You are in the class. The all school has already taken 10 minutes off the clock; you are having a quick chat with your buddy; the teacher has to scan through their notes and wait for the class to quiet down. The majority of students is finally paying enough attention for the class to start. As your attention jumps from the lecture, to talking, to checking your email, half the period has lapsed. You know you can cut out some extra time using the Swiss Knife of your tricks, “May I use the bathroom, please?” you ask. When outside the classroom, you can kill some time on your phone, stare in the mirror for a little bit, and have a quick chat with a passerby. By the time you return, the class is almost over. You beg the teacher to let you get in the lunch-line early successfully shaving the final 5 minutes off the class.

This sort of chaos, present in almost every classroom, turns 55 minutes of alleged “studying” into, at best, 15 minutes of purposeful attention. It’s absurd how inefficient education is, and how much time is wasted.

From my experience, sacrificing quantity over quality is the most straightforward solution. Replace six 55-minutes classes with two that are triple their size. The increase in class length will account for the time necessary for the students to enter the flow state and stay in it for a meaningfully long period.

Focusing on one task for an extended amount of time is more efficient than jumping between multiple ones without putting much attention or effort into any of them.