The 2016-adventure

The 2016-adventure continues...

Thank you for joining this adventure (If you have not done so yet, it is not too late to start).
Welcome to a journey on how to break habits. Let us stop operating on autopilot and start living a life of joy and curiosity!

There are many reasons why you would want to 'wake up'. Feel free to share the reason(s) and comment(s) about your journey by clicking on 'No comments:' below. You may influence the flow of this adventure and it may be to your benefit!

I will introduce the new experiments for the following 4 weeks:

• WEEK ONE I want to meditate for 10 minutes every morning for at least a week.

• WEEK TWO I want to let my mind wander, for 5 minutes, or for an afternoon or a weekend.

• WEEK THREE I want at least one fun activity per day.

• WEEK FOUR I want to wear a different piece of jewellery each day, like a watch, ankle bracelet or rings (even on my toes!).

You might like some of our experiments, like the 10-minute meditation (click, to see an animation) and want to incorporate it into your life or another new productive habit. You might want to form a good study habit or change something that doesn't work.

If so, here are some guidelines to help you form a new good habit:

Do the new action at the same time of the day (and possibly, at the same location). Take note that some days it might be easier than on other days, very much like surfing or swimming on a wave in the ocean. So stay with the ups and downs, without judgment.

1. Your cue to do the activity (to study for example) needs a bit of willpower to follow through. Your reaction to it is what counts, like starting a study session immediately (setting a timer and focusing) and resisting the urge to procrastinate by asking, for instance, "Do I need to check my WhatsApp messages now?".
2. Make your routine uninterrupted 25-minute focused work sessions, with 5-minute breaks.
3. Reward yourself by for example having a cup of tea or watering your pot plants.
4. A belief that you ARE capable of doing what needs to be done is vital. What other beliefs might be holding you back?


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I provide a Complete Study Course to students and/or learners. We follow a Mindfulness Approach learning how to study and we form good study habits.

The Course is meant to give you or your children practical insight on how to learn more effectively and with less frustration. The lessons in this course can help in learning many different subjects and skills. Whether you love language or math, music or physics or history, you will have a lot of fun, and learn a LOT about how to study!

Contact Details
082 782 4747
luciabrand@cybersmart.co.za

Learning: Creating healthy habits

Creating good study habits

...Choose wisely

Procrastination is explained as follows. When you have to do something that you do not want to do, the ‘pain spot’ in your brain is stimulated. Changing your focus to some other activity gives (temporarily) relief. Bad habits form.

Research has shown that the relief comes also as soon as you have started to do what you were supposed to do! And it is less stressful if you are present with your process - one portion of the subject at a time. You will master the ‘difficulties’ with spaced repetition. And going back and fro between focus and rest (like a game of ping-pong) is important to finding solutions and to master anything from academics to sport. 

Do this by dividing your time into 25 minute sessions with 5 minutes breaks in between.

 How to form good habits:

·        Use a timer to help you divide your day into sessions.

·        Space repetitions of your work over an amount of days/weeks.

·        Plan sessions the night before and note what time you will end off the next day.

·        Be present in one session, as it happens.

·        Reward yourself after completing planned sessions.

·        Believe in your own abilities.

Don’t step away from what you feel passionate about. Research has shown that you can learn and master something difficult (It will and should feel uncomfortable at first, but will soon be easier, after persisting).  

Don’t just follow your passion, broaden it!

Students and learners: RULES OF GOOD STUDYING

MORE RULES OF GOOD STUDYING

Explain to me like I'm 5!

Whenever you are struggling with a concept use explanatory questioning and simple analogies. Using an analogy really helps, like saying that the flow of electricity is like the flow of water.

Don’t just think your explanation - say it out loud or put it in writing. The additional effort of speaking and writing allows you to more deeply encode (that is, convert into neural memory structures) what you are learning.

Use recall. 

After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas. Highlight very little, and never highlight anything you haven’t put in your mind first by recalling. 

Try recalling main ideas when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall - to generate the ideas from inside yourself - is one of the key indicators of good learning.

How to be more effective and less stressed in an age of distractions:

The age of Distractions

When you think you multi-task, you are actually just switching from one task to another.
And there is a cognitive and emotional cost in doing so!

In order to be more effective and less stressed: 

Focus on NOW

Plan:

                         

You need to know where you are heading, so prioritise according to when you are writing the test and what you need to know for it. Plan on your To Do Today (see picture).

Manage time:

Set your timer for 30 min for your first session and GO!

During the 25 min you can't be interrupted!

 "Learning information while multi-tasking causes the new information to go to the wrong part of the brain. If students study and watch TV at the same time, for example, the information from their schoolwork goes into the striatum, a region specialised for storing new procedures and skills, not facts and ideas. Without the distraction of TV, the information goes into the hippocampus, where it is organised and categorised in a variety of ways, making it easier to retrieve.

Cell phones too, are a distraction. Stop and know it is a recipe for addiction: you receive a text, and that activates your novelty centres. You respond and feel rewarded for having completed a task (even though that task was entirely unknown to you 15 seconds earlier). Each of those delivers a shot of dopamine as your limbic system cries out “More! More! Give me more!”

 

Sustain your focus on your learning material until the last 5 min before your timer rings - use the 5 min. for relaxation. Sustaining diffusing your brain...

The timer's ring calls you back and activates your next session.

For more information on related matters see Betterhelp.com/advice/stress/