Tips for Anxiety Associated with Typing Exams

The starting point for identifying the signs of “Exam Anxiety” may be the 5-minute test. Longer tests provide the brain with more opportunities to trigger negative thoughts such as worrying about scores and comparing performance with peers. Lesson 49 presents techniques to manage the anxiety of typing tests and psychological “anchoring” strategies to help you stay focused when the anxiety is the greatest.

Using a Physical Anchor

The brain can be brought back to the present by the use of an “anchor,” which is a physical sensation. Feet may be used as an anchor when a drifting thought needs to be recentered or when an increase in heart rate is sensed. Ground your feet in the floor for up to 3 seconds. Grounding in this way will help to direct the energy away from the panic centers of your brain and back to the physical body. You are in the driver’s seat of your body. These strategies for managing anxiety about typing are used by high-level athletes to stay calm and mentally focused in stressful situations.

Reframing Mistakes

The high stakes nature of the exam makes students see the exam as a failure when they think of mistakes this way, the body is flooded with cortisol, a stress hormone, and muscle tension increases. A better way of looking at this is a way is looking at mistakes as “data”. If you press the wrong keyboard key, don’t feel angry, feel happy that you have added an additional “data point” to the exam. In a five minute test, the exam score is an average. If you remain calm, then you will be able to minimize the significance of a single mistake. However, that same mistake can multiply itself and become a mistake that places you in a state of overwhelming mental stress for 30 seconds, which in turn makes that mistake overwhelming. You should try to be a professional in the way you type and in the way you think.

Techniques for Isolating and Managing Sound

Remember from previous lessons that sound is one of the main stress causes in an exam hall? In Lesson 49, we try out a technique called “Auditory Narrowing”. Concentrate so much on the “click” sound of you keyboard, that you STOP HEARING the clock, the other typers, the air conditioning, and basically, every sound is ignored. This “sonic tunnel” guards your pace. When you can maintain your speed and tempo, internally, regardless of the noise that is present, you will have the mental resilience that is needed to be able to do any government typing test.