How to withstand a highly distractive environment, or else, 'Should I Stay or Should I Go'

Question

The headline here is: I live in a frat house with 10 other people.

They are noisy, frisky people, and living with them greatly improved my drinking social skills, and I loved it at first, but I'm past my freshman's year, so now I want to settle down and take on college. Also I want to be able to give myself time to work on my hobbies. Those things doesn't seem to be the focus around here.

Besides the rowdy people, I have major concentration problems. I have trouble focusing in the task at hand even in the most peaceful silence, what to say of an party-all-the-time place like this.

So, pinning down the questions in matter:

Can I get some useful skill out of living in this environment? Like being able to focus even in the most stressing situations, or something like that. And if so, how can I work my self-discipline in a way that works for me?

Is it worth it? Or I'd be better off living elsewhere. Some say you should live among those that yearn for things alike you. Is it really the case here? Or should I even consider living by myself?

I thank you in advance if you can provide me your personal experiences in this matter.

Answer 1

For me, music did it while in grad school. Use it as a trigger, not just to block noise out (but that's also good with some nice headphones). In my case, I played "Moon Safari" by Air, all the way through, and I found that my productivity increased substantially. The choice of music matters: You want something that's not strident, with a predictable soft tune and mellow tones. And playing the same record over and over again helps reinforce the trigger mechanisms. After a while, when I heard any of their songs on the radio, I automatically started thinking on my thesis work!

Also, make sure you utilize your time properly. 20% of your work yields 80% of your results, so choose wisely and enjoy your personal time! The Priority Matrix is an excellent tool to make this explicit: Use it to classify tasks into important/urgent, and then focus on what matters. It's unbelievable how much more productive you can be when you avoid fluff and filler work.

Answer 2

The workplace is not quiet either in most places. It is worth it to learn to concentrate when others are making noise. The younger you learn this the better.

Check with your frat brothers, some of the others may also want a better place for studying. You might be able to set up a better place within the frat house or at least some quiet hours. Certainly we did that in the sorority I was in, there is no reason why studying and belonging to a sorority or fraternity are incompatible. I don't know what officers you have in your frat, but we had an officer whose job it was to encourage us to study and get better grades. If you have such an officer, then ask him for some help in how to study in the environment. A senior or junior with good grades is someone else to ask for advice. You might even find a group of guys who want a study group. We did a lot of studying in a group when I was in a sorority. If there is someone else in your major, ask them first if they want to study together.

For yourself, set up a study schedule for when you are going to study and when you are available to take part in the fun stuff. Daytime hours are often good for this especially early in the moring before the real partiers are up. Then keep to it as if you were working at a job and had to be there during set hours (Also good practice for the real world). If you allow time for the fun parts (don't schedule friday or Saturday night for instance when it is likely to be at it's rowdiest anyway), then you won't resent that you are toiling away in your room when everyone else is playing so much. And trust me, others are not always playing or they wouldn't pass their classes either - it is just that some portion of them are always playing. And yes, the noise cancelling headphones are not a bad idea at all. And of course you can take your laptop elsewhere and work like the library. Always quiet in the library.