You’ve probably heard of Attention Deficit Disorder
Well I think many students have another condition that is wider spread and worse than ADD.
Are you ready for this one?
Partial Attention Disorder
In my 5 years as a teaching assistant and university tutor I’ve seen all manner of study problems. From over studying and writing more notes than the text book has pages to notes written on napkins!
However, in my work the most common mistake I see in students study skills is a lack of adequate concentration on a single task, otherwise known as the dreaded multitasking monster or what I lovingly call ‘partial attention disorder’
Why is PPA so pervasive?
The main reason why PPA is so pervasive is because many students see multitasking as an advantage. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For some reason, society sees the ability to perform multiple tasks badly an advantage over performing a single task properly. If you check out Tim Ferriss’ blog he has an excellent post on multitasking and shows that ‘multitaskers’ get less accomplished than pot smokers… I’m not kidding! I’m not condoning pot smoking as a study tool but this should show you how horrible multitasking can effect your concentration.
How do you spot a PPA student?
I could usually spot a PPA student when one would come into my office and have an innumerable amount of questions and not necessarily want to hear any answers. At the core of a PPA is the inability to focus, relax and truly engage in content. A perfect example was a young student that came to see me and who was obviously very intelligent. She said she wanted to talk about an upcoming paper and began to ask questions.
Her first question was on the length of the paper and the sources. She then asked about the upcoming test. She then asked a question about the paper. Then she asked another question about the test. This kind of went on for a while and she wasn’t taking any notes or really paying attention to what I was saying. See a pattern here?
I finally stopped her and asked her why she just didn’t ask all the paper questions first then all the test questions, she looked at me with a puzzled look on her face and I could see she didn’t really realize what she had been doing.
When you do multiple things its hard to focus on a single task, therefore you end up asking questions about papers, tests and readings without really getting complete answers.
How I instantly cured her PPA
I got this girl to stop, relax and focus on a single issue at a time. I asked her top three problems were with the paper. Amazingly this took almost 20 minutes as she had never really sat down and asked herself that question. We came to the conclusion that she was unsure about her main thesis statement and didn’t quite understand the question the professor was posing to her in the initial assignment. She was unsure about the content she was using for her paper and was looking for a source that was more general which could explain some of the key terms. She also lacked a clean distinction between her three main points which she wanted to make in her paper.
I reworked her thesis statement, gave her suggestions for secondary sources and asked her to talk to me again after she did the additional research so we could tackle her third question.
The Lesson Here
PPA isn’t a permanent problem, if you feel like you are doing ten things and not getting anything done. Stop, relax and focus. Ask yourself the following questions.
1: What is my most important task?
2: What the major problems I’m facing with this task and can I accomplish them with what I have in front of me.
3: How can I break that task down into action steps I can achieve in the next 10 minutes, hour, afternoon etc?
If you have a PPA problem, remember that getting one thing done properly is better than getting 10 things done improperly.
If you have any other questions, please comment and I’ll answer whatever questions you might have.
Liam McIvor Martin
