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Auntie SparkNotes: I Can’t Focus on Schoolwork

Hello, Auntie!

I’m having a bit of a problem, and it’s seriously affecting my grades in school. I can’t seem to focus on my work for more than two minutes at a time. An assignment that could take me thirty minutes would stretch out to be two hours, and an assignment that can take me an hour and a half is stretched to five! Auntie, my procrastination is getting out of hand. Every two minutes, I stop working, I get up and walk around, play games on my phone, browse websites, read books, et cetera. Everything seems to be a distraction. Then, once I finally finish homework, it’s one a.m. and I can’t study for tests and midterms. Not only is this dropping my grades, but it’s infringing on my social life too. I can’t go to hangouts, and forget about going on a weekend picnic with family. I wish there were a potion to redirect my focus towards work. But there isn’t. Please help, Auntie, my parents are threatening to take me out of honors classes if this persists. I need your help to get a better work ethic.

Actually, Sparkler, I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you there. Because in my entire multi-year history as an internet agony aunt, I’ve gotten a lot of letters from kiddos who needed some help with their work ethic — but I don’t think I’ve ever heard from anyone who sounded so much like they were struggling with an untreated case of ADD.

Which is why the very first thing I want you to do is get screened for that condition. When “everything seems to be a distraction” — to the point where you’re engaging in one distraction only to be distracted by something else, for hours on end — it’s only logical to start by eliminating the obvious medical explanation. Ask your parents to make an appointment with your doctor, and explain to them what you’re experiencing. (If seeing your family doc is difficult for some reason, you can also bring this up with your school psychologist.) Because if you do have ADD, the solution to your problem might be as simple as finding the right medication to fine-tune your focus a bit (not a magic potion, but close enough).

And if you don’t, then at least you’ll know what kind of options you need to consider from there — which will probably take the form of either bribing yourself to be more focused, or eliminating from your vicinity the various things that distract you.

For instance: if there’s one thing in particular that you always put off your work to do, then you can try making that thing your reward for doing your work: for each class in which you complete your homework, you can spend fifteen minutes reading, or Facebooking, or rolling a tiny pirate hedgehog through a moving puzzle maze. And if that doesn’t work? Then make your distractions inaccessible. Turn off the wifi, put your phone in a drawer, and do your homework in a location that provides no alternative form of entertainment… like your family’s dining room, or a sensory deprivation chamber. And if you struggle with this, you can always enlist your local pair of authoritarian overlords (you know them as “Mom” and “Dad”) to hold your phone hostage each night until you’ve finished your assignments. (But even if you don’t do that, do let your parents see you trying to do better. Even if you need time to find a method that works for you, they’ll at least know you’re making an effort.)

Oh, and one last thing: If you’re still struggling after all of this, then it might simply be because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew in terms of academic commitments — in which case dialing it back to a slightly less intense courseload might actually be worth considering. School is supposed to be work, but it’s not supposed to be so overwhelming that it paralyzes you. So if giving yourself a little more room to focus by giving yourself less to focus on seems like the best option when all others fail? That’s okay.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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