Holding focus for a long time at school has become challenging for a number of students. While this can be attributed to several reasons, there are potential ways to overcome that problem.
Triggering fast and easy dopamine release is one possible cause of losing focus. Nowadays, with the rise of technology, many social-media platforms have organised a perfect algorithm to keep people online all the time. Those apps contain short content, which is the one of the best ways to increase dopamine levels without much struggle. This accessibility, in turn, can make students dependent on easy dopamine. Many tasks at school, by contrast, are usually long and tenuous. Resultantly, when faced a difficult challenge at school, many students tend to get distracted, losing focus almost instantly. Beyond that, lack of sleep is equally, if not more, important reason of struggling to concentrate. Because it is getting harder and harder to stay academically strong, these days, many students are sacrificing their sleep in order to keep that academic strength. This sacrificion may negatively result in their ability to concentrate, however, because of the incomplete recovery.
However reasonable those arguments may seem, there are 2 possible solution to overcome that problem. First and foremost, students need to change the way of getting dopamine from the fast and easy way to the opposite – slow and hard – way. For example, they can start reading books. As this activity requires strong patience and concentration, many students may, resultantly, adopt the difficult way of boosting dopamine levels. Another, less important solution, is to change the before-bed-time activities. Usually, students scroll and watch short content before going to bed because of some available free time. The consumption of ultra-violet light roughly 30 minutes before sleeping disrupts melatonin levels – hormone responsible for sleep. Avoiding that uv light, therefore, helps the brain produce that sleep hormone and students get quality sleep with adequate amount of time.
In conclusion, losing focus is mainly attributed to the lack of recovery because of inadequate sleep and effortless rise in dopamine levels. The issue of struggling to hold focus and attention can be solved by switching the way of increasing dopamine from easy to difficult and restorative sleep.