Learning Online: Balance

I don’t know about you, but at the start of lockdown it was easy to set many good intentions. However, the ongoing days can mean our work becomes stagnant and inefficient. I’ve been reflecting on how we can apply what we know about successful learning to our lockdown. This post shares the first of our three top tips to help you become more efficient with your time and your learning, as well as actually enjoying the process.

Firstly, Balance! It is often heard that ‘your brain needs time to rest’ and ‘take regular rests, but why?

There are two modes in the brain: focused and diffused. The focused mode is when you are concentrating and you actively engage your brain, while the diffused is when your brain is at rest. (Disclaimer: your brain is never at rest but it is when your conscious brain is relaxed so it’s why your mind wanders during a lesson.) Breaks are needed to give your brain space and time to go into diffused mode in order to effectively store the information you have been concentrating on. This doesn’t mean a day long break but a short amount of time where you do something different.

So, what does this mean in practice? Take breaks regularly throughout your day and don’t allow breaks to be longer than half an hour. If your school has gone online then use the breaks that they give you and step away from your iPad or Laptop. Taking time away from where you sit to work provides separation for your brain between work ‘focused’ mode and resting ‘diffused’ mode. Make your breaks something to look forward to by interweaving your hobbies with your learning. Go and run around the garden, draw a picture, meditate, practise that TikTok dance, try out some yoga poses… the list is endless!

Top DON’T: just sit on your phone in the same space – this doesn’t give your brain a break. Looking at your phone leads to information overload for your brain and means it won’t know what to store as memory.

Top DO: Odds are you will prefer doing your hobby to your work, so be disciplined with your timings – this app has helped me.

Want more?

Read more on focused and diffused processes here

Read our next blog post on staying motivated during this weird new normal here