What makes a student successful?
While motivation to study is one of the factors that students generally look upon and think of as a significant fuel for a successful student life, setting and following the correct habits is actually the thing that will ensure your success in studies and other aspects of student life.
Motivation and demotivation are a part of daily and temporary emotional status of the student, which may affect his/her activities accordingly, making them very unstable. On the other hand, building habits (though it will take a lot of time to build a new habit) will ensure that you remain stable and do your work in a disciplined manner.
Here we are, with the top 5 habits generally followed by every successful student, which, if followed diligently, will ensure that you get the best out of yourself.
- Organisation and Planning
While this seems to be too obvious to follow, most of the students never make any kind of timetable or plan to follow religiously. Also, most of the students try to copy the timetable followed by their topper friends, or the one suggested by their YouTube teachers.
- It is important to understand that in order to get value out of your timetable, you need to prepare it yourself, keeping in mind your nature and comfortability pattern.
The organisational thing isn’t restricted to studies only. This can, and should, be implemented for your health, hobbies and finances.
- Make sure that you have a plan for everything – how often would you work out? How often and when would you follow your hobbies? How much money would you spend on your wants and needs in a month? Etc.
- It is advised that you have a diary/digital notepad every time with you, where you can list and organise all your tasks.
- 2. Monotasking
A very powerful and effective tool for students. Monotasking is basically a technique that urges the concentration of your focus at one place/work at a time. Focusing at one task a time increases your concentration and absorption power tremendously. This technique highlights the importance of ‘separation of tasks’ and allows you to do all kind of activities that you want to, provided that you focus completely on one task at a time.
- Many a times while studying, we zone out and start thinking something else without realisation. The best way out of these kind of situations is to immediately catch that you’re zoning out and instead of avoiding the thought, close your eyes for 2 minutes and focus completely on that thought. You will notice that as you give your 100% attention to that thought, it will disappear very quickly. Avoiding the though would have disrupted your focus both from studies and the thought.
- 3. Good sleep cycle
Human body isn’t made to be productive endlessly without break. Taking proper rests and giving time to your mind to recover fully from the exhaustion of the day is a very important part, often skipped by students.
- The sleep cycle of students, especially, must be fixed. There must a particular time when you sleep and wake up, be it 10pm or 2am.
- As a student you must take at least 6 hours of continuous sleep every day. Sleeping for less than 6 hours may affect your productivity and concentration power in short and long run.
The time before exams is one of the hotspot times when students compromise their sleep to study day and night. This isn’t a feasible habit for your studies or health. Have a fixed plan, schedule to study and a fixed sleep schedule.
- 4. Study environment
The desk where you study must spread positivity. The environment in which you study plays a very important role in increasing the strength of your concentration and will power, which makes the process smooth and happy.
On the other hand, if you study in a non-studious environment, say, your bed, your environment will automatically motivate you to sleep or take rest as that environment is meant for taking rest and not for studying.
It is suggested that you keep the books that you want to study on your table-top, paste relevant positive quotations and study material on the wall, and create an environment that compels you to study.
- 5. Control distractions
The distractive elements have increased with the rise of social media platforms and it has been a constant problem for the students. With the increased popularity of the online mode of study, this problem of social media distraction has multiplied manifold.
- Turn the app data off while you study, so that even if you open the app by mistake, the feed doesn’t refresh.
- Turn off the notifications of all social media apps. Notifications in between studies is one of the strongest cue to turn your attention towards social media.
- Try turning on the ‘grayscale’ mode in your phone. This may make your social media apps seem boring and thus you may be able to resist them better.
However, if you’re not able to control the distractions even after trying such hacks, we recommend you to delete those apps all at once, if they are not providing you anything of value.
