as your rank. Update your rank with every grade. This will motivate you to work hard on every essay, and you’ll feel even better when your grades go up. 3: Subjects with rote learning (learning things off by heart) Get a page with the number of pages you have learned off by heart. This way after a few weeks/months you can be like “Wow I’ve learned x pages off by heart”, and you'll also get bragging rights. 4: Languages that aren’t your first language Set a goal for the number of conversations you want to have in the next month and break it down to a daily target that you know you can achieve if you try hard. This is by far the best way to improve your language skills, and it’s fun. Setting a target number of conversations will make it more fun and create some hilarious situations.