How to Focus Better When You Study, Read or Sit in Class

If you want to know how to focus better, start with the room before you start with your willpower. Get the phone out of sight, give yourself one task, put a timer on it, and take breaks on your feet. Those four changes come from published research, and they work the same way whether you're studying for a test, reading a dense chapter or sitting in a lecture.

A wandering mind is the default. In 2010 Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert used an iPhone app to ask 2,250 people what they were doing and what they were thinking about at random moments. Their paper in Science found minds were somewhere else 46.9% of waking hours. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine has timed how long people stay on one screen before switching. In 2004 it was about two and a half minutes. Her most recent figure is 47 seconds.

Put the phone in another room

Face down on the desk is still too close. Adrian Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin ran experiments with nearly 800 smartphone users and published them in 2017 under the name "brain drain". People sat tests of working memory and attention with their phones on the desk, in a pocket or bag, or in another room. Every phone was on silent.

The other-room group scored best. Pocket or bag came second, and desk came last. Turning the phone off made no difference, and neither did placing it face down. Only distance changed the scores. The people who said they leaned on their phones most did worst when the phone sat within reach.

So before a study session, carry the phone to the kitchen or leave it in your bag by the front door. If you need it for a timer, use a cheap kitchen timer or the one on your laptop.

Switching tasks costs time, and harder tasks cost more

Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans had people switch between tasks in a 2001 study for the Journal of Experimental Psychology. Every switch cost time. The cost grew as the tasks got more complex, and it grew again when the new task was unfamiliar. Meyer has said those small mental blocks can eat as much as 40% of someone's productive time.

For a student, a switch looks like checking a group chat between flashcards, or opening a second tab mid-essay. Decide what the one task is before you sit down, write it on a sticky note, and keep everything else closed until the block ends.

How to focus better when studying

Work in timed blocks. Francesco Cirillo built the Pomodoro Technique as a university student in the late 1980s, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used. The classic version is 25 minutes of work, a 5 minute break, and a longer break of 20 to 30 minutes after four rounds.

A timer gives you a finish line, so the urge to check something can wait until it rings. If 25 minutes feels short for problem sets, try 40 or 50. Keep the break.

Take the break on your feet

Stand up and walk. Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz at Stanford tested 176 people, mostly college students, across four experiments published in 2014. Walking students came up with more creative ideas than sitting ones, and in one experiment walkers doubled their number of novel answers. A treadmill facing a blank wall worked about as well as a walk outside. Five minutes around the block, or up and down the stairs, fits inside a Pomodoro break.

How to focus better when reading

Print it, or read it in the paper book. Pablo Delgado, Ladislao Salmerón and colleagues pooled 54 studies covering 171,055 readers from 2000 to 2017 in Educational Research Review (2018). Readers understood informational text better on paper than on a screen. The gap was widest when reading was timed, which is how most exams and assigned readings work. Novels showed no gap.

Read with a pen in your hand. Underline sparingly, and after each section write one line in the margin saying what it argued. If you can't write the line, reread the section before you move on. A pen gives your hands a job, and the margin notes show you where your attention drifted.

In class, take notes by hand

Pam Mueller of Princeton and Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA had students watch lectures and take notes on laptops or by hand, with the laptops offline. Their 2014 paper in Psychological Science found laptop users wrote far more (about 309 words against 173 in the first experiment) and copied the lecturer word for word. On questions that asked students to apply the ideas, the longhand group scored higher. When students were tested a week later and given 10 minutes to review their notes first, the handwriting group did better on facts and concepts.

Writing by hand is slower, so you have to pick what matters and put it in your own words. Sit near the front, keep the laptop shut, and leave the phone in your bag.

One spray to mark the start of the block

The tactics above set up the room. A start ritual tells you the block has begun. Some people make a coffee or put on the same playlist. Ours is one spray of Dragon Breath.

Dragon Breath is chilcuague root (Heliopsis longipes) from Central Mexico, wild-harvested from growth zones the Mara team selects with the help of local elders, dual-extracted and kept in Miron violet glass. Spray it into your mouth. For a second it tastes earthy and a little peppery. Then a bright electric buzz spreads across the tongue and mouth, the mouth floods, and a clean fresh feeling hangs on after. Within seconds you're present, the timer is running, and you're in the zone for the block ahead.

Mitchell S., a verified buyer, summed up his bottle in his review in three words. "Epic. Must buy"

The bottle sits next to your timer on the desk or goes in your pocket for the library and the lecture hall. Start with one spray and go up to five once you know the feeling. There are 250+ sprays in a bottle, and the Miron glass keeps light off the extract between sessions. For where the root comes from and how Mexican families have used it, read our guide to chilcuague, the golden root of Central Mexico. If you have a test coming up, we also wrote about what to do in the hour before an exam.

Dragon Breath considerations

The recommendation on the product page: "If you're pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or allergic to plants in the daisy family, ask your doctor before using it."

Questions people ask

Why can't I focus when I study?

The most common reason is a phone within reach. Ward's 2017 experiments found people scored lower with the phone on the desk than with it in another room, even on silent and face down.

How long should a study block be?

The Pomodoro Technique uses 25 minutes of work and a 5 minute break. Plenty of students stretch that to 40 or 50 minutes for problem sets and keep the break.

Is it better to read on paper or on a screen?

For textbooks and articles, paper. A 2018 meta-analysis of 54 studies found readers understood informational text better on paper, with the biggest gap under time pressure.

Should I take notes on a laptop or by hand in class?

By hand. Mueller and Oppenheimer found longhand note-takers scored higher on conceptual questions, and laptop users tended to copy the lecture word for word.