How to Study with INTENSE Focus - 7 Essential Tips

Tell me how familiar this sounds to you. You've got some work to do. So you pack up your backpack, you find the perfect study space, perfect amount of sunlight, plenty of space to work in, little bit of nature thrown in, a fatherly picture of Nick Offerman staring down at you. You bring yourself a fresh cup of coffee. On go the noise-canceling headphones, and you find yourself an excellently tailored study playlist to accompany your impending deep dive into the practical uses of Nobita's rule for Monday's calc assignment. Everything is set up perfectly for you to start doing some good old-fashioned deep work. And then... Oh, hi, Tom. Productivity guru. Is that the IKEA cabinet planner? No, it's for research. You're disgusting. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's too real, Roy, it's too real. It's the same thing that I think all the time. How can I make sure that when I sit down to do my work, I actually do my work instead of falling into a distracted rut? After all, just sitting down at my desk isn't gonna result in really anything getting done. One of my favorite lines in Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, is his productivity equation. Time times intensity of focus equals quality of work produced. One of his case studies in the book, Peter Roosevelt, though at this time a freshman at Harvard University, knew this rule really, really well. His biographer, Edmund Morris, wrote that every single day, Roosevelt would look at his schedule between the hours of 8.30 and 4.30 and block off everything that was already scheduled, things like classes and recitations, lunch, and his athletic training. Anything left over was time spent for studying. And Morris noted that these fragments didn't usually add up to a large number of total hours, but he would get the most out of them by working only on schoolwork during these periods, and doing so with a blistering intensity. So the question that we wanna answer today is how do you achieve that ability to work with that blistering intensity like Roosevelt did? And hopefully the following seven tips that I've compiled will help you get started. First off, when you go into a work session, have a single target of focus. One of my biggest pitfalls in my professional life is that I'll wake up in the morning and I'll create a list of the things that I need to do, but then when I sit down, I don't choose one to work on. I'll get confused and I don't really know which one that I wanna start with, which leads to me just getting distracted and looking at car specs on the internet. So one piece of advice that I'm really trying to apply in my own life and that you should too is that before you earnestly start a work session, decide on the one task that you're going to work on. This creates a limitation for yourself, which can be very, very helpful, as is emphasized by one of my favorite quotes from all time, which comes from the I Ching. Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man. If they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a man's life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. Now there is a lot more that could be said about this passage, as it applies to many, many areas of life, but in this particular context, just remember that one particular single focus creates a limitation that narrows and strengthens your level of focus. Tip number two is to keep the work session sacred. And what I mean by this is that when you sit down to do your work and you've chosen your one task, only work on that task. Don't do anything before it, even if it's light, even if it's checking your email, even if it's watching a little video on YouTube, or even if it's eating. So this comes from a common pitfall that I've noticed in my own work. I will get it into my head that I need to go to a coffee shop because that's my favorite place to focus, so I will go to Starbucks, and then sometimes I'm a little hungry, so I'll get a little breakfast sandwich, one of those little protein packs, and a coffee, and of course, I don't wanna do real work while I'm eating, so I'll look at Reddit or I'll look at YouTube, or I'll do something really, really light while I eat that sandwich. The problem is, now I've gotten myself into a distracted rut, and it's very hard for me to transition myself into the real work that I actually went to Starbucks to do. So the change for me is eat breakfast at home or eat whatever meal it is at home, and then only go to the coffee shop to get coffee and to do work, no food. A third way to keep your level of focus high is to ensure that you're using the right tools and maintaining them. I love to cook, it's one of my favorite things to do at night when I'm done working, but one of the things that can make me really not want to cook is a dull chef's knife. If you've ever tried to cut an onion or an eggplant or really anything with a dull knife, it is not fun to do at all, and actually, it's pretty dangerous as well. Now, on occasions in the past, I've let my knife get dull, and a lot of times when that happens, I'll start using it and I'll start cooking a meal, but then I'll get frustrated, and then we'll just end up ordering takeout. So I've learned that if I wanna be cooking on a consistent basis, which I do, because it's healthy and it's fun to do, I need to sharpen my knife on a consistent basis as well. Every couple of weeks or every month at the very least. Now, this doesn't mean that you need to wait around to have the perfect tools to start doing your work, because that is a road you don't wanna go down, but just like a knife's edge dulls a little bit every single time you use it, something like, say, your computer's file system gets unorganized every time you use it. So build some time into your schedule to maintain the tools that you already have, and if an opportunity presents itself to acquire a better tool that's not gonna take a ton of time or resources, take it. Now for the fourth and least fun tip on this list. If you wanna work with that blistering level of intensity, if you wanna be like Teddy Roosevelt, you need to practice. An intense work ethic is something that is built over time, just like the calluses on the hands of a lumberjack. When you start out, you might be able to focus intensely for, say, 20 minutes, but day after day, after you keep doing it again and again, that ability is going to grow and strengthen. A couple of years ago, I realized that I wasn't reading as many books as I wanted to, so