Milo Week Two : How to Focus at School (Pt. 2)

 In the last blog post, I started writing about how I helped myself focus and get more work done after school. My first tip was to change up your surroundings and find another place to work in instead of your room. This week, I’m going to finish this article and share a couple other ways to make schoolwork easier. 

1. Set timers

Another huge help has been setting aside time just for work. It can be an hour of work with fifteen-minute breaks, or something shorter, whatever works for you. Splitting up time like this helps me apply myself fully for the time that I am working. 

2. Helpful apps + widgets

Through my search desperately trying to find something to keep me on track, I came across a few apps and widgets that were able to help me. 

1. A widget I have on every computer is “Snooze This Tab”, which lets you temporarily close out tabs until a certain time stamp that you set when they pop back into your browser right where you left them. It’s helped me a lot to clear out my tabs and see what I was doing better, without losing some of the websites that I needed for longer-term projects. 

2. On my phone, something that can get really distracting while I’m trying to work, I have an app called “ScreenZen”. It sets time limits for apps that could be distracting, like TikTok or Instagram. You can personalize which apps are limited, and how long they’re blocked off for each day. If you try to open an app while it’s blocked, you have to wait ten seconds before it lets you in, and you’re given a prompt, ones that range from “Is this important?” to “How long will you check?” to remind you to stay on track. It doesn’t always work and can get annoying, but it’s helped me a lot. 

3. Last but not least, another widget I keep on my computer is something called “Forest”, which is a more fun way to stay focused. You can add distracting websites to a log, and when you start working, you can grow a virtual tree. Longer periods of time help you grow bigger trees, and if you try to go on a blocked website during the time you’re working, it will ask if you want to kill your tree. It’s a better way to stay self-motivated, and while I don’t use it as much as the first two, it is really helpful. 

I hope that you can implement some of these and that they help you guys out this year, the same way they did for me! Comment if there’s anything else you want me to write about, and I’d be happy to later on in the year. :D