It hasn’t been three months into my junior year, yet I’m already finding myself nodding off in class and forgetting to turn in assignments.
Part of it is adjusting to the bigger workload, higher expectations and greater responsibilities, but that doesn’t explain why I’m staying up well past midnight on most days when I don’t have to.
So I designed an experiment to try and solve this issue. For the past two weeks, I’ve been my own guinea pig.
The idea was simple: for two weeks, implement a study technique and observe the results after the time was over. For my study technique of choice, I picked the Pomodoro method, a system where I took a five-minute break after 25 minutes of work and took a 15-minute break after an hour-and-a-half.
For the first day, everything went without a hitch: I wrapped up my work closer to 10 p.m. and promptly went to sleep. The next day, though, I made a mistake.
I put my phone next to me on my desk while I worked.
Assignments that should’ve taken 30 minutes took 45. Breaks that were meant to be five minutes suddenly were 10. My Pomodoro technique had completely fallen out of the window, all because of my phone.
I finished up my work at 11:30 p.m. I fell asleep in History the next day. I did not pick up on the nuances of the Articles of Confederation.
I hate to admit it, but I allowed this pattern to continue for the rest of the week. My experiment had not gone as planned, and nothing much had changed: I was still tired, and my grades were still suffering because of it.
So, when the next week came rolling around, I set out with a new sense of determination. This week would be test-heavy, and I would be taking the PSAT on Thursday, so getting my work done early was paramount.
I didn’t change much from the previous week except for one key detail: I took my phone and put it in another room. What seemed like a small detail turned out to completely transform my experience, as I repeatedly finished up my work early every night and was able to get adequate sleep for my testing.
Essentially, I realized that I had no discipline when it came to my phone. If it was around me, I was eventually going to get on it, and once I was on it, good luck to anyone trying to get me off it.
But by removing my phone from my reach and sticking to a specified plan, I was able to properly concentrate on my work.
And, although I love watching Instagram reels in between math problems, I think I’ll be keeping my phone far, far away from me when I’m trying to work in the future.
Or at least until I get to that 15-minute break. Then anything’s fair game.
