Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 13

Most of us get distracted plenty of times – no matter how perfect we sound when spilling out advice to others. One of the real myths that crushes those of us who know distraction well is this one: ‘it’s too late now’. I would take this head on. This is the threat to your freedom. Use your reactance on this myth; it is trying to deny your freedom to go back to the work you were distracted from. Don’t argue with it. Prove it wrong by switching back to your work, not after you get to the next level, finish watching this episode or finally work out whether going to sleep in wet socks prevents colds or causes them. The door is open – step back in, don’t feel bad, don’t tell yourself off, just try a completely non-threatening five or ten minutes of work. Often, in the midst of distraction, we tell ourselves, ‘just five more minutes, then I’ll start work again’. Use the same method to charm your way back to your work, just committing yourself to five or ten minutes of work can be all that it takes to massively transform your writing. Your essay is not the big, oppressive authority figure; it is your creative freedom. You can enjoy it, so allow yourself to do just that.

Ace your assignment Your phone and you

If your phone is in a different room from you, what will happen? Will you experience an existential crisis, your thumb poised over the space in your hand where the phone should be? Perhaps your phone will shutdown or explode, never to work again?

You, like me, may find that sometimes it is extremely helpful not to have your phone within arm’s reach of you. You can meet up again after this brief separation without any hard feelings or spontaneous combustion on either side. The technology is amazing, but it is also the most potent technology for distraction and delivering you to adverts that has been devised so far.

Why not use that concept of reactance again here? Are you going to let the wealthiest companies in the world determine what you do? Your essay, or your degree, doesn’t actually matter to them, as long as you stay hooked on your phone long enough to be delivered to the (increasingly) bespoke adverts.

It is hard to get the happy medium of enjoying our phones as a phenomenally useful and fun tool without paying a heavy price in terms of wasted hours checking social media or seeing videos of someone who claims their parrot is more intelligent than they are. But our day-by-day, hour-by-hour choices, which seem so small in themselves, really do add up to something significant.

If putting your phone in another room frees you up to write, it is worth it. And your phone will forgive you, I am sure.