What habits separate a successful student from an average one? Why is it that hardworking students attain mediocre grades and students that outperform everyone usually study less? Are they smarter? Or were they born genius? Here’s a comprehensive guide that proves that you, too, can become a successful student. You’ll have everything you need to rank highest in the class.
The MMA Terminology
- Mindset
- Motivation
- Approach
When it comes to getting good at studies, everything depends on the mindset, motivation, and approach. From our childhood, we’ve programmed ourselves with wrong beliefs about studies. These beliefs control our habits, study patterns, and grades. A student whose sole purpose is to impress someone will not focus on understanding what he reads.
Introduction: What is your reason?
Those who don’t study for studying’s sake will never outperform those who seek to learn new things every day. There are many excuses like “these grades won’t matter in the future” or “the curriculum doesn’t pique my interest.”. Getting good grades doesn’t tell how intelligent you are. Good grades usually come from discipline, focus, and commitment.
The most important part of studying is: Doing what you must do to score well, not what you want to do!
The motivation behind studying shouldn’t be anything else but scoring good marks. That should be the academic approach to studying. Anything else should be a secondary goal. If you want to learn more about a topic or dive deeper than what the curriculum covers, do it in your free time.
Get things straight! Do what must be done to succeed. Not what you want to do.
Following are the eight habits that every successful student has. If you employ all of them in your academic life, you see drastic changes in yourself and your grades. You’ll be a happier person altogether.
#1. Bring Order To Your Life.
Do things in order, decide your schedule in advance, and plan strategically. An organized life gives you satisfaction and harmonizes your life. When you are in harmony, studying becomes easy. Honestly, studying and getting good grades is so simple. You have to understand the concepts and then mug them up.
Mugging up is sometimes associated with someone who is not very intelligent. Forget about proving your intelligence to anyone (even yourself). We often follow strategies that serve our current mood. If you go by mood swings, your study patterns will be ineffective and inconsistent. You’ll also not follow a defined strategy that will get you a good score on every subject.
- Do not follow your mood!
- Follow what is strategically most sound!
- Think objectively.
- Prioritize efficiency over personal matters.
- Learn to take notes properly.
Note-taking is an artistic process. Mastering this skill takes months, so don’t take it lightly. Organize your writing and note-making process.
#2. Absorb notes and textbooks like a sponge.
Absorbing information takes several iterations. To retain the information, you must organize it well in your mind. Discern every topic, heading, and subheading from each other. Understand what the book is trying to convey and arrange it well in your mind.
After finishing a paragraph, close your eyes and think about what you picked from it. If you missed something, read it again and again.
- Keep your mind organized.
- Understand what the paragraphs are saying.
- Reiterate everything you read in your mind.
- Check whether you missed something.
- Practice or Revise regularly.
Forget about grades or impressing your peers. Just focus on practicing and revising for its own sake. You’ll enjoy the process as you go.
#3. Create realistic goals and achieve them.
Achieving targets you set for yourself gives you the motivation to keep moving. You feel a sense of achievement every time you finish the work within the deadlines you create for yourself.
Be clear about your goals. Define them with as much detail as possible. Clarity is the key to confidence and success. I noticed such habits in every successful student.
#4. Have a balanced diet and Eat the Right Foods.
Eating loads of processed high GI carbs will make you feel sluggish. Overeating will also sabotage clarity and the will to study. Eat enough satiate hunger. If you hit the gym, meal prepping for yourself is a great option. Don’t gorge on everything at once. Eat small healthy portions and fast regularly.
Doing intermittent fasting improves focus and brings clarity. You feel more energetic when you are on an empty stomach. Do you know you feel hungry for 15 minutes every 3 hours? After the 15 minutes of hunger, you don’t feel hungry on an empty stomach.
#5. Plan Your Sleep.
We have different sleeping patterns. Some people feel fresh from 6 hours of sleep, and some feel sluggish even after 10 hours.
When we sleep, we move into a deep sleep state three times per night. If you wake up in-between these deep sleep states (through an alarm), you will feel sluggish throughout the day. Set your timer such that it is a multiple of one and a half hours. One and a half hours complete one sleep cycle. You need 3 to 4 of these sleep cycles to regulate your bodily processes and re-energize yourself.
Don’t sleep during the day! Follow Circadian rhythm.
#6. Keep your studying space separate.
Studying, eating, drink and watching entertaining YouTube videos on the same table will cause mixed patterns and inconsistencies in your mood. Your subconscious mind will suggest other activities which will cause you to lose focus.
Keep your studying space organized. Keep everything where it belongs. This habit will naturally reflect in your studying pattern. The information you gather will remain organized in your mind.
Remove all the distractions and keep them out of reach.
#7. Raise curious questions and contemplate in your free time.
Contemplation might sound like a moody practice, but it redirects your mind towards academics like none other. It will indirectly help you understand topics faster. Ask interesting questions. It’ll pique interest in you and your friends.
#8. Don’t multitask.
Focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking reduces your efficiency. The human brain might be good at parallel processing (because it is a control system). Human awareness doesn’t support parallel processing (as far as I know). Give undivided attention to what you are doing. Do just that!
Conclusion
So these were the ten habits of a remarkably successful student. Make sure that you follow all of them.
If you are reading this article a day before the exam, stop worrying. Don’t worry about the exam. Just focus on what’s important, and study that. Cramming is not a good practice. It suggests that you lack discipline. Focus on bringing order to your life. Bringing order will naturally incorporate all the habits mentioned above.
One exam wouldn’t decide your future. I hope you liked this post about the ten habits of a successful student. If you liked what you read:
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If you want more, here are some more articles:
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Thank you for reading through this article. Here are some sources to learn more:
https://opportunity.org/learn/lists/10-habits-of-successful-students#.YVVk9pozbcc
https://www.jagranjosh.com/articles/habits-of-successful-students-1560431869-1
https://www.educationcorner.com/habits-of-successful-students.html
https://www.henryford.com/blog/2018/11/6-tips-to-waking-up-refreshed
Welcome to Shuflash. I’m Shubhanshu Rawat, a yoga practitioner with 2500+ hrs of time spent in meditation & 250,000+ words of published content on Shuflash. I have no plans to stop. What’s stopping you?