Written by Sid Babla

Welcome back to the Summer of Reflection with the Student Wellness Center! As Summer term comes to an end and we enter finals season, this week we look at our Intellectual Root of Wellness. This is an openness to new ideas, thinking critically, focusing effectively, and seeking out new challenges. It is being creative, curious, and engaging in ongoing learning inside and outside the classroom.

Here are a few possible ways we can begin to nourish our intellectual root as students:

1. Center Yourself – Being open to novel ideas and concepts that provide us with a new understanding requires focus and attention. This can be done by cultivating Mindful presence: the practice of being fully engaged in the present moment with a non-judgmental and accepting attitude. When our minds stop ruminating, we create space to focus on what truly matters. From this stems a clarity that reveals what action is needed for us to meet the present moment. 

2. Simplify to uncover the next action step – completing an assignment, learning a new skill or language, and working through a challenging problem set oftentimes have multiple sub-tasks and sequential steps. This can more often than not make our ‘to-do’ list seem overwhelming. Author Greg McKeown recommends identifying the first obvious action and committing to 10 minutes of focused action called ‘microbursts’. This overcomes procrastination and we start making immediate progress. For example:

Project	First Obvious Action	Microburst
Complete assignment	Open a blank document	Draft an outline for the paper
Finish class reading	Open course curriculum	Identify and search for reading material. Download book/mark it for quick access
Complete group presentation	Open email client	Write and send an email with a When2Meet link to group participants

3. Schedule it and Get to (Deep Work) – Every time we context switch, it takes about 23 minutes to regain the focus that we lost. Each time, it also requires more cognitive energy to reach the same level of focus. It’s no wonder that we find ourselves (cognitively) fatigued by 2pm on most days, unable to concentrate on challenging tasks. NY Times bestselling author and Montgomery Fellow for Summer 2023, Cal Newport ‘04 talks about the importance of deep work to overcome context switches by ‘time blocking’: scheduling an extended block of time to work on a singular, complex task without checking email or social media. (e.g. working to finish a first draft of a paper). 

This 3 step framework of centering yourself, identifying actions to build momentum, and scheduling time blocks is designed to help you go from zero to one in nourishing your intellectual root. Having a system to manage our attention and focus nurtures and grows our curiosity. The more intentional we are with how we use our attention, the more fulfilling our intellectual pursuits become. Over time, this sustains and grows our sense of wellbeing.

Sid Babla, Wellbeing Program Coordinator, Student Wellness Center