I bet my friend, Martin, $100 that I would read 25 pages every single day for three months. Now, when that challenge started, I found it really hard to read 25 pages a day, especially if the book that I had selected was really technical or detail-oriented. But something interesting happened as the months went on. Later in the challenge, I found it really easy to intensely focus on those 25 pages, even if it took like a full hour to read, until I was done. So if your initial attempts to work with that intense level of focus seem difficult, just remember that over time, it's going to get easier and your ability to do it is going to improve. Tip number five is to use timers to guide your work, but to leave some buffer room at the end of those timers in your schedule. Now, I talk a lot on this channel about the Pomodoro technique, setting a timer for 25 minutes and working on that single task you selected and nothing else until the timer goes off. But a lot of people seem to think that they're obligated to take a break at the end of that Pomodoro session, and I don't do this. For me, the Pomodoro session is just a way to get started, to overcome that initial resistance to doing the work. But once I get into it, I often work for an hour or more. I ignore the timer when it goes off. The thing is, it can really take some time to get into that state of mind where you're really intensely focused on your task. You can't do it within five or 10 minutes. So again, the Pomodoro technique is just a way to get yourself started. Let yourself work past the end of that timer. That being said, don't give yourself too much time either, because time pressure can be a very powerful motivator. As the author Adriana Tregiani once said, that there's nothing an artist needs more, even more than excellent tools and stamina, than a deadline. Our sixth principle was best expressed by the artist Pablo Picasso. Without great solitude, no serious work is possible. If you wanna be able to focus on your work intensely and get really good creative work done, for the most part, you need to be doing it alone. Now, there are obviously caveats to this. A lot of good collaborative work is done in teams. But often the best way that teams work is by coming together for short little bursts, communicating, collaborating, and then having everyone go off to work in solitude to really focus on their assigned part of the project. And there are even some times when working together with a partner for a full work session does work well. When I took statistics back in my sophomore year, I did have a partner who would come to my dorm every single time we had an assignment, and we would do it together. But what I've concluded about that experience is, number one, I wasn't good friends with this person at all. She would show up, we would do our work, and that was basically the extent of our relationship. And secondly, statistics is a particular kind of subject where you can kind of come to the answer very logically. Math works that way. But if you are writing something or doing anything that requires more of a creative mindset, it's better to do it alone. And to reiterate, that statistics partner was somebody I didn't really know well. A lot of times, working with study partners means that you're working with friends, which means the conversation inevitably drifts into other things besides your assignment. And finally, tip number seven, give yourself time for recovery. Nobody can work intensely all the time. And if you try to, you're eventually going to burn out. So take advantage of the flip side of that productivity equation. If you wanna have intense focus, use a little bit of time on your studies. And the time left over, you can use to relax. You can use to play video games or pursue something that's really interesting to you or hang out with friends. All that time spent relaxing may not seem productive in the moment, but it's gonna leave you refreshed and able to focus with that all-important blistering intensity the next time that you do need to work. Now, in addition to all the practices that we've gone over in this video, another essential ingredient in the formula for intense focus is interest. Without some amount of interest in your subject, your brain is gonna resist all of your attempts to focus on it. And one of the best ways to spark that interest is to give yourself a challenge, something to actively work on. That's why you should check out Brilliant, especially if you're at all interested in improving your mastery in anything related to math, science, or computer science. Brilliant is a learning platform built around the principle of active learning. And throughout the courses on calculus, machine learning, logic, astronomy, algorithms, and many, many more, you'll find yourself immediately presented with challenges that build interest and encourage the intense focus that's crucial for efficient learning. For example, within the first 10 minutes of their Intro to Probability course, I found myself having to learn how to multiply probabilities. In a normal classroom, I probably would've had to start out by introducing myself to the class, telling everyone what my favorite dog is, and then passively sitting through a lecture for quite a while before actively being challenged. And while this active approach to learning will help you more quickly reach mastery of the specific concepts you're studying, it also serves as crucial practice for building a mental framework that will allow you to apply your critical reasoning skills to any problem you face in the future. It makes you a flexible thinker. So if you wanna start learning more effectively, I highly recommend giving Brilliant a try. You can use the link down in the description below to start learning for free, and the first 83 people who sign up using that link will also get 20% off of their subscription. I wanna give a huge thanks to Brilliant for sponsoring this video and helping to support this channel. And as always, thank you guys so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, you can hit that like button down below and maybe share it with a friend who'd find it useful. And if you wanna get notified when I publish new videos, you can subscribe to this channel right there. You can also get a free copy of my book on how to earn better grades by clicking right there. And if you wanna watch one more video on this channel, smash your face into your phone screen right around here. Thanks for watching, and I will see you guys in the next video.