Some cheap hacks that help me stay awake and focused:
Talking aloud to myself. (Examples: reading the textbook aloud; speaking aloud to myself as I try to make sense of a difficult bit of text; talking aloud to myself about what I’m trying to accomplish and what the next step in my studying should be; talking aloud to myself about how to set up a given math problem, how it is that I seem to be proving something impossible, etc.). Some people literally explain their math solutions to a teddy bear because they find this practice helps them find errors.
Standing up from my work and doing jumping-jacks or the like. Sometimes I set a timer that beeps every 20 minutes and tells me to move about physically for a minute or three.
Working with other people. (Whether they know more than I do, comparable to the amount I know, or significantly less; discussing the material with other people helps me learn it, and makes the material more real).
Hacks 1 and 2 may seem silly, but they aren’t; we humans are physical systems, and it can be much easier to engage the whole mind if one also engages the voice, the systems that allow for speaking, the systems that are activated when one hears someone speak, and/or the systems involved in social interaction.
Standing up from my work and doing jumping-jacks or the like. Sometimes I set a timer that beeps every 20 minutes and tells me to move about physically for a minute or three.
Seconded. I do jumping jacks and/or pushups, and it definitely helps. Sometimes if I don’t feel like getting up I’ll simply slap myself in the face as hard as I can. It hurts, but I’m usually quite alert after that. (May seem a little odd if there are people around, however...)
Some cheap hacks that help me stay awake and focused:
Talking aloud to myself. (Examples: reading the textbook aloud; speaking aloud to myself as I try to make sense of a difficult bit of text; talking aloud to myself about what I’m trying to accomplish and what the next step in my studying should be; talking aloud to myself about how to set up a given math problem, how it is that I seem to be proving something impossible, etc.). Some people literally explain their math solutions to a teddy bear because they find this practice helps them find errors.
Standing up from my work and doing jumping-jacks or the like. Sometimes I set a timer that beeps every 20 minutes and tells me to move about physically for a minute or three.
Working with other people. (Whether they know more than I do, comparable to the amount I know, or significantly less; discussing the material with other people helps me learn it, and makes the material more real).
Hacks 1 and 2 may seem silly, but they aren’t; we humans are physical systems, and it can be much easier to engage the whole mind if one also engages the voice, the systems that allow for speaking, the systems that are activated when one hears someone speak, and/or the systems involved in social interaction.
Seconded. I do jumping jacks and/or pushups, and it definitely helps. Sometimes if I don’t feel like getting up I’ll simply slap myself in the face as hard as I can. It hurts, but I’m usually quite alert after that. (May seem a little odd if there are people around, however...)