How to Create an Organized, Productive Study Space

Key Takeaways

a writer for The Paris Review once asked the great science fiction writer Ray Bradbury where he did his writing his response I can work anywhere I wrote in bedrooms and living rooms when I was growing up with my parents and my brother and a small house in Los Angeles I worked on my typewriter in the living room with the radio and my mother and my dad and my brother all talking at the same time later on when I needed an office and wanted write my novel Fahrenheit 451 twenty-five years ago I went up to UCLA and I found a basement typing room where for 10 cents which you inserted into the typewriter you could buy yourself 30 minutes typing time now this seems a bit surprising at first especially given all the other famous writers who had very let's say particular writing habits for instance the author Gertrude Stein chose her writing spots based on whether or not she'd be able to see a cow walk by but Bradbury's ability to work anywhere makes more sense when you hear his answer to the universe follow-up question about whether or not he enjoyed writing yes it's obvious that I do it's the exquisite joy and madness of my life and I don't understand writers who have to work at it if I had to work at it I would give up because I don't like working I like to play this is the kicker Bradbury's intense love of writing is what enabled him to drown out all other distractions he wrote because there was nothing else he'd rather be doing at the moment and you can probably think back to things that have consumed your attention in a similar way for me at different points in my life those things have been UI design programming and most recently playing the guitar when I'm playing the guitar nothing is going to distract me because that's exactly what I want to be doing and I get into it but there are always less interesting things that we just have to do like calculus assignments and ironic essays about the virtues of nihilism and crucially as your interest in the work you're doing diminishes the more important the optimization of your environment becomes so today I want to explore what goes into creating the perfect study space one where you can easily slip into the flow state resist distractions and actually get your work done fast enough to have some time left over to play cave story before you gotta go to bed and when it comes to creating a great study space the first thing we need to talk about is context you have a ton of choice when it comes to study spots you've got libraries you've got coffee shops you've got basements of academic buildings that nobody else knows about and then there is your dorm room or your bedroom but wherever you decide to study you want to make sure that the place you select is exclusively for studying and nothing else that's because context is ever environmental factors influence a lot of our behavior so if you put yourself in a place where the purpose is ambiguous you're gonna be a lot more likely to slip into the path of least resistance which is usually taking quizzes to find out what your Hogwarts house is now this is definitely easier to do if you select the library or the academic basement as you probably aren't gonna go there for any other reason but if you happen to pick your dorm it's much more important to consider so for an example check out how my friend Martin set up his study space he did decide to study and work in his room but he divided that room up with a Shoji screen so that way he had a one isolated area that was only for work now you definitely don't have to go all out and buy a Shoji screen like he did in fact he didn't even buy it was just laying around but you can use his example to tailor your own study space one alternative method would be to turn your desk into a corner of the room and make sure that all your fiction books and your video games and any other distracting materials are just out of your field of view that'll make sure that what you're looking at is exclusively about the work you're supposed to be doing secondly you think about the quality of your lighting because it really can affect your productivity now if you can get natural light that is definitely going to be your best option but if you have only artificial light to work with you can work to control that because it does make a difference while I was doing the research for this video I was especially interested in a German study that looked at the effects of color temperature and light intensity on the productivity of students at the Colonial University of Applied Sciences now this study only tracked 50 students so this area of science could definitely use more fleshing out but what they did find is that students were more creative under warm light at about 3000 Kelvin and they were able to concentrate better under colder light at about 6,000 Kelvin to add to those findings another study done at Cornell University found that light that was too dim or too bright also negatively affected productivity so with those findings in mind it might be a good idea to experiment with lighting in your study area maybe get a lamp for your desk and experiment with different color temperature in the bulbs that you choose for that lamp and on the brightness end of things you definitely don't have to go out and buy multiple bulbs at different levels of brightness to figure out what works for you instead for about 10 bucks you can go to your local hardware store and get a lamp sight dimmer and if you get a dimmable bulb you can experiment just by toggling the switch and seeing what works now in addition to the color temperature of your light the actual temperature in the room that matters a lot as well not only can an environment that's too hot or too cold consciously tract you and make you look up and daydream and not want to do your work but it can also unconsciously cause you to make mistakes while you're actually working that same Cornell study that I referenced a couple of minutes ago also looked at temperature and they found among other things when temperatures below 68 degrees or 20 degrees Celsius employees made 44% more mistakes than an optimal room temperature 77 degrees or 25 degrees Celsius so if you have access to the thermostat in your study area make sure you're setting it to an optimal temperature for studying and if you don't maybe try a different location regardless of where you decide to study you want to make sure that you have access to all the things you need for the particular task that you're doing that includes notebooks textbooks index cards if you're gonna make flashcards for studying and pens and pencils and on that note of pens and pencils make sure that what you're writing with is something that you actually enjoy writing with now some people definitely go way further than I would go with this in fact there's an entire podcast out there with literally hundreds of episodes called the pen attic that's all about pens but I would say don't go for the cheapest pens that are a pain to write with because they're just going to distract you and make process of writing notes down unenjoyable additionally make sure do you have a somewhat comfortable chair to sit in or maybe even experiment with a standing desk now I've got a standing desk in my room right now that cost well it cost a lot of money but back when I was in college I actually tried to build a much cheaper standing desk using tables from Walmart and screws and a little bit of ingenuity but I'm gonna be honest it wasn't enough ingenuity because that standing desk kind of sucked but luckily there are now standing desks for about twenty-five dollars like the smark standing desk that are made of cardboard and that you can set up very very easily so that might be something to try out also one additional thing that you might not have thought of having with you while you study