Metacognition:
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- What have you discovered about your process, your habits?
- Now, what do you know you don’t know? Circle back to your essential question.
It is extremely difficult for me to get into the mood to sit down and spend dedicated time working on my senior project. I have realized that I am someone who benefits greatly from doing work in a social setting – not with people that I know well, sometimes the gaze of a random person holds me accountable to my work. I’m not sure how to describe it other than, knowing that someone is watching me study and get my work done actively motivates me to be more focused and less distracted (like preventing me from pulling out my phone.)
Over the course of senior project , I have tried to force myself to get up and adapt to a morning schedule where I start my day much earlier. What I have found is that often times I’m tired in the morning – even after a well rested sleep, so I take a nap. Or, the constant buzzing of my phone from news notifications hijacks my entire study flow and I pick up my phone. Sometimes some of my best most focused work happens late at night when my entire family goes to bed and I don’t have to worry about my friends texting me or reading up on the latest WAPO article. Knowing that the rest of NYC is asleep and there is no reason to pick up my phone has been the best motivator to do more productive longer learning sessions.
I don’t know more about how learning varies by subject. Often times in my reading of PubMed articles or other forms of research I learn generally about the neuroscience behind learning. I want to understand more about how learning a foreign language or STEM or arts varies by subject – I imagine that my previous research into Howard Garnder’s Multiple Intelligences Theory will help me connect the dots between varied subjects and methods of learning.
I’m having a similar problem with not being able to focus unless I’m working with people. I’ve been using Study Stream (https://www.studystream.live) which is a site that has open Zoom rooms for students to study and do work in. When I’ve joined, there were usually around 600-800 people in the rooms, and you can’t unmute or chat, so it’s helped me focus a lot, just knowing that I’m on Zoom with other people also doing work.
I have the same issue. I’m trying to wake up earlier too but I find that it’s easier to work late at night.
Your point about working in a social setting resonated with me—earlier in my project (when I did not have as many hard deadlines), I struggled with a similar lack of motivation. To resolve this, I got together with some friends on Zoom, and we all worked on our projects on the call. Even though we didn’t really talk, it felt like we were keeping each other accountable with our work.