We’ve covered the Three Levels of Knowledge before, but Stepcase Lifehack has turned me on to another trio of levels that law students need to be mindful of: The Three Levels of Concentration. The levels of concentration are about learning to recognize when you are truly distracted, and when you are simply seeking distractions.
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p style=”clear: both”>Level One: Acknowledging the Task According to Paul Dickenson, the first level of concentration is to acknowledge you have a task. At this point, you may be resisting the work, by surfing the web, focusing on other tasks, or allowing your mind to wander. The challenge here is motivation and more fully understanding the work.
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p style=”clear: both”>Level Two: Understanding the Task The second level is when you start to define and understand the task at hand. When you start to understand what you need to do better, distractions begin to melt away and the task becomes more attractive. Paul points out an important issue though: at this point concentration is fragile. A phone call you need to take can lead to an hour of web browsing you don’t.
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p style=”clear: both”>Level Three: Diving into the Task The final level of concentration is when you have dove into the task and are immersed in it. Other versions of this idea are achieving “flow” or getting “in the zone”. At this point it becomes difficult to get distracted, and even things that we wouldn’t normally call distractions like eating or similar basic needs melt into the background. Once this state is broken though, it can become difficult to get back into it.
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p style=”clear: both”>What Does it Mean for Law Students? The key is to reduce the distance or effort between knowing you have a task and diving into it. Law students are very aware they have stuff to do. You have a syllabus, or you know the professor covers 15 pages per class. Now multiply that by four or five classes. Clearly knowing that you have something to do isn’t the issue.
Defining the task isn’t much of an issue either. After the initial challenge of learning how to read and take notes on cases and legal education, law students generally know what they need to do when it comes to the work of law school. That is unless you were me, constantly switching your work habits (not a path I would recommend).
It’s getting into the flow that is difficult for law students. One of the keys is to recognize what makes it easy or difficult for you to concentrate. Think about whether you need noise in the background or silence. Do you need to be around other people or by yourself? Computer typing or writing notes on paper? Frequent short breaks or can you just shoulder on? Knowing how you can get into a state of maximum concentration can eliminate a lot of time spinning your wheels before the real work begins.
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p style=”clear: both”>In this post: Dealing with Distractions [Stepcase Lifehack]
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p style=”clear: both”>Previously on Fearfully Optimistic: The Three Levels of Knowledge
