Fix Your Attention Span: 5 Levels of Focus Every Student Must Master

Summary

In this engaging video, Han Zhango discusses five crucial levels of attention that students must master for academic success. From the most basic, focused attention, to the most demanding, divided attention, each level requires specific techniques and understanding. By mastering these levels, students can improve their focus, overcome distractions, and achieve their academic and personal goals. The video also highlights practical tips like the Pomodoro technique and using tools like an iPad with a Paperlike screen protector to enhance focus and efficiency. Ultimately, the key to better attention spans lies not in blaming technology, but in understanding and practicing different focus levels.

Highlights

• Mastering attention is essential for academic excellence 📘.
• The Pomodoro technique helps improve focus by managing study sessions ⏲️.
• Selective attention helps filter relevant information in distracting environments 🧠.
• Alternating attention is key for switching between different tasks efficiently 🔄.
• Divided attention requires managing multiple tasks and is the most demanding 🌟.

Key Takeaways

• Master the five levels of attention to enhance your academic success 🎓.
• Social media isn't solely to blame for poor focus; it's about choosing the right level 🕹️.
• Practical methods like the Pomodoro technique can improve sustained attention ⏳.
• Selective attention helps filter out distractions; try studying with controlled distractions 🎧.
• Divided attention is demanding but crucial for multitasking and managing multiple duties 📚.

Overview

Attention is not just about staying focused; it's an art with multiple levels. In his video, Han Zhango emphasizes how mastering the five levels of attention, from basic focused attention to advanced divided attention, can transform your academic life. He explains that many blame technology for poor focus, but it's often a matter of operating at the wrong level of attention. By understanding and mastering these levels, students can take control of their minds, improve their focus, and achieve greater success.

Techniques like the Pomodoro method are highlighted in the video for enhancing sustained attention. By timing study sessions and taking breaks, students can gradually increase their focus time, eventually transitioning from time-based to task-based study methods. Han provides practical advice on eliminating both internal and external distractions, offering insights into how to create an efficient and focused study environment, whether using traditional methods or modern tools like the iPad with a Paperlike screen protector.

The video also delves into selective, alternating, and divided attention, explaining how each plays a role in our ability to manage tasks and information. Han advises practicing selective attention by introducing controlled distractions during study. While higher levels of attention, like divided attention, are more demanding, they are crucial for managing multiple tasks simultaneously. Ultimately, the key to better focus is to make studying enjoyable by understanding our brain's needs and using the right techniques to master our attention spans.

