How to focus on studying when you cannot: motivation, the phone, and the first five minutes

You cannot focus on studying because the task in front of you is vague, large and unmarked, and your phone is within reach. None of that is laziness. Focus is a state you build in five minutes: one question at the top of a page, one source, an end time, and the phone in another room. Motivation follows the first marked answer, not the other way round. Here is the five-minute setup, what the research says about the phone, and what to do when you still drift.

Why you cannot focus (it is the task, then the phone)

Two things are in the way, and they are both fixable tonight.

The task. "Study chemistry" has no first step and no finish line. Attention needs a target it can see: a question it can attempt, a number it can reach, a time it can stop at. A topic gives it none of those, so it wanders to the thing in the room that does offer a target, which is the phone.

The phone. Its presence alone costs attention. Ward and colleagues (2017) had nearly 800 people do tasks that load working memory with their own phone either on the desk face down, in a pocket or bag, or in another room. The group whose phones were in another room did best, and the desk group did worst; it made no difference whether the phone was on or off, face up or face down. The authors' reading is that keeping yourself from checking it uses up some of the capacity you were trying to use on the task. Thornton and colleagues (2014) found a related pattern on paper-and-pencil attention tasks: a phone merely visible on the desk lowered performance on the harder tasks and not the simple ones. That second result has not replicated in every later attempt, so take it as a second sign pointing the same way rather than a settled number.

Interruptions leave a residue. Leroy (2009) found that when people switch from one task to another before the first is finished, part of their attention stays on the first; she called it attention residue, and it was worse when the first task felt unfinished. Mark, Gudith and Klocke (2008) measured people doing a task with and without interruptions: the interrupted work was finished faster, and at the cost of more stress, frustration and effort. Every glance at a message is both of those: a residue when you come back and a faster, tenser version of the work.

So the evening is lost before it starts when the task is a topic and the phone is on the desk. The setup below fixes both, and it rests on the four moves that move marks, because an evening you can focus in is still an evening of answering first.

The five-minute setup

A timed list. The clock starts when you decide to study.

1. 0:00 Phone to another room, not face down. The whole walk, there and back. One minute. This is the step the research is clearest on.
2. 1:00 One page, one source. The textbook section or the notes for tonight's idea, and one blank page. Everything else off the desk, including the second textbook you might need later.
3. 2:00 Write the first question at the top of the page. An actual problem with numbers in it, or a definition to produce, not a topic. "Find the asymptotes of f(x) = (x + 1)/(x − 3)" is a question. "Rational functions" is not.
4. 3:00 Write the end time and what done means tonight. "Stop at 8:40. Done = six questions marked." Both numbers; a block with no end feels endless, and a block with no count cannot be won.
5. 4:00 Start the first question. If you cannot, make it smaller: the first line only, or the diagram only. The two-minute start and the five moves against procrastination are the tools for a start that will not come; this page assumes you are seated and handing you to that one when you are not.

Five minutes, and the desk now holds a target attention can see. Chapter 9 of the free playbook has the setup as a checklist to keep on the desk.

What motivation is, and where it comes from

Students wait to feel motivated and then study. The research describes it the other way round.

Expectancy-value theory (Wigfield and Eccles 2000) says you put effort into a task when two things are true: you expect it to go reasonably well, and the result matters to you. Both can be made visible tonight. Expectancy comes from a number: a diagnostic score of "5 of 8 right" is something you can raise, where "I'm bad at this" is a feeling with nothing to grip. Value comes from the date and one sentence: the exam is in nine days, and here is why the mark matters to you, written at the top of the page under the question.

Ryan and Deci (2000) add one thing in their account of self-determination: effort lasts longer when you feel able and when you chose the task yourself than when you were pushed into it. So you choose the first question, not the teacher's order and not the textbook's. The first question is the one you most want to be able to do.

The honest line, which every tip list skips: motivation follows action more often than it precedes it. The first marked answer is what changes the evening, because it turns "study chemistry" into "5 of 8, and I know which three". Nothing about how you felt at 7:30 has to change for that to happen.

"How do I stop being lazy?"

