• Take a break. Depending on your effectiveness and time constraints even 5 minutes can be very helpful. If you have more time set aside 20 minutes or so for a walk around the block or park, and this exercise will re energise your body and your mind.

• Stretch- practice some easy yoga, some chair or desk isometric exercises, some tai chi to systematically exercise and stretch all the muscles in turn, then get back to it.
• Eat or drink something- make it something healthy a low GI carbohydrate snack and a drink of low sugar such as tea, coffee, water.
• Change to a different subject or different activity. For example, Belle is taking a distance learning course. She studies at home. When she loses concentration, she will go and do something different, such as empty her dishwasher, put on a load of washing etc., do ten minutes of garden weeding, basketball throwing for team practice or knitting. This takes only a few minutes, but it enables us to have a short break and then refocus on her studies. 
• It is important though not to KEEP doing other tasks, as this can just be another method of procrastination and way to avoid focusing on studying. Watch carefully that you do not get distracted and suddenly you have lost an hour or more of study time.
• One student uses a kitchen timer and an alarm clock to schedule break time each hour. She works until the clock rings it is a break, has a break which is a fixed time of 10 or 15 minutes, then gets back to work when the second alarm rings. This structures the study time and prevents lost time by being distracted on break time. This same student structures in morning tea breaks lunch and afternoon tea breaks as may be found in an office workplace routine 9 am – 5 pm.
• Move to a different physical location
• Change the music you are listening to and its pace for a while
• Pause for 5 minutes and make a list of reasons why you are studying this. You can reflect back on what you have learned so far and summarise it, to change you thinking patterns.
• Slow down – tackle studies in smaller, easier to digest, quantities (e.g. Read one paragraph, then summarize that paragraph before moving onto the next)
• If you consistently have difficulty with one subject; talk to your teacher or college and see if you can substitute that subject for something else. Alternatively you may be able to go onto another lesson or assignment that you can do relatively easily, and then come back to the first one.
• Every time you have a difficult task ahead and may feel rather discouraged, think if this is something you REALLY want.  Give yourself some positive self-talk to keep yourself inspired.  IF this is REALLY what you want, then it is worth the effort and so keeps persisting.
• Sometimes, you may just not be in the mood to study, you may be too tired, ill, stressed, worn out, and bored. Whatever the reason, sometimes we need to stop studying. If this is the case, decide to put your books away for that day and make a better effort the next day. One hour of studying when we are in the right mood will be far better than three hours of bad tempered, bored or distracted studying.

Some ideas from our new ebook- Learning