Fix Your Attention Span: 5 Levels of Focus Every Student Must Master Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 there are five levels of attention that I think every student should Master for academic success they go from the most basic to the most demanding type of a focus a lot of people bling social media or technology for our declining attention span but actually most of us are simply just operating at the wrong level of attention so this can make you feel like you are losing control of your mind and make you seem impossible to reach all your goals I've written 10 pages of excellent essays in 4 hours before I've also written two pages of nonsense in the same amount of time the only difference is much I was paying
• 00:30 - 01:00 attention for me mastering Focus was really the key to how I managed to get top results at everyy League school while having good social life and sleep while if you want to take control of your mind the first step is very simple finish watching this video by the end you able to identify which level of attention you're currently using your mistakes are currently holding your back and know exactly how to stay more focused study more efficiently and achieve all your goals so let's just get into it the first level is called focused attention it's the most basic
• 01:00 - 01:30 level of attention for example if you hear a bear noise nearby then you turn your head to see where is the bear it's the ability to respond to any specific stimuli the foundation of all the other types of attention it's how we're able to interact with the world around us and notice things a lot of students are actually operating at this level of attention it's very easily distracted and all the Technologies and notifications sometimes take advantage of this which is obviously a problem moving on to level two we have stain
• 01:30 - 02:00 attention which is the ability to focus over a period of time for example if the bear is following you then you really need to pay attention to the bear and keep an eye on him for a really long time for students this is the most common and important type of attention for example we need to study for upcoming exams for 2 hours straight and it's also what we usually mean when we say oh our attention span so here are some tips on how to improve your sustained attention the first step is how long we can actually Focus start by timing yourself as you begin to study
• 02:00 - 02:30 and solely focus on your studying task the moment you start wondering about other things where you kind of lose focus you should start your timer so this is your Baseline how long you can maintain your hardcore Focus this is also known as the pomodora technique for example if your Baseline is 15 minutes then you can just start a timer for 15 minutes and then you can take a 15 minutes break and then start the timer again and study for another 15 minutes once you get more comfortable with 15 minutes then you can increase that time to say 20 minutes and keep pushing the
• 02:30 - 03:00 time longer and longer until you can study for like an hour then you actually want to shift from time based to task based studying sessions for example you want to have a task of review 30 vocabulary words and then take a short break and then do another task like solve five math problems and then following another short break if you have a larger task you can break them into smaller tasks like if you have assignment of writing an essay you can break it into like doing research write the first paragraph write the body of
• 03:00 - 03:30 the paragraph Etc it's important to recognize that our focus and motivation are tied really closely together a lot of people think that focus is some like brain stuff that we were born with we either have it or we don't most of the time we will run out of motivation first before we're actually run out of the cognitive resources to focus another tip is to eliminate distractions I will talk more about how to study with distractions in level three but that's significantly harder if our goal is to study more efficiently in longer hours
• 03:30 - 04:00 then we want to make things as easy as possible like try to get rid of all the distractions and there are actually two type of distractions external and internal for internal distractions before you start your studying session you want to just bring Dum everything that's on top of your mind that you can think of if during your studying you thought about something that you're supposed to do like oh I need to fold my laundry or like I need to reply to that message instead of just do doing that
• 04:00 - 04:30 because oh you just thought about them just keep a little sticky notepad next to you or like the list that you just had and write those SS down and tell yourself you actually take care of them later for external distractions firstly just clean your studying space if you want you can take a picture of your studing space and see if there are any like distractions you didn't notice like some old notes or like some chord that you didn't even realize they were there please please just put your phone away put it somewhere that you can't read be
• 04:30 - 05:00 unless you like get up and walk all the way across the room and turn off the notifications so you won't be bothered if you do need technology I recommend using an iPad turn off your Wi-Fi and close all the tabs that you don't need in college I basically only use my iPad to study I don't need to bring all the book and constantly buy new pen or pencils everything is just in one place the only downside for the iPad I would say is I kind of miss writing on real paper sometimes and it can be a little bit uncomfortable using the apple pencil
• 05:00 - 05:30 to write there was also a learning curve when adjusting from real papers to iPad that's why I was really excited to discover the sponsor of this video paper like if you watched my other videos you know I love paperlike it's this amazing screen protector that basically makes your iPad fuse like a paper I use Nino dots technology so when I write on my iPad I get the satisfying feeling back so I have the best of both worlds digital paper that feels like real paper also if you do any form of digital art art or design paper like has the texture
• 05:30 - 06:00 of Premium art paper it gives you the Precision you need when you draw with paper like writing on my iPad just been so much more comfortable especially during long studying sessions that sometimes I write so much my hand gets sore so paper like also have this really nice pencil grip which is just so ergonomic overall paper like just make my workflow more enjoyable and productive so I highly recommend you to check out paper like as well if you also use an iPad the link is in my
• 06:00 - 06:30 description thank you so much paper like for sponsoring this video now we move on to level three we have selective attention this is the ability to focus on a specific task while filtering all the other distractions imagine you got really angry and you start hunting that bear well there are a bunch of other small animals running around as well you need to filter in all those distractions and only have your eye focus on the beer so when we're attending lectures the teacher may have a bunch of like feeling words we're making small time
• 06:30 - 07:00 or having jokes with you you should filter all those distractions and only focus on what is the important stuff the teacher is talking about sometimes they actually test you in English exams like if they give you an article and ask you to read and choose the most accurate option while they may give you a bunch of like other misleading informations so from now on you can be a little bit more mindful when you're learning new information take a second to think about what is the target here what exactly you're looking for can practice selective attention by introducing
• 07:00 - 07:30 controlled distractions for example like when you're studying you can listen to music that has lyrics and actually there are a bunch of small exercis can help you with this for example like this one I would say from level three including level three it's very difficult although it's beneficial to practice and master them our attention is actually a limited resources that can run out every day if we don't like take a break or a rest so if you do too much of level three or level four or level five it can actually
• 07:30 - 08:00 burn more of your energy and you can get tired really fast so if your goal is to study for longer hours for exams or whatever you should actually try to avoid doing advanced level Focus you should try to go back to level two and like in limited distractions level four is alternating attention this is the ability to switch between tasks that requires different type of attention for example if there are two bears around you and you want to pay attention to one of them for a while and then you switch
• 08:00 - 08:30 to the other for a while and then you want to switch back and forth to keep an eye on those Bears this may not be the most productive type of attention you may lose time in the process of doing so it cost you a lot of cognitive resources but it is kind of useful as a students to have the skills of mastering this type of attention for example in our exams there might be very different type of questions that requires you to switch your attention pretty fast or in the middle of working on one question you
• 08:30 - 09:00 feel like you run out of time you don't want to do it anymore then you work on the others first then you might need to switch back later finally we have level five which is divided attention this is the ability to respond to multiple tasks at the same time for example if a bear is chasing you then you not only need to pay attention to the bear but also you want to call and on the phone to answer bunch of questions like uh where are you at this is the most demanding type of attention because you're your mind need
• 09:00 - 09:30 to manage multiple different type of information all at the same time as a students during lectures if the teacher doesn't give you the time to write down notes they just like keep talking you not only need to process that information also summarize it in your mind bring out different kind of questions and write down important information again lots of time we don't realize what we're doing from level three to level five because sometimes there are distractions that we are not even realizing it's there the best tip to be more focused is actually make what
• 09:30 - 10:00 you're doing more fun and easy we never had any problems focused on a fun movie or playing video games and we don't even need to try it just feels natural to to focus on those things we only had trouble focusing while we're like studying because it's too hard it's too boring so just makes things easier um a lots of the tips and information I'm sharing is not asking to change everything you're doing I'm just sharing information so you can be a little bit more Mindful and get to know our brain
• 10:00 - 10:30 better so in the future you can subconsciously increase your productivity more if you're enjoying this video please like And subscribe that would be such a good motivation for me to keep making better videos for you guys also comment on any questions you may have I always read them even though I may not have all the time to respond to everything also if you use an iPad you can go check out paper like I think they're such a good product I'm such a big fan yeah so I hope it's helpful thank you so much for watching I hope you have a wonderful day good luck with
• 10:30 - 11:00 your studying and I will see you next time bye-bye