I didn't start doing well at uni until I stopped using social media at my desk...

This might sound extremely obvious to some people, but I had literally never thought of this until last year...<br><br>I'm a 4th year Computer Science major at a top university in the Asia/Europe region. Truth is, I wasn't always the greatest student. I always had good grades throughout high school, but it was pretty easy, and I was never the type of student to do extra work outside of class. I didn't study very much at all for the first 3 years of university, and I'd usually only start looking at my notes the night before an exam. I didn't fail any classes but I also didn't do extremely well. <br><br>The turning point came when I had to apply for some really competitive internships during my 3rd year. I knew I needed to step up my grades, but I never had enough motivation to consistently put in the effort. That was when I realized that my lack of motivation was due to the fact that I was always on social media at my desk, and my brain was too distracted to focus. I used to have the browser open on my second monitor while I worked/studied in the code editor on my main monitor. I thought it wouldn't be a problem if I only take a few seconds between coding/looking at my notes/browser, but at that time I realized that it was taking up way too much of my study time. In fact, I realized that I hadn't spent more than 15 minutes away from the browser at any point that day. Everytime I checked the browser and scrolled through social media/reddit for a couple minutes, I was completing losing my train of thought. I was trying to learn new concepts but my brain just couldn't remember them because I was always taking breaks. <br><br>I thought about it and realized that I never open social media on my phone while studying anymore, and there's a reason for that. It's because I don't want to study on my phone because it's too uncomfortable, and if I'm on my phone I'm way more likely to go on social media and watch random videos or scroll mindlessly. This was a massive waste of time and it was making me feel horribly guilty whenever I had to tell my parents I was studying but in reality I was just watching videos on the phone. So, I stopped studying on my phone, I could only study on my computer, and the only way I could study on my computer was by closing the browser. When I finally closed it, I was able to focus on my notes for hours at a time. I realized that my lack of motivation had nothing to do with how boring the subject matter was. It had everything to do with how distracted I was. <br><br>When I closed the browser, something crazy happened. My brain wasn't cluttered with random distractions. I was suddenly able to understand the material so much better, and I was able to understand it a lot faster. It didn't feel so boring anymore. I realized I could always close the browser and get back to the work I was doing in a couple hours, and it's not like I was going to miss out on anything by not scrolling through social media at that time. When I closed the browser I didn't feel like I was just going through the motions of studying and wasting time. I felt like I was actually doing it. <br><br>I got my first Top 5% grade this semester on a exam that I thought would be impossibly hard. I never had to pull an all-nighter, and I didn't feel burnt out after any of my exams. I was able to walk out of the exam hall feeling like I did my best, for the first time in my entire academic career. I feel like I'm finally able to enjoy learning new things, instead of feeling like it's a chore or something I'm forced to do. It feels great. <br><br>Of course, this is extremely obvious to some people. I literally had never thought of this until last year. I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things, this advice is nothing revolutionary. I'm only posting it here because it helped me so much, and I never would've thought of it otherwise.