what the hell am I doing I set up my camera to record a time lapse of me studying right like you see always those like aesthetic timelapse like study Vlogs and this was like for the Vlog a while back like the one with the octopus thumbnail right and so for that thing I was trying to record like a time lapse of me studying and so I set up the camera in the corner my room and I sat time to study but I forgot I like set up and started recording so it called Everything J SP call in 4k I sat down ready to study and then straight away I started fiddling with the ruix cube on my desk R and then I started to choose my favorite song to like um get started on studying on the front page basically sportfire is like um s like shows like the artist that you listen to it shows you like they dropped a new music video or new album and so since that was there I ended up clicking on it to watch like the new music video and I'll be like oh yeah let me see if this song's good so I can add it and then I'll start studying right and so I'm on YouTube and I'm watching the music video and it was was pretty good right but then in the sidebar like um you see like your favorite YouTubers also posted a video and this is right there like it's one click away I move my arm like two cm to the side and I click on that video right so then I'm on YouTube I'm watching random videos looking down at the sidebar just clicking and clicking and clicking onto the next next and next video and then I randomly start like flexing in the mirror and then start like Shadow Boxing and spitting on my chair like a Beyblade you I genuinely can't make this shut up I was sat at my desk with my books out and work in front of me but my focus wasn't there I done the hard part arguably I showed up physically I sat down at my desk I put the study stuff out in front of me but mentally I wasn't there I wasn't able to focus I know about that time when you had your textbook open your laptop out with the assignment and the work was quite literally right in front of your notes but you do anything but that you try to do the thing but you lose focus and you do something else wouldn't it be amazing if you could just sit down and actually get work done it sounds stupidly simple and yet it's the thing that's stopping you from achieving in all regards it's limiting your grades it's limiting the progress you're making in anything focus is key as Alex Moi said a focus for can accomplish more than a distracted genius so number one is difficulty athletes always call being focused like in the zone right but that's so vague how do you actually achieve Zone where is the Zone what is the Zone because the Zone means like an area or place how having a particular characteristic purpose or use and so the zone is like a tangible place right it should be but we the ath always say like I'm in the zone I'm in the zone like okay how do we get to the Zone but what if I told you like it actually was a Zone and it's just before this line of burn up take a look at this diagram when something is too easy and there's no pressure you're bored and hence your productivity is very very low and the zone is that blue area right there it's a stretch and the task you're doing is just beyond your Edge Edge Edge you need to edge with they do not include the point is it's not too easy but it's not too hard imagine if like uh let's use the example of by basketball right imagine if the hoop was only 5T tall and you were standing right in front of it you get the ball in every single time and after like five Hoops i y and I'll be bored and I go do something else I I'd find it hard to stay focused at that task because it's way too easy but at the same time imine fails 9ft tall and you're also being guarded by some big basketball Bros you wouldn't be able to get to flow either or the Zone because it's way too difficult and you would end up giving up I remember in school this one time the time I be most in the zone playing Bonton was when I play against this guy in the year above and he was slightly better than me right but we were quite similar in ability and so that's exactly when I was like pushed beyond my Edge like slightly very slightly he wasn't too much better than me that I was being like absolutely shat on but he was like just better than me that I had to like actually try and that's when I play my best and that's when I could feel myself like actually just like focused and so for studying you need to make sure it's not too easy but it's not too hard the comfort zone is just making notes and reading the textbook you can't get those things wrong it's way too easy and that's why even though you think it's like productive you can't stay focused and you end up like being bored you have to do things that you can test yourself and where you can think you can actually get wrong you learn off your mistakes but as I said you can't get like reading notes wrong or textbooks wrong right it's as Josh weedin said every time you uh adjust repeat or make mistakes that's when you see an improvement imagine doing free throws in at basketball and you throw your first one and you see like it didn't even make the hoop like uh you didn't have enough power but then in the next sh you're going to put in more power because you saw that like it didn't reach that point you used the mistake to your advantage and we this is like how we learn but when it comes to studying Etc we find this like hard to do right because like mistakes seem bad and like test scores it means that we did bad and so we end up not doing it that way but you have to be able to make a mistake and it has to be a challenge for you to get into the zone and that's why past papers are amazing because you're able to see where you get wrong you're actually able to test yourself but they're also quite difficult because they're actually like an exam and they they're in the order of like easiest to hardest the time right and so you're actually like forced to simulate the an exam venue and so you're actually actively like in the zone and you're much more likely to do that and the second one is positive reinforcement the way you train animals is by positive reinforcement I was trying to train like a mango to like sit and like which means like Po like put your hand like and the way you do this is like um you have to positively reinforce it they don't I mean I think they don't know what actually what it means right so when I'm like one and they actually get it like off like luck once they put the hand on there you have to positiv to reinforce that and so straight off that what do you do you give them like a treat right so they're like oh okay wait I did that and I think I got the treat let me double check and then so they do it again and then um they