Mastering the Basics: Simple Steps to Academic Success (Part One)

You would be surprised at how consistently performing simple tasks will improve your overall grades. It’s always the smallest tasks that make the biggest difference, yet many fail to complete them on a consistent basis. This chapter will cover what these simple tasks are and how you can implement them into your day-to-day life during the school year - whether you’re in class or at home. The word ‘consistency’ is key, because in order to see your grades develop, you must perform these basic tasks consistently, not whenever you feel like it. Turning these tasks into habits will put you in the upper 20% echelon of students from an academic standpoint, surpassing 80% of other students. Thankfully, these tips aren’t some magic formula - instead, they are ordinary things that you have probably have heard of before. In that case, why even bother talking about them? Well, you’ll realize that with a lot of things in life, doing the small, ordinary things and reverting back to the basics is what makes the biggest difference. After all, big changes cannot be made without establishing the small changes first, and in this chapter, you will learn that this also applies to school and your grades.

Focus
The first tip is to pay attention in class. Yes, just pay attention. It sounds extremely obvious but many people fail to do it. You may realize that your focus is constantly shifting and fixating on something else during a lesson. This is common amongst many people due to our low attention span. Social media and technology in general has contributed greatly towards mitigating our attention span. In fact, our attention span is now equivalent to that of a goldfish, according to newly released studies. We have been sucked into an abyss filled with endless content that is directly catered towards us with the help of advanced algorithms. We are constantly fed instant gratification as everything is a few clicks away.These distractions, social media being the biggest one, spikes our dopamine levels for extremely short durations of time, and then fades away. During these short intervals where our dopamine levels spike, we feel good, and since this has been happening to us for years, our dopamine receptors have been overloaded. Therefore, we struggle to direct our focus back towards tasks that don’t reciprocate those feelings, such as paying attention in class.

Ensuring that we focus appropriately in class is done by actively listening. Listening is not simply hearing the words that are being spoken, but rather, it is understanding and internalizing those words to seek the actual meaning behind them. Many fail to do the latter. However, the benefits of focusing in class are overwhelmingly positive. Being attentive in class settings will enable you to understand the material in class with relative ease. This will mitigate the amount of time you need to spend reviewing and relearning the concepts due to feeling lost. Instead, you can delegate this free time towards other tasks which require your attention. This can also reduce potential stress from not understanding the material. Also, if you focus in class even during work periods - by completing any homework or tasks, your productivity will skyrocket. However, the question remains, how do we actually combat our remarkably low attention span so that we can focus and listen better in class?

Distractions are what prohibit us from focusing, and unfortunately, they will always be there. Hence, it is merely impossible for us to “eliminate” our distractions, but it isn’t impossible for us to prevent ourselves from encountering these distractions. In a class setting, there are two main sources of distractions; people and our devices.

Let’s start with people. It is extremely tempting to sit with our friends, so that we can enjoy our classes and converse. It makes sense, since we are behaviourally inclined to be social. As generic as this may sound, class is not designed to be a social get-together. Yes, it’s okay to talk in class occasionally, but refraining from it during lessons is vital. It all boils down to the basic premise of prioritization. Ask yourself this and truthfully answer; is it more important to talk to your friends, so you can get your dosage of instant gratification and dopamine, or is it more important to focus, which will allow you to thrive academically? It’s not worth sacrificing your focus in exchange for conversing with someone. Your lack of focus will eventually catch up to you when you are forced to independently review the concepts in your free time and end up feeling stressed. What you want to do is find a seat, if possible, that is distant from where your peers are located. That way, you will not be able to constantly converse with them during instructional time and are instead forced to direct your attention towards the teacher. Also, if you want to take it a step further, it is highly favourable for you to find a seat closer to the middle or front of the classroom. That way, the proximity between you and your teacher is smaller and you will be forced to not talk, since the teacher will easily be able to hear you. Essentially, this forces you to stay quiet and focus on what requires your attention, that being the lesson.

