How to Study When Your Mind Keeps Wandering
Sometimes a study session ends before you get up from the desk. The book is open. Your pen is in your hand. You are still reading. Ten minutes later, you realise that you have been returning to the same paragraph and very little has entered your head. So how do you catch it? How long should you work before taking a break? What can you do on a day when your attention is particularly poor?
Written by Michael Siaw Larbi
There are two hours on the clock. That does not always mean there were two hours of study. For part of the time, you may have been doing good work. You understood why a tax treatment applied. You followed the logic of a standard. You made a proper attempt at the question before looking at the answer. Then the quality changed. You began reading without taking anything in. You opened the solution and stayed there. Perhaps you checked one message and returned five minutes later with three new thoughts in your head. The clock kept running through all of it.
Students can be unfair to themselves here. Some decide they are lazy because they cannot sit still for three hours. Others count the whole three hours and cannot understand why so little has been covered. It helps to know how long you can do this particular work well, on this particular day, and what usually takes you away from it.
What the Research Does Not Say
You may have heard that the average attention span is eight seconds, or that concentration disappears after ten or fifteen minutes. Those numbers travel easily because they sound precise. The evidence behind the popular ten-to-fifteen-minute claim is weak.[1] Researchers who study attention also tend to measure it through a particular task. There is no single laboratory number that tells you how long you can read tax law after work or solve a consolidation question on Saturday morning.[2]
So we will leave the impressive numbers alone and pay attention to your work.
Notice When You Are No Longer Studying
Reading can continue for quite a while after attention has gone. Your eyes reach the bottom of the page, but you cannot say what happened between the top and the bottom. Researchers call this mind wandering. Studies on reading have found that people do not always notice it as soon as it begins.[3] A review of 25 papers involving 3,926 people also found that more mind wandering was associated with poorer reading comprehension.[4]
Sometimes you have to catch yourself. Your behaviour will tell you more than the feeling that you have been concentrating.
You may have read the same lines twice. Your notes may have turned into a copy of the textbook. You may be rearranging papers that were perfectly fine where they were. During question practice, you may keep looking at the solution because making the next decision feels uncomfortable.
The strongest sign is usually this: the work has stopped moving. For several minutes, there has been no new calculation, no sentence in your own words, no decision and no question you can name.
Be careful here. Difficult thinking can look slow from the outside. You can spend several quiet minutes on one adjustment and still be fully engaged. Ask yourself what exactly is holding you up.
If you can say that you do not understand why the asset has a nil tax base, you are still working. You have found a gap. Mark it, check the rule or ask for help.
If the problem remains a vague feeling that you simply cannot study, your mind is probably hovering around the work. Make the next job smaller or take a proper break.
Leave the insults out of it. You have noticed the problem, which is already better than spending another hour inside it.
Find the Length That Works for You
Before you start, decide what you want to have in your hand when you stop.
“Study Financial Reporting” gives you too much room to wander. It can mean reading, highlighting, watching a video, answering messages and returning to the book. The evening can disappear without a clear point at which you failed to do what you planned.
Give the session a smaller job:
- attempt Question 4 without the solution;
- read the section on impairment indicators and explain them in your own words;
- complete the first two adjustments in the group cash-flow question;
- read five pages of the legislation and mark every provision you cannot yet apply.
Now you have something to come back to when your mind moves away.
For the next three study sessions, keep a rough note. Write the task, the time you started and the first moment you noticed the work becoming poor. Add what was happening at that point. A corner of the page will do.
It might look like this:
| Task | Started | First sign of trouble | What was happening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attempt Question 4 without the solution | 7:36 pm | 8:08 pm, reached for phone | Stuck on the second adjustment |
The time is useful. The reason is usually more useful.
If you keep reaching for your phone when a question becomes difficult, you may be escaping the discomfort of not knowing what to do next. Stay with the uncertainty long enough to name it. More minutes on the timer will make little difference until you can do that.
