Studying with focus: concentration can be trained

Why concentration breaks

Every switch has a cost: if you glance at a chat, part of your attention stays there – an “attention residue” that slows the next task (Leroy, 2009). And the mere presence of your smartphone on the desk can reduce available cognitive capacity, even when it’s switched off (Ward et al., 2017).

Phone in another room

The simplest and most effective step: don’t turn the phone face down, put it out of reach – ideally in another room. Keep only the tabs open that you need for the task.

Note distractions instead of giving in

In the middle of studying you remember an email you need to write? Instead of writing it right away: jot it down and keep going. The thought is saved, your attention stays. In the app’s focus session such notes can go straight to your to-do list at the end.

Grow your focus span step by step

Concentration works a bit like endurance: you build it in small steps, just above what you can do right now. The focus session in UniApp24 starts at 15 minutes; after a good session the next one gets a little longer, after a broken one a little shorter. Your span grows with you instead of overwhelming you with 90-minute blocks.

Take breaks the right way

After about 50 minutes the app reminds you to take a break. It helps most if you move, look out of the window and avoid screens – rather than scrolling. A short breathing exercise or movement break is one tap away from the break reminder.

Recognise fatigue

Sometimes the problem isn’t concentration but sleep. The alertness test in the app is a short form of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task, the standard test of sleep research (Basner & Dinges, 2011). If your reaction times are clearly slower than usual, sleep helps more than pushing through.

Brain training – honestly

Exercises like n-back, Schulte tables or the Stroop test are good concentration practice and make progress visible. Whether they make you smarter in general is disputed, though: you mainly get better at exactly these tasks (Melby-Lervåg et al., 2016). The biggest lever remains your study environment.

Frequently asked questions

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