While the end of October highlights the traditional joys of the fall season, such as Halloween and pumpkin-spice lattes, it also stands as a gruelling reminder of midterm season. Given the anxiety and stress that can easily wash over us during exams, we tend to gravitate to our phones as a temporary distraction from these negative emotions. Yet when we browse through feeds, messages, or media platforms, we’re all aware—whether we admit it or not—that doomscrolling only digs us deeper into a hole.
Fortunately, this shared experience has inspired many students around campus to find different approaches to staying focused. Olive Bohdanowycz, U1 Arts, discussed how she manages her school work while being mindful of her screen time, sharing her personal strategies for different study locations.
“When I’m at Schulich or McLennan, I normally use the phone lock machines to completely remove myself from my phone’s distractions. When I’m at home though, I just rely on DND [do-not-disturb] to silence everything,” Bohdanowycz said.
In addition to the basic do-not-disturb function, many phones now have versatile personal, work, and sleep modes allowing you to customize which specific apps you receive notifications from. Setting these precise restrictions on your phone can improve self-discipline and help prevent procrastination.
Daphne Barrett, U1 Arts, also found success with limiting access to her phone. Along with adopting similar do-not-disturb approaches to Bohdanowycz, she used strategies that relied on other people to get involved with her personal screen time limitations.
“I’ll either have one of my friends or housemates take my phone away, or set timers so I can see how much work I’ve done without my phone,” she explained. “It’s motivating to see my time and track my hours of studying.”
Through methods like this, Barrett was able to balance effective studying habits with a feeling of satisfaction and progress, specifically through her timer strategy. This approach of transforming screen time restrictions into a motivating process seemed to be effective and popular with many other students as well.
Juan Garnica, U2 Desautels, mentioned apps that use similar tactics as a motivating tool. For instance, Flora is an app that plants a virtual tree for a set duration of study time. When the timer runs out, the tree appears fully grown in your virtual garden. He explained how closing the Flora app kills your tree, forcing you to restart the process.
“Seeing that I’ll kill my tree makes me think twice if I really want to go on my screen. It is a way to make me realize my priorities,” Garnica said.
Like Barrett, Garnica uses this app to stay focused on his work by reducing distractions and using the virtual trees as a motivating reward. Turning focused work and studying into a game is an ideal way to get through difficult tasks.
On the other hand, Shirley Tu, U2 Arts, tries to avoid their phone entirely whenever possible.
“Usually when I’m listening to music, I try to always connect my headphones to my laptop instead of my phone so if I’m changing the song or volume, I’m not distracted by any notifications or feel the need to look at other apps,” Tu said.
Using an alternative device like a computer, which lacks the disruptive qualities of phones such as constant sporadic alerts and the ease of getting lost in distractions, can be effective for staying on task. While we may try to justify constantly having our phones close by to listen to music or keep up with text messages or other vital alerts, Shirley’s method shows that it is possible to do these things without a phone.
While simply silencing their phone may be enough for some, others might need to find alternatives to fight the urge to scroll and keep themselves focused on school. Whether you use a screen time regulation app or completely remove your phone from the equation, these insights can help us develop strategies for balancing work and phone usage. By locking up our phones, we can unlock our full study potential to achieve a successful midterm season.
