If you’re able to go on 12-hour study sessions with utmost focus, without them feeling like a rapidly fading memory to you, are you even normal? Owning a phone that has notification bars lighting up like a Christmas tree every few minutes isn’t of much help either. If you usually find yourself immersed in your phone during your online classes, you might feel reassured to know that you aren’t alone! Well fortunately or unfortunately, we’ll be facing another semester online, so here are a couple of hacks that might help you deal with your goldfish attention span.

1.Turn off Notifications

Most of you might already be following this, and for those who aren’t - try it out. The incessant nagging from the apps on your phone will only succeed in making you spend more time on them. Hence, unless it is necessary, mute those groups, hide the banners and take control. It is also advisable to use the web version of these apps as it is less likely that you will feel comfortable with their layouts.

2.Uninstall Temporarily

You have OBVIOUSLY tried this and it never works, but try it with a twist this time. Humans respond to emotional goals better than goals that only have a material benefit attached to them. So, make it a bet with your friends or announce on your social media account that you will be inactive for a while. This will incentivize your conscience against re-downloading the app exactly five minutes later.

3.Extensions are your friends!

It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole of clickbaits especially when you have fifty recommendations on your feed. You might be watching a video on binary trees and the next thing you know, you are watching Gordon Ramsey yelling, “Idiot Sandwich!”

A couple of extensions that can help avoid this are:

• Using an ad-blocker (‘AdBlock – best adblocker’ is recommended)

• Removing YouTube recommended videos and comments

More such creative extensions are free and relatively safe.

4.Track your progress with a study buddy!

Make sure that you keep track of the time that you spend productively. This will make you want to spend more time doing so. If possible, find a study buddy with whom you can plan out sessions to study. Having an added responsibility to either teach or learn from someone will help you hold yourself accountable.

5.Be kind to yourself

The pandemic has taken a toll on everybody already, so don’t let academic pressure add to the burden. As important as it is to focus, it’s necessary to enrich ourselves outside the bubble of college work. Take a walk, talk to your friends, and read the plethora of interesting articles that The Guindy Times publishes! (wink wink).