If the quality drops after roughly the same period even when the work is going well, plan to stop a little earlier next time. If your evening sessions are consistently poor after work, move demanding questions to the weekend and use the evening for shorter review.
Your useful stretch may change with the subject. Thirty minutes of close reading may tire you more than fifty minutes of calculations. A familiar topic may hold you longer than a new one. Sleep, hunger, noise and worry will also have their say.
After three sessions, choose a sensible starting length. It may be 25 minutes. It may be 40. It may be longer. The number only needs to help you stop before the work becomes empty.
The Phone Does Not Need to Be in Your Hand
Seeing a notification can feel harmless when you never touched the phone. It still costs something.
In one controlled experiment, receiving a call or text notification disrupted people's performance on an attention-demanding task even when they did not touch the phone.[5] Once you see a name or hear the sound, part of your mind begins dealing with it. Is it urgent? What do they want? Should you reply now or later?
For the short period you have chosen to study, silence the notifications. Put the phone far enough away that checking it requires a decision. If you are studying from the phone, download what you need, turn on the focus setting and block the apps that usually take over. Let important people through if they may genuinely need you.
Not every interruption comes from the phone. You may suddenly remember that you need to buy data, reply to somebody, pay a fee or check an exam date. Keep a scrap of paper nearby. Write the reminder down and continue. You do not have to carry it in your head, and you do not have to deal with it in the middle of a calculation.
Prepare the work before your time starts. Open the right question. Keep the calculator, standard and blank paper close. If you need a website, open the exact page. Otherwise a two-minute search for one rule can become twenty minutes of unrelated browsing.
The room may be beyond your full control. People study around children, conversations, work calls, power cuts and shared space. Use what is possible. Earphones may help. You may need to ask for quiet until 8:15. You may save the hardest work for the one quiet hour you can get each week.
There is no prize for owning a beautiful study desk. You need a short period in which the people and devices around you know, as far as possible, that you are unavailable.
A Break Should Bring You Back
The Pomodoro method gives students 25 minutes of work followed by a short break. Some people like the certainty of it. Others finally settle into a question and hear the timer just as the answer begins to make sense.
The number became popular because it is easy to use. Adjust it when it gets in the way of the work.
One study involving 87 university students compared students who chose their own breaks with students following fixed study-and-break patterns. Those choosing their own breaks worked for longer periods and also took longer breaks. They reported more fatigue and distraction, but the groups did not differ significantly in how much work they completed. Some students found the shortest fixed periods disruptive.[6]
Use a timer if it helps you begin. When it rings, look at the work before obeying it. If you are making good progress, finish the step you are on. If you are rereading, drifting or reaching for an escape, stop.
Stand up. Drink water. Stretch. Use the washroom. Walk outside for a few minutes if you can. Laboratory research on sustained attention has found that brief, occasional switches can prevent the steady decline seen when people remain on one task for too long.[7]
Choose the change of activity carefully. Opening WhatsApp may give you four conversations to carry back to the desk. A short-video feed may still be playing in your head when the break has ended.
Before you get up, write the next action on the page:
When I return: calculate the temporary difference for item 2. Leave the solution closed.
Coming back is much easier when the first job has already been chosen. You sit down and begin there. You do not have to face the whole subject again.
Set a return time before the break begins. Five or ten minutes may be enough after a short session. If you leave the return open, the break can easily become the rest of the evening.
Some Days Will Be Poor
You can usually work for 40 minutes. Today, after twelve, you are restless and nothing is settling.
Perhaps you slept badly. Work ran late. Something at home is worrying you. The exam is getting close and this topic is showing you how much you have left to learn.
Forcing yourself to sit for the remaining 28 minutes may only make the chair feel like punishment.
Reduce the size of the job. Read the requirement and plan the headings. Explain one rule. Complete one adjustment. Give yourself a clean place to begin tomorrow.
There are also times when you should close the book and rest. Persistent exhaustion, low mood, poor sleep or difficulty concentrating across the rest of your life may need more than a new study timetable. Speak to a qualified health professional when the problem is continuing or interfering with daily life.
