Summarize the following:
There's no perfect place to concentrate. You may find it best to get out and work or study among people, sitting at a coffee shop or cafe, or you may find that unbearable and distracting. Likewise, the best place for you might be in your living room, seated at your writing desk, or you may find the call of the Xbox way too tempting. Try to identify your tendencies toward distraction and create an environment that eliminates those distractions. Take a day and Try to write down everything that distracts you. If you're supposed to be studying and you click on Facebook instead, write that down. If you should be working on a paper and you're playing guitar, write that down. If you're supposed to be listening in class and you're daydreaming about your boyfriend, write that down. At the end of the day, look at your distraction habits. When you get down to work tomorrow, Try to create a space where you'll eliminate those distractions. Close your browser while you study, or go somewhere without wireless. Put the guitar in the basement, or leave the house. Put away your cellphone and stop texting the dreamboat. They'll all still be there when you've got free time. Sometimes, there's just no way around it: something will distract you from your work. Even if you've gone to the perfect spot in the library where it's quiet, where you can get work done, where it's perfect, and suddenly, the old guy reading old New York Times papers starts barfing up a lung at the desk next to you. What do you do? Two options: Leave. If the distractions are insufferable, don't overreact, and don't sit there stewing and wasting time. Get up, pack up your things, and find a less distracting corner of the library. Ignore it. Plug in your headphones and cue up some ambient music and drown out the distracting wheezing from the other people, or just focus in on your reading to such a degree that you don't notice it. He's not trying to annoy you on purpose. Get on with it. Sometimes it seems like the browser window is designed to ruin your life. The distance between your English paper and a rabbit hole of old wrestling videos and emails from your girlfriend is just in an adjacent tab. You don't even have to close out of your paper! If you can afford to do it, stay offline while you're working. Put your phone away, turn your Wi-Fi off and get to work. If you struggle to work on a computer, or you need the Internet to do your job, head yourself off at the pass. Block the websites you find the most distracting by using a program like Anti-Social, or download a time-restriction software that will only allow you to use the internet as set times. In between, you'll be in charge, not the evil vortex called YouTube. . One of the most distracting things can be dwelling on all the stuff that's crashing down on you: work, school, relationships. Something's gotta give! When you prioritize those items, however, you can control them, working through them and accomplishing them in order of importance and deadlines. Make good friends with the "to-do" list and stick to it as close as possible! Pick one thing at a time to work on, and keeping working on that one thing until it's done completely. You can't do two things at once, can you? Check your list for possibilities to double up and make your day more efficient. Need to study up for a math exam AND do the laundry? Review your notes at the laundromat and cross them both off your list, keeping up with home commitments and schoolwork. The most debilitating distraction has nothing to do with YouTube, Facebook, or the animated couple chattering next to you in the coffee shop; it's got to do with you. Our minds can be like keyed-up lizards bouncing around a rubber room, and it's everything we can do to get them to sit still and do what we say. No matter where you work, what you've got going on today, and what you need to work on, it's you who has to make the decision to do it. Calm your mind and get busy. Nobody's stopping you but you. Try meditating in the mornings, or doing some deep-breathing exercises to center yourself when you start feeling overwhelmed. People who have trouble concentrating have a tendency to spiral into different levels of distraction, making it worse rather than pulling themselves out of it. Reverse the cycle by learning to anticipate it and chill out.
Find a comfortable work environment. Embrace the distractions you cannot control. Get offline as much as possible. Prioritize your efforts Get to it.