College readings can be tough.
In some cases, they can finally be the chance that you can read books you’ve always wanted to read and never had the time for, while also calling the behavior productive.
In other cases, these readings can be the bane of your existence.
Across the board, however, they’re often hard to focus on, hard to get through or, at the very least kind of boring (Does anyone ever do the readings for calculus?).
This doesn’t necessarily require you dislike reading, or even just dislike the book. The book could be boring, but also could just be uncomfortable or written in an unfamiliar grammar or with sentence structures you haven’t studied before.
No matter the problem, here are some tips to keep yourself reading despite discomfort. Mix and match for best results.
Tips To Help You Stay Focused on Challenging College Readings
Create a Focusing Question to Guide Your Reading
Sometimes, the thing keeping you from focusing on the reading is the fact that you’re not sure what concepts to focus on. Thankfully, this is something you can decide for yourself. What you decide to focus on doesn’t have to be exactly what your professor wants you to get from the text.
(However, a look at the title of the course or the focus of the next lecture can be a big help in figuring out what the professor wants from you – if your class is about ghost stories, focus on the impact of the ghosts in the stories, rather than the weird living children in the stories).
Any question that you commit to will have you reading with greater intention and focus, leading you to pick up on more concepts than if you were just mindlessly skimming.
If you were reading, Beloved by Toni Morrison, you may ask “Why does Stamp Paid feel the need to apologize to Sethe’s family?” or “What is the significance of the home 124 being referred to as a number?”
If you were reading an organic chemistry textbook, your question might be, “How exactly do you get from this step of the mechanism to next step?”
Your question could even just be a “why?” prompted by a strange event that just happened or a concept that wasn’t fully explained immediately and might be explained later through other examples.
Often creating questions can also help you prepare to get the most out of office hours, as these questions can preemptively help you find areas of confusion that you can ask about.
Take Notes as You Read
Simply having the intention to take notes is a focusing behavior. The idea that you should be taking notes can awaken your mind and interest as you look for something to make a note of.
Note-taking can also help keep you engaged as writing is a cognitively active task. As well as keeping you present, note-taking helps you keep track of the progress you’ve made in the reading and facilitates your having a more comprehensive view of what you’ve been reading. This conscious note-taking can also help with creating a focusing question as you may be more likely to find an area of confusion if you are actively trying to make sense of the text as you read it, rather than just trying to get through it.
Make note of quotes you like, answers to questions that may come up, interesting points, vocabulary (if in a textbook, anywhere you find a word you don’t know the meaning of, write it down and look it up).
If you have no idea what to write, just make a point to stop regularly (each subunit section, or chapter of a novel, or every couple of pages, or every page in a shorter excerpt for a philosophy class that may be quite dense) and make note of the plot of the story so far (and any characters of interest) OR make a a brief and clear summary of the points raised so far.
Walking While Reading
Most people who grew up enjoying reading have probably walked and read at the same time.
Despite primarily being a strategy for people who care more about finishing their book than not colliding with someone on the way to class, reading while walking is also a useful for strategy for many others who are capable of walking and are also reasonably coordinated
First off, however, I recommend walking in an area where you are less likely to have an unfortunate collision with another person (or inanimate object) – your bedroom, your living room. If your walking space has to be a public hallway, ideally it should be primarily empty.
Walking (unless you’ve taken some type of sleeping aid) can be incredibly helpful in keeping you awake while reading.
Further, the added complexity that this type of multitasking can add to the task can lead to increased focus on the reading, and likely lead to a more enjoyable and efficient reading period. Focus generally precludes any rumination on the discomfort of the task.
Take Breaks from Reading
Some people may feel weird taking breaks while reading, especially if you aren’t making a lot of progress during a given work session. However, this may be one of the best things you can do for your ability to focus.
Taking breaks refreshes your brain and gives you a break so you can return to the task with renewed intensity.
There are many ways to structure your work vs break workflow. You can work for 25 minutes and take a break for 5 minutes (the pomodoro method), or take a 10 minute break every 50 minutes, or even a 5 minute break every 15 minutes, whatever works for you.
You can also try Mini Breaks, which is how I describe a back and forth workflow in which you work for an incredibly short amount of time and take a break for a similarly short amount of time. For example, reading one page of philosophy reading and then journaling or doodling or stretching for minute. I often measure these breaks in actions rather than time, so 3 stretches, half a page of doodling, a quarter of a page or a page of journaling OR journaling until my head seems relatively clear.
This technique is especially useful when you’re having trouble just getting started. Often, after a few iterations, you can work for much longer without needing a break, the mini breaks serving to get you mentally warmed up. And even if this doesn’t happen, you will end up being more productive than if you continued to procrastinate to avoid discomfort.
In either case, make sure that your break is not so engaging that it prevents you from getting back to work.
Eat, Drink, or Just Chew on Something While You Read
This focus tip is primarily distracting yourself from your discomfort so you can continue to read.
Water bottles are great fidgeting tools, and focusing on making yourself finish a bottle can be enough to distract yourself from your discomfort so you can focus on your reading.
Food can also be a nice distraction. It’s enjoyable and comforting. And actually, merely chewing something (gum, a toothpick, etc.) can lead to similar results as food.
