Staying Focused

Sunlight shining through a window would wake me up from under my downy blankets. After a breakfast of bird nests (eggs fried in a hole in a slice toast), I would take a stroll down the Mission Creekwalk and look at the clouds and mountains. I would come back home and play guitar for a while and learn some new songs. Max Isenberg, a great friend of mine, and I would shoot a skit to upload onto YouTube. After filming, we’d come back to my house to eat lunch and edit the footage. Once Max had left, I would take a nap and be awoken by another friend, calling me to play basketball at Gomes. Knowing my friends, we would stop playing after an hour and just sit around talking, which is just fine with me. After my friends had all left, I would go play on the nearby swings, come back home for dinner, and browse Facebook and Lifehacker. After reading in bed, I would turn off the lights and go to sleep.

When the Smoke Signal representatives came into the classroom and talked about joining Journalism, I wasn’t exactly intrigued by the notion of giving up an AP course to write articles. I didn’t give it a second thought until I was talking to my English teacher Mr. Rath about applying for summer programs. I had to submit a written work to the summer program so I was asking him for a unit test he had collected. He asked me if it was for the Smoke Signal application. I hesitated, caught unawares, but I eventually collected my wits and told him that it wasn’t. However, his comment ran through my mind for the rest of the day. I began thinking more about joining but still didn’t know if I wanted to fill it out on my pre-registration form and sacrifice an AP course. A few days later, I was at a meeting after school about editing Mission TV’s first b...

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...ing your colleagues about a group project. There are still things you can do to help you concentrate. You can start by using a different browser, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, so you won’t be enticed by all the tempting bookmarks on your normal browser. If you’re already using Firefox, you can create a new profile (see http://bit.ly/5RpvFh for more information) to separate your work from your play. Firefox users can also download productivity add-ons, such as LeechBlock, which prevents you from accessing distracting sites. There are also plenty of ambient sound websites that relax you while you work, with sounds varying from classical music to white noise (which is basically just static; to each his own!).

I’ll part with one last tip: Keep your workspace neat. You’ll get work done much quicker if you have a table free of little diversions and clutter.