The second distraction is our devices, mostly our phones. Phones and other technological devices are now so deeply ingrained in our daily lives that living without them seems impossible. We rely on them for various different tasks and they also are the largest source of entertainment for the vast majority of people. Nowadays, in highschool, almost all students have phones. We have a bad habit of frequently glancing at our phone or tuning out of the lesson to stimulate our brains with dopamine by using social media apps. However, even redirecting our focus towards our phones for 10 seconds to a minute can pose negative effects on how well we are able to retain information. In order for you to escape this distraction and prevent it from imposing these negative effects, you need to get rid of your phone from your environment. Ideally, you want to put your phone somewhere where it is out of sight and difficult to access. This psychologically makes us disinclined to use our phone, since it is not visible in our surroundings. Before the class starts, place your phone in your school bag - ideally under your books or binders - making it even more tedious to access. Then, move your school bag out of your eyesight and that’s it. Obviously, this is much easier said than done. Initially, you will feel repetitive urges of using your phone and that is completely normal. Again, you are trying to stop something you do subconsciously. This is going to be an absolute game-changer for your focus. One valuable tip when it comes to implementing the habit of not using your phone in class when you feel like it is to constantly remind yourself of the benefits that are attached with not using your phone (less stress, understanding concepts faster and better, more free time, etc).

Don’t Multitask
Above, I mentioned that even using our phone for short periods of time, even 10 seconds, can damage our ability to retain information. Even if you claim that you are able to effectively listen to the teacher while on your phone, that is simply false. This leads me to my next point about optimizing your focus in class - do not multitask. The whole concept of multitasking is a myth. It is scientifically proven that we are not capable of multitasking. So why does it feel like we can? When we think we are multitasking, we aren’t actually multitasking. Instead, we are rapidly alternating between more than one task and that results in us not performing either task effectively. Back to the example above, when you are on your phone and believe that you are multitasking, you are simply just switching between two different tasks at a rapid rate. This doesn’t only apply to your phone, it also applies to fidgeting in class, talking to others, listening to music, or anything else that is unrelated to what you are supposed to be doing, which is focusing in class. These small things actually impact how effectively we are interpreting the information. I used to have a bad habit of fidgeting and talking to those around me during lessons and I would constantly argue that I was able to absorb all the information properly. Eventually, I realized I was wrong. I was being delusional and fed myself this lie to justify my actions. It’s actually quite fascinating how big of a difference it makes when you give your undivided attention to the lesson and are completely focused, without doing anything else, even if it’s something as insignificant as playing with your pencil.

Sleep
The third, and a crucial point is to get adequate sleep. It is scientifically proven that teenagers tend to sleep late and wake up later. Contrastingly, highschools start extremely early - even earlier than elementary or middle schools. As our sleep patterns remain unchanged during our transition from elementary to highschool, we are getting less time to sleep. Also, keep in mind that there is also a heavy increase in workload and responsibilities in highschool compared to elementary. The same study found that the times we sleep and wake up on the weekends are much later in comparison to rising and sleeping times on the weekdays. This, again, is due to school times starting early. As a result of teenagers spending less time sleeping (due to early rising times for school), the data reveals that the discrepancy between their sleep schedules on weekdays compared to weekends increases as high school commences.

