A common thing these days is to suffer from ADD. Attention deficit disorder is something that people claim to have when they are finding it a little harder to pay attention in the classroom or in their workplace. When you really have that disorder you are going to be far beyond just having difficulties consentrating and for people who think they have it, I would just say that you need to learn to focuse to be focused on learning.
Most of us are not that gifted in studying and that is for a simple fact – we are not doing it actively. It is more common than you think to be just flipping through the pages of the book and reading them through than trying to actively study the content and be able to learn from it. If you want to be a great learner then you need to stop thinking about the times you have read a specific piece of text, and concentrate on the quality reading times.
When you truly focuse on the text you will most likely only need one time reading it through to memorize it. This is where your focuse and attention comes in. You need to be able to find the most important things in the text and try to avoid the things that are of great interest to you. Don’t get me wrong, if you are interested in what you are reading it will greatly increase your chances of grasping the true meaning of the article, but to be able to learn EVERYTHING you read you are going to need to try to pick out the important parts while you read, and neglect the rest – for now.
Once you find a thing that has a major importance, you need to stop reading and try to learn it. Think about it for a second and try to find a few examples that you could use if someone asked you about the information at hand. You should be able to tell it with your own words without quoting anything from the textbook. Also if you learnt it well, you are going to be able to come up with the examples that are usually following in the textbook, on your own.
When you really understood the main parts of the text you are going to start studying the smaller bits of information. Remember that even if a book is written with the information presented in a specific order, you are not forced to read it that way – you can try to learn it in small pieces and at the same time try to make sense of the whole consept.
The one true most important thing in learning is your focuse and motivation. You need to be able to block out any distractions, and that includes your mobile phone and the television. Use earplugs and close your phone, since you are going to have a lot better results if you focuse just on your studies for two hours, than if you multitask and try to do everything at the same time during the day for eight hours. Do one thing at a time and your focuse will develop and eventually you will be able to remember anything you read just once.