I feel like one of the concepts that are really important to focus on when discussing time management is stimulation. When you do your homework, are you under-stimulated or overstimulated? When you’re under-stimulated, homework and other productive activities can feel sooooo boring, and in this state, it can feel like nothing is interesting or like there’s nothing going on inside your brain. Whereas when you’re overstimulated, you might notice yourself feeling irrationally angry (typically for no reason), and overwhelmed. For each individual, too much or not enough stimulation will present itself differently, which is why it’s really important to listen to your own body and keep track of the patterns you notice. Under stimulated? Maybe you need a controlled distraction to keep you focused on the main activity. For me, I find that music (usually electronic or phonk) that lacks words is typically the most effective and easy to control distraction in my toolbox. But for other people, podcasts or classical music works better, (in addition, your needs can change day by day or by each assignment!). It’s important to remember that there are numerous factors in your “controlled distraction” that can affect how well it works for you, so it can be a good idea to keep track of what elements of the distractions work best for your work style, (Words or no words? Slow or fast-paced? Music or podcast? New music vs familiar?). If you find yourself to be overstimulated, noise-canceling headphones can be a lifesaver! I’ve found that headphones that allow you to control the degree of sound cancellation work the best here because sometimes total sound cancellation can cause under-stimulation. And even more confusingly, sometimes you can be dealing with both at the same time! For example, sometimes the noise from the construction around my apartment completely halts my functioning, but when I use noise-canceling headphones that also play music, my problem is solved, (Aka, I can function again). The important thing to remember is that it’s typically the distractions that are out of your control that will mess you up the most!