Tuesday, September 8, 2009

I Want to be in the Zone. Where is my Zone!?

When it comes to homework -- be it reading some delicious text or working on Hebrew homework -- I am so susceptible to my environment. I have to find and stay in the zone. What is the zone you ask? It's that place free of distractions, free of the wrong kind of noise, free of all the things that make me stop and fixate on something other than my homework.

You see, I have absolutely no will power.

I know, that's a huge fault. A horrible fault. It's why I dedicated myself to Weight Watchers last year and tried not to have a TV in my dorm room (but that girl last year was just giving it away!).

I'm attempting to read Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton for my Ancient (Jewish) Fictions course. (Note: I dropped my Sexual Politics/Women in Tanakh course, but that's for another post at another time.) I'm sitting here, with the book sitting next to me, and for some reason I can't pull myself away from trashy VH1 "reality" shows filled with potential murderers and definite narcissists. Their ridiculousness has captured me, more than a classic ancient fiction can. Why is that? Why is it that the horrible reality of being a tool is more riveting than a story of love, lies, and Aphrodite? Is it me? Am I weak!?

At any rate, the point is that a learning environment is important. For me, this means no television, no computer, no distracting noises (but definitely some type of music, probably Itzhak Perlman or something similar), no noisy people, no distracting items on the walls, or places with a lot going on all at once. Interestingly, I could blog in a hurricane or wind storm or with hail beating down on my face and fingers.

What's YOUR zone? How do you focus? Can you make homework and important things happen with kids running around, things flying across the room, the TV blaring, and noise elevating every second? How do you make yourself walk away from distracting things? What's your secret?

Help!