I was sitting with a student today going over his schedule. He had 3 assignments due and a mountain of homework to complete. He had been sent by his english teacher to learn how to manage his time better.
I started asking him a few questions about his after school commitments, I checked out his diary and we had a look at his assignments. Then I started to talk to him about a plan to get him more organised and improve his study habits.
I don’t have time to listen to you. Just let me do my assignment.
It is a statement I hear all the time. When students are stressed, and the work is piling up, they just want an extra hour to get things done.
Wrong!
I bet any student could find an extra hour to get an assignment done. All you need to do is wake up an hour earlier. But what do most students do? They spend that time looking for their lost notes, emailing friends, daydreaming. Oh, and the last 10 minutes if work..and frantic work.
Most study skills that I talk about on this website are short and simple to start. Here is a list of study skills that would take less than 10 minutes to implement:
- Set up a Study Folder
- Use a Base Camp
- Highlight key words
- Use Skipping to Study
The difficulty is turning those study skills into study habits. You see, a habit is created when you do the same activity repeatedly for 30 Days.
For students that means doing some type of studying or organizing every day.
What do you do when you get home? It is probably on autopilot. You get in the door, chuck your bag somewhere and either sit down at the computer or in front on the TV. Now I don’t want you to stop doing that. Sure, have a break. But what do you do next?
What if the next thing you did was go and sit at your desk and looked at your study folder and created today’s daily routine. Now that would be a powerful study habit right there. After 30 days you would have trained yourself that studying is important.
Start a new study habit today. It will make you life so much easier.
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