Presuming that you’ve read the previous articles in this series, you now know how to keep track of everything you need to remember and you know how to schedule the things you need to do into your calendar. But having a calendar plan and sticking to a calendar plan are two completely different things; a calendar plan itself is just a guide for what one has to do in a day, but having a guide doesn’t necessarily mean that one will complete the things that they need to do. The next step therefore, is to learn how one can stick to their calendar plans - I call this “attention management,” because it requires you to force your attention towards tasks you may not enjoy but have to complete.

Attention management requires two fundamental skills: willpower and the ability to avoid distractions. Willpower is the ability to force yourself to do things that you may not have any desire to do. In the context of a calendar plan, willpower is useful because it allows you to complete precisely what is written in your plan, regardless of whether you are interested in the task or not. You complete the task because you know you have to. Avoiding distractions is also very useful in the context of a calendar plan, because it allows you to remain focused for long periods of time, allowing you to complete tasks in the time limit you’ve set yourself.

Willpower is a difficult skill to master. It requires you to postpone your immediate desires to a later time, while choosing to focus on a more important task now. This is called delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is the idea that one would choose to complete a longer task that has bigger benefits in the future, rather than a smaller task that provides less rewarding benefits right now. Most people have difficulty mastering delayed gratification (and therefore willpower), because they succumb too often to instant gratification—choosing the less rewarding task with immediate benefits over the longer more rewarding task with future benefits. 

So, how does one prevent instant gratification, and in turn, gain willpower/delayed gratification? There are a few tips and tricks that have been scientifically proven to help gain willpower. First of all, the “out of sight, out of mind” technique is extremely useful. If you keep things that result in immediate benefits (phones, TV remotes, etc.) out of sight, you are less likely to think about them when working on tasks in your calendar plan [1]. Another technique that trains your ability to delay gratification is something called the “if-then technique”. If-then is that idea that, if I do a task that does not result in instant gratification, then I get to do a task that gives me instant gratification. For example, for every afternoon that I study after school (approximately three hours), I reward myself by not studying after dinner. Instead, I chose to use that time to complete things that I truly want to do. This gives me something to look forward to at the end of the day.

If-then is a good way to reward yourself at the end of the day for having completed all the tasks that you really did not want to do. However, there is no need to use this technique forever. Once you begin to see the effects of the delayed gratification, there is no need to continue with the if-then method, because you’re already being gratified from past choices. Once you reach this point, it’s easy to completely stop instant gratification and rely solely on delayed gratification.

Eliminating instant gratification is only one part of attention management - this will allow you to willingly complete the tasks you must do. But there’s still the issue of being able to focus when working on tasks. Eliminating distractions plays a big part in maintaining that level of focus. Focus is extremely important, because it allows you to reach a highly productive state of mind: The Zone. The Zone is what I call the state of mind that you’re so focused on a task that you don’t even realize a few hours have passed. The Zone is a moment of pure productivity, efficiency, and strong focus which you ought to seek for every study session. But… with distractions around you constantly, it’s easy to never reach The Zone. In fact, there are studies that show that once distracted it takes 23 minutes to get back in a state of focus. 23 minutes! [2] And what if you get distracted again within the 23 minutes? You have to start the process of re-focusing again and again, and you never get to be in The Zone. 

Therefore, the key to reaching The Zone is eliminating distractions, but how do we do so? This is where Nir Eyal shines a guiding light. His book, entitled “Indistractable,” is filled with tips on how to manage/eliminate distractions. I will be sharing his major tips and tricks for staying focused (if you are interested, a summary of the book's major points can be found here.

Nir Eyal explains that there are two types of distractions: ones caused by an internal trigger, and one caused by an external trigger. For those caused by internal triggers, Eyal suggests beginning with identifying the root cause of the problem. Analyze the moments when you get distracted: what happened right before? How are you feeling? Each time you get distracted, write down these things. After a few days, it will become obvious that there is a common cause to your distractions: a feeling, location, event, person, etc. Once you’ve identified this common internal cause, it becomes easier to eliminate it (and the resulting distraction).

For distractions caused by external triggers, he, once again, advises you to analyze the moments where you become distracted to find a common cause, and then eliminate it. However, Eyal notes that oftentimes, our external distractions come from mobile devices, and he offers a few specific tips for those situations. He suggests deleting all unused apps from your phones, along with changing the spot on your phone of the apps that you use most often (this makes it more difficult for you to find those apps, and therefore it becomes less likely that you seek for them). I also argue that the “out of sight, out of mind” principle discussed above is really useful with electronic distractions. If my phone is out of the room I'm studying in, I’m much less likely to check it and get distracted.

Staying focused is a difficult thing to do, but I promise that with these tips, you will gain willpower and eliminate distractions. Stay tuned for the last article in this series, “Putting an End to Pesky Procrastination”.

Works Cited

[1] American Psychological Association. “What You Need to Know about Willpower: The Psychological Science of Self-Control.” Apa.org, 2021, www.apa.org/topics/personality/willpower. Accessed 2 May 2023.

[2] Lastoe, Stacey. “It Takes 23 Minutes to Focus after a Distraction.” The Muse, 19 June 2020, www.themuse.com/advice/this-is-nuts-it-takes-nearly-30-minutes-to-refocus-after-you-get-distracted. Accessed 2 May 2023.