is a notebook or a piece of scratch paper or maybe an app where you write down things that come to mind or distract you one of the things I can completely wreck my concentration and absolutely kill a study session for me is if something comes to mind that I just can't get out of my head it could be something stupid like you didn't do the laundry but if I take the time to write that down in a system that I trust where I know it can come back and see it later that allows me to get back into my work and let that thing go additionally that piece of paper can also be a record of things that distract you maybe your environment is really prone to having people come in and ask you to do things or maybe it's just really noisy if you write those things you can start to consciously make improvements and maybe just select a different spot altogether now in addition to the things that you need to have available to you you should also consider the things that you shouldn't have available to you this is why your room is often not a good study area and why you have to work hard to make it so because remember it's context your room has your videogames your room has your bed your room has your nine-foot tall stack a cup ramen it's not always the best place to study and speaking of things that you don't need while you're studying the big elephant in the room is the thing that you're using to watch me right now which is the internet now I know you're gonna say I need the internet for research I need the internet to get on MyMathLab and yes sometimes you do but remember tasks can almost always be broken down into individual subtasks or mini tasks this video that you're watching right now is a good example of this because to make this video I had to write a script which is basically like an essay and writing a script isn't a singular task it's a sequence of subtasks there's the research phase there's idea generation there's the rough draft writing phase and finally the editing phase and guess what I only needed the internet for one of those phases the research phase so during the other three phases especially that rough draft writing phase where I'm very prone to distractions and I don't really want to be writing for a lot of it I will often turn the internet off or I'll use an app like cold turkey writer which will literally block my ability to do anything else but right now the Internet and its many many cat pictures is probably the greatest threat to your concentration but there are many other things that can derail you as well so before you settle into your study spot and starting your first task make a mental note of all the potential things that could derail you in the future if you're gonna get hungry or thirsty during the study session make sure you bring a snack or water bottle with you or if you need your laptop for your task it has a really bad battery make sure you've packed your charging cord I've had several times in my life where I go to a coffee shop I have every intention of working hard for several hours and then of course I forgot the charger so I derail also when you finish studying for the day make sure to clear your space to neutral bring it back to its clean a pristine state because the next time you come to it you don't want to have to clean it up because it's likely to make you procrastinate you want to be able to just smoothly roll into the work immediately and lastly this is a bit of a weird one but try to view your study space as a work progress I know we kind of talked about making the perfect quote unquote study space here but if you're always seeking out perfection you're never actually going to use your study space to get work done so just view it as a work in progress that is constantly improving but that will never be perfect and that's okay and one idea that might help curb that perfectionism and make you more productive is to switch locations in between tasks this is something that I really enjoy doing myself and I am not alone the author Cal Newport does it as well and he calls it the concentration circuit here's what he has to say about it something about arriving at a new and novel location some are different than what you normally work provides a boost to your motivation and aids concentration over time this effect will wane but if you keep switching locations you can keep Reece Tim you lating this reaction again and again maintaining an average level of concentration that's potentially much higher than if you had slog through the deep tasks in one literal sitting all right so because we covered a lot of ground in this video I want to do a quick recap just like we did last week first make sure that your study spot is exclusively for studying context is king second keep your lighting in mind and offer natural lighting if you can try studying near window and if you can't at least experiment with your lights color temperature and intensity until you find something that works for you third if you have to control over it try adjusting the temperature of your study space as well ideally somewhere around 77 degrees Fahrenheit but it might vary for you fourth before you start studying make sure you have access to all the materials that you're going to need and make sure that access is easy and quick but number five also make sure you don't have access to things that you don't need because they are likely to destroy your concentration and make you procrastinate number six make plans in advance to deal with possible derailments to your productivity and number seven try switching up locations in between tasks now taking by themselves these tips should hopefully help you make some meaningful improvements to the place where you work but it is also sometimes helpful to be able to see how other people work and to get inspiration from them so to the end I've set up a fun little website called study spaces where you can see other people's study spaces and even submit your own now the idea for this site popped into my head I was writing the script for this video and once I realized I could use the dot es extension to get that cool looking domain name I was able to get it registered in just about 30 seconds over at hover which is exactly where you should register your domain names as well however makes it incredibly easy to find and secure basically any domain name that's there and available for the taking with extensions including the classics like calm and net and cooler ones like da TS like I've used here and Dot me when you want to actually build a website for that domain name hovers Connect feature will easily let you hook it up to tons of different web services including Squarespace and Shopify and if you want to create a professional-looking email address attached to that domain then you can do that easily with hover as well so if you have an idea for a fun side project that needs a domain name like I did or if you haven't yet secured a professional domain name for yourself and your job search give hover a try and if you're among the first 100 people to grab your domain with link below you're gonna get 10% off of your first order I want to give a big thanks to hover for sponsoring this video and guys as always thank you so much for watching as well I really hope you found this video useful if you did you can give this video a like to help support this channel and if you haven't already maybe consider sharing it with a friend as well you can also subscribe right there if you want to get notified when new videos come out and you can also click right there if you want to get a free copy of my book on how to earn better grades alternatively you might want to check out our latest podcast episode right there or if you want to watch another video on this channel click right there or slam your face into your phone that works as well anyway thanks so much for watching and I will see you in the next video