Blockers to Learning Things?
Writing a new blog after a long long time!! Not sure, how many people actually read these. But then whoever reaches till these blogs, hopefully they find it worth reading. :)Many of the students asked me over Instagram or LinkedIn as how to even be focused while preparing for placements. It's usually some distractions that take over them like Social Media or when they try to stay focused they are not able to achieve what they had planned for the hour.
This article is focused around the very 2 points above!
Just analyse as to why you will be on Social Media for hours? When you waste a lot of time on Social Media, it CONSCIOUSLY or UNCONSCIOUSLY? Is it because you get bored from everything around and you start to scroll through the Instagram Reels? Or do you have some person to chat with for long hours? Or is it like you prefer scrolling posts on Instagram or Facebook rather than studying that Tree Data Structure because, one -> you find it easy to scroll and difficult to read Data Structures? Or you have no interest in the subject but you have taken the subject just because your Dad or your friend told you to take it? Or you think that now placement seasons or exams are not there, Jab ayegi dekhi jayegi, Sab Bhagwan Bharose?
The simple conclusion is -> If you are scrolling the posts, and later point of time when it's time for exams or placements you are forcefully trying to grasp as much as possible to compensate for the wasted time. It's not gonna work!
The entire efforts have to be a continuous one.
Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. Therefore, you have to continuously make efforts in order to stay focused and learn things that might be contributing towards your overall success.
The simple conclusion is -> If you are scrolling the posts, and later point of time when it's time for exams or placements you are forcefully trying to grasp as much as possible to compensate for the wasted time. It's not gonna work!
The entire efforts have to be a continuous one.
Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. Therefore, you have to continuously make efforts in order to stay focused and learn things that might be contributing towards your overall success.
Solution:-
Keep the phone in Silent Mode and in a different room from where you are preparing for your subjects.
I used to give my phone to my sister so that she hides it a place where I couldn't find it. :)
Once I was done with tasks for the day, I used to ask her back for my phone. She used to cross question me at times as to what have you read and all, if she felt it convincing enough she would hand over my phone to me. :P
Scrolling reels will only give you satisfaction for quite a time. Those music with people doing random shit gives kick only for a while.
These are some of the baits that we shouldn't fall for. Watch Instagram Reels for 5 mins if you badly want to, but don't make it for long like 1 hour or something as it is a TOTAL waste of time. (I am telling it because I have waste quite a lot of time, and regretted every bit of it, as I could have done so much more in that time.)
Second one is, even though you are focused, you are not able to achieve what you had planned to do for the hour.
There might be again 2 reasons for that -
1. Either you set unrealistic goals.
2. Or you are more worried about completing the task, rather than understanding it.
For the first point above, I would suggest you to take a BIGGER task and then break it down into SMALLER tasks. That's DIVIDE and CONQUER for you. All my Computer Science Folks are Triggered now.
Well coming back to the point let me give you an example!
If the BIGGER task is "Reading about Tree Data Structure".
Here, I would divide this BIGGER task into SMALLER tasks ->
1. Read the basics of Tree Data Structure.
2. Learn the Traversals of the Tree - INORDER, POST-ORDER, PRE-ORDER, LEVEL-ORDER Traversals.
3. Try to code the above in the editor and programming language of my choice. Can be C++, Java, Python or anything.
4. Solve 3-4 problems with 2-3 approaches of each of the problem for the hour.
And so on and so forth!
Doing this will make sure that you have small achievable goals, while making sure that you are ultimately contributing towards the overall goal.
If the BIGGER task is "Reading about Tree Data Structure".
Here, I would divide this BIGGER task into SMALLER tasks ->
1. Read the basics of Tree Data Structure.
2. Learn the Traversals of the Tree - INORDER, POST-ORDER, PRE-ORDER, LEVEL-ORDER Traversals.
3. Try to code the above in the editor and programming language of my choice. Can be C++, Java, Python or anything.
4. Solve 3-4 problems with 2-3 approaches of each of the problem for the hour.
And so on and so forth!
Doing this will make sure that you have small achievable goals, while making sure that you are ultimately contributing towards the overall goal.
After you learn a small topic. Try to explain yourself about what you just read here.
If you are able to explain that topic to yourself properly, then you had been reading it properly.
If not, then you were just trying to complete it in order to tick mark that topic in your checklist of the topics to be read.
That is not gonna help you in any way. Checking mark the topic for your satisfaction will be easy. But on the bigger picture it won't help you at all.
As a famous line from one of my favourite song goes - "Safar khoobsoorat hai manzil se bhi".
Concentrate on your Safar, You will ultimately reach your manzil (that is finishing off the topic), but only with all the experience that you experience in the Safar (The Learnings).
Let me know if you connect with the points above!
- Abhishek Rai
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