Get those good studying habits (p1)

A good studying habit will get you far, while a bad studying habit will only restrain you from achieving your true potential. I have seen a lot of cases of my peers, where while they are extremely smart, struggle from finishing and doing well in schoolwork. In contrast, there are people, who although are not really gifted with the ability to process information very fast, are still able to manage their school work and end up with great scores. This difference boils to one single thing at the end of the day - studying habits. Due to its great importance in influencing the way we digest knowledge and the way we are able to learn effectively, in this post, I would like to share, personally, the way in which I am able to do well in school without having to be that best student in everything.

First of all, there are some certain mistakes that you guys tend to make, which can have a heavy toll in the quality of your studying. First of all is having distractions in your studying area. It’s not very rare to see people, who despite being learning, have a phone by their sides. And when the phone just rings a bit and when a notification pops up, that person will immediately get away from learning and checking their phones. In response to this, these people may say something like “I’m not checking my phone for too long”, or “I’m getting back to work right away” … don’t fall into this delusion, you guys! There are some issues that root from this misconception - first of all, you can not take track of the time from when you lift that phone up until you actually put that phone down and focus back on your study. I always think of this as a domino effect: from just a text from a friend on messenger (for example), you start to check out other messages from other people, and them would go on Instagram and watch “some” reels, which you’ll explain by saying something like “I’ve just studied for quite a time now, and I need some time to relax”. They are all fallacies, you guys! That is only an excuse for you to stop doing work, so please, if you are still doing that, stop it right now! Additionally, you may not choose a good environment for learning. A lot of people want to learn with friends (go to the coffee shop and have a “study date”), and you may attempt to do that too, but it really depends on each individual to determine if this type of environment is suitable for them or not. Personally, this doesn’t work at all for me - from a study date, it will eventually turn into gossiping time, and just like that, hours will pass by yet no work is done. To be aware of these two things will help you tremendously in developing good study habits.

Recently, a friend has reached out to me, saying that she didn’t have motivation for learning. When I asked her why that was the case, she replied to me by saying that since she liked to hang out with her friends, that prevented her from having any motivation to get the work done. Additionally, when she came home, she tended to have the habit of scrolling through Instagram reels, which though might seem normal at first, could cost her several hours per day! I am mentioning this example so that I hope you can take something out from this, anyways. In response to her problem, I start by asking her about priorities. Well, as many others, her priorities are towards learning, and earning that grade score, right? But I challenged her with that statement - so what is preventing you from achieving that? And she said: she liked to hang out with friends and went online (which I have mentioned earlier). Are you seeing something not logical here? She wants to focus on schoolwork, yet she doesn’t want to do it - she prefers to do something that she likes!

And that time, I have responded here by asking about the significance of hanging out with friends and scrolling Instagram reels for hours. Well … she doesn’t have much to say - basically, this is because it doesn’t generate any value in your life at the end of the day, just some fleeting laughters at most. By then, it is clear: learning is more important in the long run, whether you want to avoid it or not. She answered this by saying that she did understand the importance of learning, but she couldn’t change her old habits. And plus, she couldn’t just block out her social life like that…

Basically, the conversation continued on like that. So what is the point that I’m trying to make here? The point is: if you don’t want to do something, you will have explanations for not doing that. Not to say that I hate her (she is a very good friend of mine), but the lesson from the excerpt of this conversation is that in order to create a good study habit, first of all, you have to have a tendency to actually do the work. If you are doing work but then your mind is wandering somewhere else, you will never get the work done!