5 Essential Tips to Maximize Study over Screens

Exams are stressful and study is hard. HSCs are rapidly approaching in Australia, and every family member wants the results to be good, both the students and their parents. It takes focus and dedication, and it can feel overwhelming. This feeling is only exacerbated when there is an added battle to overcome: the enticing and comforting lure of the social media feed, where 5 minutes of downtime can quickly transform into an hour of doom-scrolling.

There are plenty of posts out there about how to study better, but we want to help students avoid getting distracted by their smartphone and de-railing all the good study tips they have accumulated. Hopefully these suggestions will help you to beat the screen and study smarter (as well as harder) and get the most out of your HSC exam prep.

Don’t Cram! Study Regularly

Leaving your study late is a sure-fire recipe for extra stress, as you see the remaining days slowly diminish. Not only is smaller, regular study a more effective technique which relieves this stress, it is also an effective way of managing your screen time. Once you enter the ‘cramming zone’ leading up to the exams, the higher levels of stress will often result in seeking ways to relieve it, one of which is hopping on your phone.

Cramming also involves longer daily study periods which puts more stress on you to focus for longer. It is natural to want to take a break, but those breaks are more likely to have you reaching for your phone.

Study plans can help, and creating that plan earlier to stretch over a longer period will result in less stress as the exams approach. A plan for 20-30 minutes a day over 6 months is going to be more effective, both with the results and the temptation, than a plan for 6 hours a day in the last month.

Create a Phone-Free Zone

We all know that we are more likely to succumb to a temptation when it is easy to get to, and the most obvious reason is that it’s in our vision. You are more likely to snack on some chocolate if it is in front of you than if it is at the back of the fridge. In the same way, it is so tempting to pick up your phone if it is in sight and in easy reach.

Phones are a bigger problem however - they love to call to us and beg for attention! Often, one familiar ‘ding’ from our phone is enough to interrupt our focus and make us want to find out what just happened.

There’s an easy solution for this - while you are studying, mute your phone and put it in a different room. There are many apps which provide a ‘Focus’ or ‘Zen’ mode as well, which makes it more difficult to access your phone even if you do go an pick it up. After 10 minutes of continuous focus on your study, you will often find that you hit that ‘zone’ where you can easily do another half an hour.

Start a Study Group

Study groups come with plenty of benefits anyway, but one added bonus is that it is easier to manage phone distractions if you have a ‘study buddy’. Plan some time with a mate or two to study together, and make the joint decision to put your phones somewhere else, say in a box in the kitchen. Having your friends around will not only motivate you to all focus together and give everyone more support (by quizzing each other or asking questions), it will also create a social contract that make it harder for any one person to make a break for their phone.

Study First, Screen Later

We all know that leisure activities are enjoyable and we would rather do them than study. Most leisure activities have a natural limit however (e.g. most people go to the movies in the evening, and watching a sports match has a fixed length). Spending leisure time on a phone these days is almost limitless; social media feeds are endless and streaming services allow you to binge-watch anything. So we have to think about what limits we can put on ourselves.

Planning and committing to study first and leisure later is an effective reward strategy. Perhaps a friend or parent can help with this - commit to knocking of some study goals, or a time in the day, before they give you access to your phone. If you think this is too difficult then think of some activities to substitute for your phone if you are losing focus (go for a walk, do some push-ups, eat some fruit). They will give you something to do but they all consume a finite amount of time, allowing you to get back to study when you’ve finished.

Interrupt your Scrolling Habit

At some point, we will lapse. It might be an innocent slip-up or it might be a dip in motivation. When this happens, we need to be reminded of our goals and get some motivation. This is where Screen Balance can help. Screen Balance injects custom motivational videos into your social media feed in order to interrupt your scrolling and inspire you to make a better choice. Sometimes we just need a little nudge, and we also need to learn to exercise our self-regulation.

Screen Balance videos are highly personalized to you and your goals. You might see a video of your favourite scientist, sports team or even school-mate who speaks to you, saying “Hey Josh, have you finished your Marine Ecosystem Geography section yet? Exam’s in 3 weeks! You got this!”.

We believe that screen limits can be effective, but practicing making important choices at the right moments has greater benefits in the long-run. If you think this will help then find out more here!