Major takeaways

When you’re trying to balance school, work, and life, it can be hard to adjust to changes in your schedule. Learning how to adjust on the fly to these changes can be difficult to overcome. However, having a solid plan to work off makes it easier to adjust. Setting specific intentions is helpful when you have a million things going on as it gives you time to focus on one thing during a certain timespan. Working with intentions is a good way to keep my mind focused on one single task, rather than letting my mind wander and worry about other tasks that I need to get done.

Breaking habits such as checking on my phone regularly is hard to do but in the long run it’s extremely beneficial and gradually becomes easier as it becomes a new habit. I’ve learned that taking the first steps to eliminating distractions is identifying your distractions. I thought my phone was preventing me from accomplishing what I needed to get done in a timely manner. From there it’s figuring out a game plan to limit your distractions are necessary steps if you want to improve your focus. I have an extremely busy schedule so why should I waste time when I can spend my limited time on being productive? It’s impossible to get rid of these distractions entirely, but it’s helpful to tame these distractions to spend my time better.

While my goal for the semester didn’t go exactly to plan, I felt that I took a big step forward to being a productive student. Creating a schedule using the time blocking method was a huge help for setting aside time to get started on assignments early so that I could reach my goal of turning assignments in one day early. Creating a time block for schoolwork also helped me keep track of what assignments I needed to work on. I didn’t turn in every assignment in a day early, but I saw an increase in assignments turned in early compared to earlier in the semester.

Eliminating my phone as a distraction was one of the hardest things for me to do. Over the past few years I’ve become glued to my phone, but I’m happy to say that I made significant progress in minimizing the distractions caused by my phone. During this project I found that it was easier for me to get in the zone when my phone was on do not disturb mode. Eliminating the constant buzzing and glow from my phone screen helped me stay focused on completing my assignments.