Studying is never as simple as it sounds. Check out these top 23 distractions that are sure to remind you of your past experiences with the dreaded task.
1. You are hungry.
2. You are sitting next to someone who is moving their foot up and down in a rhythmic pattern that you don’t recognize.
3. There are people around you.
Even just one person is enough to distract you. Including yourself.
4. You notice an unusual person staring at you that you do not know.
Friend, or foe?
5. You begin to notice pencil marks on the wall and try to make shapes with them.
6. You notice the intricacy of the brick wall you have been staring at for the past hour in lieu of looking at your textbook.
So many shades of red.
7. Your group from class decides to send out 376 messages within a span of six minutes.
8. Your mom calls and calls again. Four minutes later, you check your phone to find 13 voice messages.
All from mom.
9. You notice a spider on the wall.
10. You have an itch. You scratch it, think about the fact that you’re scratching it, and then feel like your entire body is itchy.
11. When you can’t help but listen in to strange, rhythmic music, because that’s what the person near you decided to blast through their headphones.
12. You smell food.
13. You begin to daydream.
14. Your body temperature is not right. Sweatshirt on, sweatshirt off. Forgot to bring a sweatshirt.
Whatever it is, it’s uncomfortable.
15. Your foot falls asleep and you don’t realize until you stand up. You walk out of the room with the limp of an 87-year-old man.
16. Your stomach is making noises, and your attention is then transitioned from homework to attempting to position yourself to ruffle papers and change seat positions every time you hear it growl.
Don’t deny you’ve done the paper ruffle.
17. You read the same paragraph 17 times in effort to understand it, only to realize that the last 16 times, you weren’t even paying attention.
18. You have to go to the bathroom but can’t get up.
19. Someone is ordering a burrito over the phone.
May of 2015, this distraction occurred to me and has never been forgotten.
20. You can’t stop talking to who you are “studying” with.
Might as well have planned to just meet up for a quiet chat in the library, because that is all you have accomplished.
21. You have a hyper-aware moment where you realize you’re not interested in the material you are studying and continue to spend the remainder of time contemplating your future life choices.
22. When you don’t speak Japanese but you’re convinced that’s what your math textbook is written in.
23. You are hungry again.
These top 23 distractions while studying are more than enough to bother even the sharpest attention. What’s your biggest distraction while studying? Comment here – and then get back to work!
