June 23, 2020
The Concept of Flow – Revision Tips on Focusing
Mehul
We have all been there, woke up super early in the morning thinking that today is going to be the day!
“I am going to get all my work finished today”
Then 20 minutes pass, then 40 and that’s when we get that pesky text from a friend. A reply turns into a conversation which turns into scroll through Facebook. Three hours later you are back in bed on your phone or on Netflix and the work hasn’t been done.
Unfortunately, this situation is far too common and we have all experienced this, but there are multiple steps you can do to avoid this and enter a state of total flow where you are able to study continuously for longer periods of time. This intense revision state is called the concept of flow. This is what allows artists to paint for hours without eating, footballers can score amazing goal or athlete can break world records. When you are so involved in an activity that nothing else matters. By no means it is not the healthiest, but it is an effective way to focus at getting difficult tasks done.
So what can you do to enter this state of total emersion?
Here are the 4 simple things you need to do to achieve it.
- Set clear goals for yourself
You need to set yourself a macro goal and a micro goal. The macro goal is what the overall goal is that you want to achieve, i.e. get into university. The micro goal is what you do every day to work towards the goal. It is vital that the goals you set are as clear as possible and have a finishing line in sight giving you something to work towards
- Set challenging task
Make sure that the task you set is not too easy or too difficult. If it is too easy it increases the chances of giving up on the task as you may find it boring. Always work from a foundation so you can build up your skillset and not be demotivated if the task it too hard. The task you set yourself matches should match your skill set but is still challenging, that way it will increase your skill set and therefore this will then increase the task difficulty and ultimately improve your skillset.
- Try to cut out the distractions
Socially distance yourself from your phone! This is one of the most important thing you can do to stay away from any distractions that might pop up. Remember the 2 metre rule!
- Maintain it
Think of entering the state of flow like riding a bike, when you start riding it will always be hard at first, but once you have started it is easy to maintain. Don’t just jump straight into it, make sure you build it up over time.
Now if you are struggling with the material, that’s where someone like me comes in. In school or university there are multiple students but only one teacher. All of the students are individuals and each of them process information at their own rate and think about problems in different ways. The main problem is that in a class, the teacher goes at his/her rate and students are left sometimes not being able to keep up with the lesson. Hopefully having a personal online tutor like me will allow us to work at your pace and they can be there for you giving you study advice as well as life advice which is invaluable.