Learning by Heart: Maintaining Attention

I am not sure just how effective this attention technique would turn out for other people but I am able to successfully employ it and, perhaps, other people might be able to benefit from it if they somehow think the same way I do.

I often have trouble concentrating on long readings and my mind will tend to wander. Before I know it, I've been staring at a single page for 20 minutes daydreaming about other things or I distract myself by randomly wanting to google something that has no connection to what I was already doing.

In order to keep myself more engaged with my work I need to switch tasks consistently in order to break gridlock. Often, I do this by switching between multiple readings. I find that not only does this keep me reading for longer, but it also helps me to synthesize the things that I'm reading into something more coherent to talk about in class. Usually, I employ this technique by reading several pages of a article or book until I feel myself getting bored. This can happen anywhere between 3 and 10 pages, or even never if I really like what I'm reading! When I do get bored though, I make a note of where I left off and then switch to another reading. When I get board of that, I can either switch to yet another reading (as I typically have a great many due at one), or I can switch back to the original reading.

I understand that this technique may not work for everyone, but I doubt that I am the only person who thinks this way and gets distracted so easily. I need to be engaged with things moving more rapidly and I think it's possible that other people have a similar problem and could benefit from the same system.

(a somewhat unnerving picture of someone multi-tasking)

Learning Challenge: Bibliotherapy

The New Yorker article about whether reading can make you happier was pretty interesting. I used to love to read a lot and there are still books that I remember resonating with me very clearly. In high school when I was going through a very tough time I remember reading a lot of Sarah Dessen books which were all about other high school girls who encountered issues like abuse, neglectful parents, sexual assault, depression, and things like that. All of these teenage girls ended up finding strength and hope in their friends and sometimes family and becoming better versions of themselves in the end. I remember some of these books so well because of how much they kept me occupied on the idea of better which was what I really needed at that time.

Right now, with how much work I have to do consistently and my own person issues I don't read a lot of fiction. I read a lot of theory and articles for class but I doubt they have the same kind of benefits. Reading about Franz Boas's critique of the comparative method probably won't cure my depression but at the same time my depression really keeps me from feeling up to reading much. And any time I do try to read I always find myself distracted and disinterested. I don't know if I can find that reading spark that got me through high school but I think it's worth another try if I can just get myself interested in something.

(Sarah Desson books, article not reccomended)