do it again and again and again and you give them the treat straight after and so they start to associate the PO hand thing um with the tree so that's how you get animals to be trained right so the most optimal way to train them is to initially give them a tree like straight after like that thing and so later on down the line even if you don't give them the tree straight away they know like they associate the hand on thing with like getting the tree and so that's how associations are formed and so for the basketball hoop the reinforcement and reward and goal is very clear if you get the ball in the hoop you can like very straightforwardly see it that's a positive reinforcement and that's a success but for school like studying you study but there's no positive reinforcement you see that after you do the exam in four months and then you have to wait another two months to see the results there's nothing positively reinforcing our activity like studying Etc and that's why focusing on that is so so difficult so we have to create our own way of positive reinforcement and goals and so what you need to do is write down smaller goals if you just study all the time for the end goal which is like it's good to have in mind right the gsas in like four months time or like the very big exams that's cool but you have no way of reinforcing the action of studying but if you don't study you're not actually going to get to the goal in the first place so you have to set smaller goals that's why like setting a to-do list or a success list and writing down goals for the day it's a really effective way of doing it for example today I just want to learn this concept and I want to do a past paper suddenly you have an extra goal to work to like you have a past paper you're able to see where you're at you're able to see some positive reinforcement so you need to set goals like consistently like for the day and also like utilize past papers once again because you're able to see like how well you're doing and also see like your progress it's kind of like saying checkpoints and seeing where you're at right now the level that you're at and the third concept of focus is have to be singular there's three concepts that experts say what focus is and they're all very similar David Gman says focus is selective attention he says that there's two types of focus open awareness and selective attention open awareness is basically like um the state that you're in most of the time you're not focusing on anything specific whereas selective attention is when your brain selects what is relevant and focuses and directs all your attention into one thing the second concept is focus as deep work K possess your ability to do deep work which is focused uninterrupted distraction lless work will determine how much you thrive in the information economy it should be something that pushes your cognitive abilities to the Limit just beyond your Edge as we talked about and number three focus is singular in eat the Frog Brian Tracy says that multitasking doesn't exist and what you're doing is actually task shifting after being interrupted it takes 17 minutes to totally refocus on the task and continue starting and stopping repetitively can increase the time needed to complete a task by 500% in contrast when you work without interruption you can cut the time required to finish in half so there quite l a 10 times difference between you sticking and doing a singular Focus task on one thing instead of switching tasks as if you look at me last year from my mock my study sessions were the complete opposite of this I was always in an open state of awareness I wasn't focused on a singular task and I'd always be like focusing and caring about other things I remember I went to a study Cafe once like last year and I'd always be focused on like other things like oh it's that girl over there looking at me I was like I was rethinking about random memories I was thinking about like what I'd have for lunch and so I'd be doing shallow tasks i' always be multitasking and my study sessions were long and boring the opposite of what we need to focus and so now we know these we can study and focus better and so you have to have a plan and you have to know where you need to concentrate your focus on light is everywhere right but when you get like a magnifying glass and you like concentrate that light into a single point that's what starts the fire that's when like there's so much energy right you have to do the exact same thing so for each day have a priority nap and zeratsky it suggest that the best way to do this is to choose one priority per day and so it's not the only thing you'll do that day but it's the thing you should focus most of your attention to the way to find this is what will feel the best for it to be done and complete what would be the thing if you got done will make everything else easier and also like lift the most of your shoulder so for me each day I really don't want to record on like script right it's like the biggest task it's quite hard to do it's mentally demanding and yet I know if that's the thing that if I did it would make my day a lot easier and that's cuz I'm on St holiday right but like when you're in exam season it's probably like studying doing that past paper it's quite hard if you do that you know you revise your like safe for the test and so that's the thing you should focus your priority on make sure to reward yourself though the hardest part is maintaining your focus across long periods of time right and do me the chemical release when you reward yourself after an activity just like training mango you have to positively reinforce yourself what with that's with words with rest you're going to be you're going to have to do this thing anyway right you're going to have to focus you're going to have to study so make sure your brain like positively reinforces this and makes Pathways and links it to the good feelings focus is still getting distracted but it's just sticking to it reinforce the good habits the more you do this the easier you'll get it's kind of like the exponential cut the initially like as much time you put in you don't see that remaining results but as as soon as you like start to cross that line you see the massive exponential result and you see that you can actually focus and if you're struggling to focus and you feel like you're not Reaching Your Potential as a student make sure to check out student acceler which will be the first link in my description and it's changing students lives all around the world and if you want to check out more remember to click that link and I'm sure that you'll find some value in it and as always take action in what you learned today and as always I'll see you next [Music] time bam