On an ordinary bad day, one short piece of proper work is enough. Finish it. Write down where you will continue. Then stop. Adding an hour of guilty page-turning will not improve the day.
As you keep doing this, you will learn what a good half-hour can produce. That knowledge is far more dependable than the study timetable of somebody online whose work, health and responsibilities you cannot see.
Your concentration may improve with practice. It may improve because you now understand the subject and no longer spend half the session avoiding it. Better sleep and a quieter hour may help too. Let the work show you. When you can stay with a difficult task for longer and still produce something sound, the improvement is real.
What I Tell My Students
Do not judge the session by how long you stayed in the chair. Look at what the work produced. If the work is moving, stay with it. If it has gone empty, stop, reset and return with a smaller job. The clock cannot tell the difference. You have to.
Michael Siaw Larbi
Do This Today
Choose one task you have been avoiding. Keep it small enough to complete in one sitting. Write down when you begin and notice the first clear sign that the quality of your work is falling. Record what was happening at the time.
Before taking a break, leave one written instruction for your return. Repeat this over three study sessions. By the end, you should know more about what breaks your attention and roughly how long your good work lasts.
Questions Students Ask
How long should I study before taking a break?
Start with a period you can manage, perhaps 25 to 40 minutes, and watch what happens to the work. If you are still making good progress when the time ends, finish the step. If you regularly begin rereading or drifting earlier, shorten the period and look at what is taking you away.
Is the Pomodoro method good for studying?
It can help you begin and give the session a clear boundary. You do not have to follow 25 minutes exactly. Change the length when the timer repeatedly interrupts good work or arrives long after your attention has gone.
How do I know when I have stopped concentrating?
Look for repeated reading, copying without thinking, unnecessary checking of the solution, task switching and several minutes in which the work does not move. Try to name the exact difficulty. If you can name it, you may still be working through a hard point.
How can I stop checking my phone while studying?
Silence notifications and move the phone beyond easy reach for the length of the session. If you need it for study, use focus settings and block the apps that usually distract you. Write down other reminders and deal with them afterwards.
What should I do during a study break?
Choose something that ends naturally. Stand, stretch, drink water, use the washroom or walk for a few minutes. Decide when you will return before you leave the desk. Messages and short videos often make returning harder.
Can I improve my attention span?
You can often extend the time you spend on useful work by practising, removing interruptions, sleeping properly and becoming more comfortable with the subject. Increase the period gradually when the quality of your work remains good. Longer sitting by itself proves very little.
What if I can only concentrate for a few minutes?
Begin with a very small task and remove the interruptions you can control. Sleep, stress, mood, medication and health can all affect concentration. If the difficulty is persistent, severe or affecting daily life, speak to a qualified health professional.
This is the twelfth guide in the Excellence Blueprint, MSL Business School's weekly study and exam technique series, written by Michael Siaw Larbi. Once you can protect a good period of study, Why You Forget What You Study will help you make the learning last. If the task is a past question, continue with How to Practise Past Questions Properly.
References
- Bradbury, N. A. (2016). “Attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more?” Advances in Physiology Education. Read the paper
- Fortenbaugh, F. C. and colleagues (2023). “Quantifying attention span across the lifespan.” Frontiers in Cognition. Read the paper
- Schooler, J. W., Reichle, E. D. and Halpern, D. V. (2004). “Zoning out while reading: Evidence for dissociations between experience and metaconsciousness.” View the research record
- Bonifacci, P. and colleagues (2023). “The relationship between mind wandering and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Read the paper
- Stothart, C., Mitchum, A. and Yehnert, C. (2015). “The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. View the paper
- Biwer, F. and colleagues (2023). “Understanding effort regulation: Comparing ‘Pomodoro’ breaks and self-regulated breaks.” British Journal of Educational Psychology. Read the paper
- Ariga, A. and Lleras, A. (2011). “Brief and rare mental ‘breaks’ keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements.” Cognition. View the paper
