The anxiety of studying
We all know that feeling. The date of the exam for that subject that you do not like is approaching.
You don't really know why you don't like that subject or maybe you do. The teacher is bad, the classes are always at 8 in the morning and half the time you don't even show up. Or is it that the first test went wrong?
You say to yourself: "This time I won't be caught by the bull,".
You really thought you were going to start early but the first day you took the note pad and you already felt uncomfortable, a little sad, or you got hungry and went to the kitchen to make yourself a mini sandwich.
If not, you realized that WhatsApp rang and there was a misunderstanding in the friends chat group and of course, it took you half an hour to clarify the issue. Then you went down to buy something that you were missing in your house and then you had to go to the gym because doing sports is also important etc, etc, etc.
At night when you went to bed, you felt a small amount of guilt for not having started to study. "I'll start tomorrow," you think, and fell asleep.
Is anxiety to study common in your life?
The worst part of all is that it continues to repeat itself throughout your life.
It is what we call procrastination, and it affects everyone to a greater or lesser extent.
A few months ago, I discovered the physiological reason why we tend to procrastinate.
STUDYING CAN BE PAINFUL
Researchers at the University of Chicago published a study in 2012 (1) in which they described what happens inside the brains of people who hated mathematics when they were asked to do mathematical tasks.
They used functional magnetic resonance imaging and observed that certain brain areas, the dorsoposterior insula and the middle cingulate cortex, were activated when the subject anticipated that the math tasks were coming.
The dorsoposterior insula and the middle cingulate cortex are regions involved in the perception of pain or in the detection of threats to the integrity of the body. If people with math anxiety suffer from such brain activation, it is reasonable that they avoid any math-related activity at all costs.
It can be said that it is a defense mechanism. It does not matter if it is an overreaction in the sense that mathematics is not going to harm them, physically speaking. They are not going to lose an arm or get sickbut your brain reacts as if it would,
Learn how to learn
The researchers observed that these brain areas of pain were activated when they participated in the math exercises, but not during the exercises themselves. This was eye-opening for me when I discovered it in Coursera's Learning How to Learn course (I highly recommend taking the course if you have time - a new edition begins January 2015).
Course teacher Barbara Oakley clearly explains that the tendency to procrastinate works as a defense mechanism, but wrongly since if you have to accomplish a task, delaying only temporarily relieves the annoyance.
If you overcome your initial discomfort and continue working, in a few minutes you will notice that it is easier for you to continue in the task that you do not like.
The pomodoro technique
One technique you can use to overcome initial resistance is the Pomodoro technique.
Of course, when you have managed to work for a while on that subject that makes you so lazy, you have to give yourself a good reward for your achievement' a soda, a piece of chocolate, having a cool drink outside the library.
This subject causes you a real annoyance, but you have managed to overcome it and move on. Surprisingly our mind responds positively to these rewards, and we'll talk about it shortly here as well: how to use Pavlov for our convenience.
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