{"id":25540,"date":"2014-09-10T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/studying-for-the-gmat-while-staying-focused-and-healthy\/"},"modified":"2014-09-10T07:00:05","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:00:05","slug":"studying-for-the-gmat-while-staying-focused-and-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/studying-for-the-gmat-while-staying-focused-and-healthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Studying for the GMAT While Staying Focused and Healthy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\"Studying<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\"What\u2019s<\/a>If you\u2019re about to start studying for the GMAT<\/a>, your life is going to undergo some temporary changes. Odds are, your professors, parents, and peers have already started giving you some study tips to coach you through the two to three months of recommended GMAT prep you\u2019ll need.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably thought about some of the adjustments you\u2019re going to have to make to your schedule and your lifestyle: adding a study session<\/a> every day, scaling back on social plans, lugging around books, and spending lots of time on your cell phone\u2014not texting, but playing with a GMAT app<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, prep is important, but staying focused and keeping healthy while studying for the GMAT is just as crucial. How much change to your everyday life is too much? Where do you draw the line?<\/p>\n

Staying focused during your GMAT prep<\/h4>\n

Has this ever happened to you? You\u2019re driving along one evening looking for the street address of a new place where you\u2019re supposed to have dinner with some friends. You slow down to a crawl, turn down the radio, stop talking, and examine each sign. Why is that? Neither the radio nor talking affects your vision. Or do they?<\/p>\n

Steven Yantis<\/a>, a former professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University<\/a>, explains the similar challenge of staying focused while driving on the phone:<\/p>\n

\u201cDirecting attention to listening effectively \u2018turns down the volume\u2019 on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited\u2014a zero-sum game. When attention is deployed to one modality\u2014say, in this case, talking on a cell phone\u2014it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality\u2014in this case, the visual task of driving.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Yantis is talking about divided attention<\/a>, the ability to multitask and pay attention to two things at once. Divided attention is generally much more difficult than focused attention. The factors that come into play are your attentional capacity and the processing required by the stimulus\u2014essentially how much of which areas of your brain are needed to process the input.<\/p>\n

Your attentional capacity can be diminished by tuning out distractions, dividing your attention across multiple things, or even fixing your attention on one topic. Fatigue takes a big toll on attention. If you're tired, it's harder to concentrate. You may have already experienced this during a late-night GMAT study session<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These studies go on to show that you don\u2019t want to take up your attentional capacity by introducing distracting changes\u2014such as drastically changing your diet, caffeine use, or sleep schedule\u2014in the weeks before Test Day. As you are studying for the GMAT<\/a>, your brain is already coping with all the new content, methods, and strategies you\u2019re learning. No need to distract it by giving it other changes to grasp\u2014this could actually negatively impact all the good work you\u2019ve built up studying.<\/p>\n

Keeping healthy while prepping for the GMAT<\/h4>\n

Introduce healthy habits as early as possible into your GMAT prep, and even before you begin studying for the GMAT, if possible. You can begin to make these changes while you are still researching your business school options<\/a> and developing your application timeline<\/a>. Get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise.<\/p>\n

Physical exercise has been shown to generate new neuron growth in the adult brain<\/a>. Following a series of experiments, researchers from the Gage Laboratory at UCSD concluded that exercise leads to the production of new brain cells in the dentate gyrus\u2014a strip of grey matter in the hippocampus that has been shown to play a role in the forming of new memories.<\/p>\n

So keep in mind that general health and physical activity can be every bit as useful as your more traditional GMAT prep tools, tips, and tests.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if you could browse through different careers in your area of interest, see what test scores top schools consider acceptable, and read interviews from people like you who have succeeded in pursuing their dreams?\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

All this and more is available at kaptest.com\/unlock<\/a>. Just by visiting and filling out your info, you\u2019ll be entered to win $10,000. The good life is closer than you think!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The post Studying for the GMAT While Staying Focused and Healthy<\/a> appeared first on Kaplan GMAT Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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