Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment


The environment effect in learning

The environment has major effects on the effectiveness of a study session. Specifically, for those of us who spent long periods in an environment, it is critical to prepare a high-quality learning area. Otherwise, the environment would have numerous degrading effects on our effectiveness.

The most important three aspects of the study environment are the noise level, the nature of the environment as well as the number of interruptions.

Constant Noise Level

Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment
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To increase the focus on the work, the environment has to have a constant level of noise. It should not have constantly changing noises.

My solution for forming a constant level of noise is to use high-quality headphones with the ASoftMurmur-like applications to create a constant sound that will clean all the dynamic background sounds.

A Soft Murmur

A Soft Murmur is an online background noise generator designed to help you relax, focus, and tune out unpleasant sounds…asoftmurmur.com

The other solution is to use earplugs. It may be a good option in certain circumstances.

As a warning, having a piece of music you like may give a temporal boost of productivity while working but, over the long rung the dynamic nature of the music will degrade the level of knowledge acquisition as well as the effectiveness. Care should be given in this aspect.

“I found that listening to music while I code, impedes my concentration. Over time, I realized that listening to music, only feels like it improved my concentration, when actually, it divided my attention.

Programming is the act of arranging procedural elements, in sequence, selection and iteration. Music, is the arrangement of tonal and rhythmic elements in sequence, selection and iteration. It is logical, therefore, that programming and music use similar parts of the brain, and that listening to music, consumes resources, that the programming part of your brain requires.”

Robert C. Martin

Environment Change

Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment
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Every once in a while you should make changes in your environment. I don’t mean to go somewhere else to study. But, your study environment should not be static.

One of the solutions is to study outside or in a different environment for short periods of time. For example, you shall go for a walk to listen to the audio-book version of the book you currently read.

The occasional location change will prevent the lower motivation and focus problems arising in constant environment studies.

Interruptions

Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment
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When you are studying in a crowded environment, you get interrupted all the time. Whether it is the chair noise, the noise or music you have in your headphones, or someone asking questions to you or someone else all the time.

For increasing the effectiveness of the study sessions, you should be able to focus solely on your study. Here, being alone gives you the ability not to use any headphones which will boost your level of effectiveness.

Towards The End

Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment Increase Your Effectiveness by Focusing on The Environment
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All in all, if we want to increase our effectiveness, we should focus on the number of interrupts we get through the different mediums.

The environment plays an important role when we search for the interruptions around us. By removing the interruptions through the use of constant noise levels, dynamic environments, and less crowded places, we can increase our effectiveness.


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