If you’re going to use food for comfort, however, there are some things you should keep in mind. I recommend doing this only when you would be eating anyway (i.e. when actually hungry), the amount of food you would normally eat (i.e. stop when full/ no longer hungry), and while eating something that’s not disruptive to the reading – for example, smoothies, soups, even a sandwich for some people. It really depends on your coordination.
Prop Your Challenging Book Against Something And Crochet (or Similarly Fidget)
This may seem like a lot to do at once, but sometimes a book is really difficult to get through and the only way you do it is by doing something fun simultaneously. I would only recommend propping the reading up and fidgeting with another task while you read when you are REALLY struggling to get anything done. This will help keep you focused, but in no way do I believe it is great for focus.
For crochet or knitting, you’ll probably require both hands, so I recommend doing this only with a book that can be propped open and will remain at the page you left it on. This would probably be a huge textbook or an ebook. I also recommend, in the case of a physical book book, it be a large book so as to decrease the number of times you have to stop fidgeting so you can turn the page. Every time you have to stop, it introduces friction into the task that you just don’t need.
Other fidgeting activities you could do are: knitting, doodling, origami, etc. The task can be anything that you can do without looking down at your hands too often.
Listen to Instrumental Music as You Read (Or Music in A Language You Don’t Understand)
Music makes everything better. It sets a tone, it creates an environment. It’s a way changing a situation from one of dreary boredom or discomfort into one of adventure or fun. The tone of the song you are listening to can set the feel of the whole study session.
If you’re looking for something fun, I recommend songs by Ikson (my favorite songs of theirs are Sunkissed, Dear Autumn, Bliss, and Thinkin’) and Breakmaster Cylinder (the Reply All theme may be my favorite song from them).
If you want a more adventurous feel, the main theme of any superhero movie is a great option. I recommend the Avengers, Avengers Endgame, and Captain Marvel themes.
There’s also always movie scores and piano covers of your favorite songs. To get you started, you could try BBIBBI by IU, Where You At by NU’EST W, and Sunny Summer by GFRIEND.
You can also listen to songs in languages you don’t understand. In some cases, they may be more disruptive, but in a lot of cases given that you cannot understand them, the words blend into the melody and it’s not as disruptive as say, listening to rap in English, which is more problem set music than reading music.
I recommend K-Pop, as well as pop from China (options that wouldn’t work if you speak Korean or Mandarin or Cantonese, respectively).. If you google a bit, you can find K-pop songs in sub-genres you like already.
Listen to Your Book as an Audiobook
If you’re in a situation where you can get the book you’re reading in audiobook form, which is usually in the case of books that aren’t textbooks, listening can be really helpful. You can walk around as you read, you can do chores, you could play a video game – all sorts of things to distract you from your discomfort, but, hopefully, don’t distract you from gaining comprehending and consolidating information about the book.
Further, listening to a book can just be a more enjoyable experience. Readers bring a lot of energy and personality to a book and that can make the process of consuming the story much more fun. I for one am not sure I would’ve gotten through Gilead or The Chosen without listening to them, and I adore The Chosen.
Lastly, if you feel that you gain a lot of knowledge from simply consuming the source material rather than through reviewing your own notes, you can re-listen as many times as you want (though, may I recommend writing better notes). It’s much logistically easier than re-reading, not only because you can increase the playback speed.
Bonus Tip: Books That Will Help You with Focusing On and Getting Through College Readings
I know, I know. You came here for help focusing on reading and I’m giving you more reading. It’s ridiculous, I get it. But there’s a lot of knowledge in books. It’s one of the many reasons they’re still around. And writers usually are readers, and these are the people who usually know the most about getting through a difficult read.
(Also, the only one of these books that I haven’t found an audiobook for is How to Become a Straight-A Student and it’s a pretty easy read. For the rest, listen the audiobook and do your laundry or run from your problems.)
The Books
How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport
This book is full of great tips on how to be a successful student, from how to defeat procrastination to how to efficiently and effectively write great essays. It also has a large section on college readings. It not only goes over how to get through the readings, but how to get the most out of them, how to take notes on them, and which readings you should actually do.
The author, Cal Newport (now a professor at Georgetown), also has a great blog archive full of study tips. One of my favorite posts from him is on pseudo-skimming (a way of efficiently reading without missing key information). I really recommend it. You can find the post here.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
This is another book from Cal Newport. The book begins by arguing for the importance of deep work, which is the ability to focus on very difficult, cognitively demanding tasks for an extended period of time and produce novel outputs – at least, this is the definition in my conception. The term is better defined here.
The brunt of the book is spent teaching people how to develop the ability to do deep work, and part of that is helping people develop the capacity to maintain focused attention for an extended period of time.
The tips and techniques Cal Newport teaches for focus can be used for any cognitively demanding task, including difficult readings, and I believe that using some of his strategies could really improve your ability to focus.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler
How to Read a Book is about how to take notes that ensure you get the most out of the book. It helps facilitate doing a deep reading of a book and I feel that using some of the questions and perspectives recommended could be helpful in learning to take notes so as to focus better on your reading.
These questions can also work as guiding questions to help keep you mentally engaged with the text.
I hope this post was helpful and you can finally get that reading done. Thanks for reading!