This study provides insight and a new perspective on sleep and school. This chapter isn’t to argue about highschool starting times, because that is something we cannot change. Transportation, traffic, teachers and a variety of other things all are heavily reliant on school starting times. Extending school starting times would equally delay ending times and simply changing this one factor would interfere with a multitude of other factors as well. However, what we can change is ourselves and our sleep, as hard as it may be. Throughout my entire life, even as a little kid, I’ve slept extremely late relative to others. It’s a habit I adopted as a child. To this date, I still occasionally struggle with sleep. Around what would be regarded as appropriate sleeping times, I tend to feel a rush of energy disperse throughout my body, which in turn boosts my mood and encourages me to do something besides sleep. I feel like listening to music, doing something productive, or just enjoying my time. It feels great in the moment, but in the morning on a school day, it’s quite possibly the worst feeling ever. If you can relate to this, you know what I mean.
Your alarm forcefully wakes you up the following morning, your eyes feel extremely heavy and are hard to open. You have to gather all the mental courage to drag your body off your bed and get ready for school. Then, when in class, all you could think about is arriving at home from school. You feel saturated with fatigue. This fatigue we experience in class has negative implications that most of us dismiss. It damages our ability to focus and results in low energy. When you have low energy, it impairs your ability to think properly, alters your mood, and invokes certain unwanted emotions; all of which serve as a catalyst for weak performance. Try to think of a time when you were extremely tired in class and compare that to when you were not tired. The distinction between those energy levels contributes significantly towards your ability to focus. When you’re tired, it’s harder to pay attention and retain information, which leads to gaps in your understanding. Additionally, sleep has a profound contribution towards building memory. During sleep, our brain is strengthening the new information we learned. It’s also important to note that being tired restrains our total productivity output as well. To summarize, sleep deeply influences our ability to learn, focus, and remember the information we obtain. Sleep has a great impact on all of us, which extends much further than our ability to focus. Without adequate quality or quantity of sleep, our brain is unable to function at its optimal levels and this will prevent us from focusing in class. The purpose of mentioning sleep was to expose you to the detrimental impacts it can impose upon your ability to focus, learn, and remember. I am far from a sleep expert, so I am unable to go into heavy detail on how to repair your sleeping schedule. That is not the purpose of this book. However, I am able to get you thinking about it and that’s what matters. If you are someone who suffers from poor sleep, this point should encourage you to look deeper into it and work towards improving it.

Be Present
The last point is to be present in class, which connects with the previous point. Being present means that your mind and thoughts aren’t wandering in the past or future or about something else. Instead, you should be focused on what you are doing now. Your mind needs to be clear of the internal dialogue. Almost any student will find their class boring and would rather do something else with their time, if they had the luxury of doing so. Unfortunately, we’re all stuck there. This encourages our mind to wander off, as we start thinking about random things. In a way, our thoughts are kind of a source of entertainment for us during dull lessons. As harmless as this may seem, when our mind wanders, we are focused on something else, which is completely irrelevant to what we should be doing. There are an infinite number of things we can be thinking about. When we are fixated on irrelevant things, the lesson material goes over our head. Not all of it, but small chunks here and there which result in a very choppy understanding of the content. The goal is to keep these thoughts to a bare minimum during lessons, so we can enhance our ability to comprehend the content. This is a very difficult thing to do. I myself am extremely far from perfection when it comes to taming thoughts. I still catch my mind wandering almost every single class, but I keep it to a minimum. If you pay attention to how often your mind wanders in class, you would be surprised. It occurs a lot more frequently than you would expect. When you catch yourself, redirect your focus to the lesson, but without thinking much about it. If you lose your focus and tell yourself in your mind to ‘focus’, you will probably make yourself susceptible to losing focus. What you need to do is skip over the “thinking” process, straight to focusing. It sounds confusing but practise it in a real-life situation. Sometimes, thinking amplifies the difficulty of doing certain things, such as this.

Learning to focus effectively in class by implementing the four tips above will be a game-changer for you. You won’t need to review concepts on your own as often and you will finally abandon those feelings of cluelessness after a lesson. This alone will put you ahead of the vast majority of students, since most individuals fail to focus effectively in class.

This was mentioned before, so to prevent unwanted repetitiveness, it will be short. You need - not should - ask questions from the teacher whenever feeling confused. Will this surely solve the problem every single time? No, but it can. There is absolutely no harm in trying because you have nothing to lose. Either you get it and move on, you don’t get it and learn it yourself, or you partially get it and learn the rest yourself. You can either gain nothing or something but you’re not losing anything. Nobody is judging you for doing this, because chances are, other students probably have the same question as you! So don’t feel ashamed to ask a question because you’re only making things worse that way.