Laziness is a label you put on yourself after the fact. It explains nothing and it tells you nothing about what to do.

The research on putting things off describes something more specific. Steel's (2007) review of hundreds of studies finds that people avoid tasks that are vague, large, boring or threatening, and the more of those a task is, the more it is put off. "Study for the chemistry final" is vague, large and, if the last test went badly, threatening. That is three of four. The question to ask is not "why am I lazy" but "which of the four is tonight's task, and what shrinks it." Vague shrinks to a written question; large shrinks to a count and an end time; threatening shrinks to the easiest question first.

One more line, said plainly. If you cannot start on most days in most areas of your life, not only studying, that is a different conversation. Studying with ADHD is this blog's page for one version of it, and nerves that stop you in the chair rather than before it are test anxiety, which has its own research and its own moves. Neither is laziness either.

When you drift mid-session

You will. The question is what you do in the first second after you notice.

• Write the drifting thought down on a parking page and return to the question. "Text Sam about Saturday" goes on the page, not into your working memory, and not onto a phone that is in another room.
• Stand up for one minute and come back to the same question, not a new one.
• Shorten the block. If you drift at twenty minutes, the next block is fifteen. How to set a timed block that fits recall has the version of the timer that helps rather than nags.
• If the question is too hard, read one worked example and redo it cold. Drift is sometimes the honest signal that you do not yet have the method; how to study math has the mechanics of reading an example so that you can.
• Never pick up the phone "to check one thing". It is in another room for exactly this moment, and the walk to it is long enough to notice what you are doing.

Worked evening: 7:30 pm, rational functions, no focus

A Grade 12 student with MHF4U idea 7, rational functions and their asymptotes, a test next week, and no wish to start.

7:30 The setup. Phone to the hall. The textbook section and one page. "Done = six questions marked by 8:40." First question written: find the vertical and horizontal asymptotes of f(x) = (x + 1)/(x − 3).

7:36 The first question. The vertical asymptote is where the denominator is zero and the numerator is not: x − 3 = 0 gives x = 3, and the numerator there is 4, not zero, so x = 3 is a vertical asymptote. The horizontal asymptote: the numerator and denominator have the same degree, 1, so the asymptote is the ratio of the leading coefficients, 1/1, which is y = 1. Marked against the back of the book: right.

7:40 The second question, the one that catches people: the asymptotes of g(x) = (x² − 9)/(x − 3). The common wrong line, and the one this student writes, is "vertical asymptote at x = 3". Check it: x² − 9 = (x − 3)(x + 3), so for every x except 3, g(x) = x + 3. The function is a straight line with one point missing. At x = 3 the line would be at 3 + 3 = 6, so there is a hole at (3, 6) and no vertical asymptote at all. The rule the student writes in the error log: "a zero of the denominator is an asymptote only if it is not also a zero of the numerator; factor first."

By 7:45 two questions are marked, one wrong, and the evening has a shape: a known rule, a logged mistake, four questions to go. 8:40: six marked, four right, the two misses named on the log for tomorrow.

The point of the example is what did not happen. Nothing about motivation changed at 7:30. The setup did, and the first marked answer did the rest.

The mistakes

• Starting with a topic instead of a question. "Rational functions" cannot be attempted; the first question can.
• The phone face down "in case". The research measured face down; it cost the same as face up.
• Music with lyrics. Words in your ears compete with words on the page; the music research is one page and its answer is short.
• Rereading until you feel ready. You will feel ready when the page is familiar, which is not the same as knowing it, and the test will tell you the difference.
• Waiting to feel motivated. The feeling arrives after the first marked answer, so waiting for it first is waiting for something that cannot come yet.
• Punishing yourself for last night. It changes nothing about tonight and it makes tonight's task more threatening, which is one of the four things that make a task easier to avoid.

The setup on one page

1. Phone in another room, not face down.
2. One source, one page.
3. A first question, with numbers, at the top of the page.
4. An end time and what done means, both as numbers.
5. Start, smaller if you must.

The one rule: motivation follows the first marked answer. Build the five minutes, answer the first question, and let the evening take its shape from the mark.