Some cheap hacks that help me stay awake and focused:
Talking aloud to myself. (Examples: reading the textbook aloud; speaking aloud to myself as I try to make sense of a difficult bit of text; talking aloud to myself about what I’m trying to accomplish and what the next step in my studying should be; talking aloud to myself about how to set up a given math problem, how it is that I seem to be proving something impossible, etc.). Some people literally explain their math solutions to a teddy bear because they find this practice helps them find errors.
Standing up from my work and doing jumping-jacks or the like. Sometimes I set a timer that beeps every 20 minutes and tells me to move about physically for a minute or three.
Working with other people. (Whether they know more than I do, comparable to the amount I know, or significantly less; discussing the material with other people helps me learn it, and makes the material more real).
Hacks 1 and 2 may seem silly, but they aren’t; we humans are physical systems, and it can be much easier to engage the whole mind if one also engages the voice, the systems that allow for speaking, the systems that are activated when one hears someone speak, and/or the systems involved in social interaction.
Standing up from my work and doing jumping-jacks or the like. Sometimes I set a timer that beeps every 20 minutes and tells me to move about physically for a minute or three.
Seconded. I do jumping jacks and/or pushups, and it definitely helps. Sometimes if I don't feel like getting up I'll simply slap myself in the face as hard as I can. It hurts, but I'm usually quite alert after that. (May seem a little odd if there are people around, however...)
Ok, let's face facts. The Internet has fried my brain. I'm a terrible hedonist and procrastinator. I have a very important test in May -- I am not exaggerating when I say that the outcome of the test matters to the future direction of my life. There are situations where failure is just a temporary setback, and there are situations where failure would be a real problem, and this is the latter. No fooling.
My Problems
1. I don't work enough. My primary distraction is the Internet, though occasionally novels happen too, and I'm capable of just staring into space and daydreaming.
2. I fall asleep during the day. I've tried getting more hours of sleep at night and it doesn't solve the problem. When I'm bored or confused, my body says "Naptime!" It can be quite embarrassing.
3. I often feel too tired/demotivated/bummed to do errands. A lot of stuff, some more important and some less important, slips through my fingers. The most important, to my quality of life, are buying necessities and cleaning my room -- I tend to put these off much too long for my own good.
4. I don't have enough measures of how well I'm doing as a student. I get confused by some abstract concepts, and sometimes I don't even notice that I'm confused.
5. I like being happy and entertained better than being stressed and bored and confused. This makes me want to work less. Not proud of this character trait but not sure how I can rewire my preferences.
Planned Solutions So Far
1. Work in a cubicle, with no computer, with a kitchen timer to keep me mindful of how many hours I spend working.
2. Plan out the material I have to learn and the time I have to learn it, and make a kibotzer.com account to see if I'm on track for my goal.
3. Track various measures of productivity (hours worked, concepts learned, problems solved, percent correct) with a Joe's Goals account. Have thresholds that I don't want to drop below.
4. Use Self Control to block all my entertainment internet sites during "working hours" (I'll leave early mornings and/or late nights free.)
5. Accumulate diverse library books relevant to coursework, and various sources of practice problems, and more notebooks and paper than I need; don't let lack of physical resources limit my progress.
6. Set aside a regular occasion for clean-up and errands.
Any other advice?
In particular, I don't know what to do about my sleepiness problem. I'm not a very regular caffeine drinker; I've started to drink Lipton tea, but I don't think I've reached the quantity sufficient to keep me awake yet, at 2-3 cups a day.
Any advice on the psychological front would also be helpful. How to stay motivated. I know what my motivation is (the consequences of failure in my situation are not pleasant) but how to keep focused on the importance of my goal, without spending all my time being miserable and frightened because I'm visualizing the worst-case scenario. I know I can fuel myself on guilt for a short time, but I don't like it much and I don't think it's practical long-term.
Yes, of course I'm aware that adults know how to work to achieve what they want. Somehow I've reached adulthood without really developing all the personal capacities that I should have. It's lousy of me, but this is where I am, and I'm ready to change and willing to take advice.