In today’s article you’re going to learn everything you need to know about how to be a successful student. So, let’s begin!
How To Te a Successful Student:
1. Get enough sleep
Imagine how did you feel last time you got a god night sleep. You were energised,eady for the day, ready for all activities.You could not wait for first plans and first tasks to do,first problems o solve.
And now think about how you felt this morning,did you get enough sleep?Probably the answer is no. And that causes you being angry to everybody and feeling groggy all day. Now the question is how much sleep do you need actually.
There are a lot of theories but some studies had shown that an average teenager needs about 8-10 hours of sleep and the average person(adult) needs about 6-8 hours of sleep. Sleeping a lot more that this can cause higher chance of depression,emotional eating and even dying. On the other side lack of sleep can cause the same results.
If you are a student and you have to remember what you read and learned the last day you need to get 8 hours of sleep. Explonation is coming: 6-8 hours Is known as R.E.M. sleep. This is because at the beginning of a sleep cycle your brain activity is on the average,then low and on the end really high. This high activity is during the part from 6-8 hours.In this part your brain is going to replay everything that you learned the day before.
So if your bran does not have time to sleep it does not have time to remember.
What I know as a teenager is that it is really hard to get a good night sleep while being a teenager. Night clubs and all that stuff. But what I must tell you is that I had the best grades and the time when I had a fixed time for going to bed and fixed time for getting up.I would go to bed at 10-11 p.m. and get up at about 7-8 a.m. My brain was remembering really good and I learned a lot of stuff.
Now I do not have a certain time for going to bed so my marks are a little bit worse but I am trying to go back to that system because it is not just about being a good learner but instead to be healthy and energized for everything.
2. Work out
As a student it is really hard to find time to go to the gym,work out and do some exercises. But there are a lot of benefits from work-outing. First benefit is that it feels great.You feel energise and ready for everything else, when lift these heavy weights or lift your body In body weight exercises everything else for you is a lot easier.
The feeling is great because yu are energized and because you know that you are making a great body which could be attractive in a lt of ways, in one word you are improving yourself…
Second benefit is that you are starting to be ore productive. Whenever someone asks me what is your number one tip for productivity except using planer and being organized I say work-outing. Because it puts you in a great state where you feel great and you are ready for studying,your concentration is going to be better and you will remember better.
In a primary school my teacher told us that whenever we cannot learn something we should go out and run for a while and then go back to study and we will have a lot better focus.
When the teacher said tat we were all laughing like: We do not have time for that and she is crazy, it is always better to sit in a chair for 5 hours. We did not know anything…. And know I see the importance of working out.
And the third benefit is that you are going to have a better apetite. You will eat more and remember to eat healthy fod not some crap. If you eat crap you are going to look like crap and think like crap. So do not eat crappy food…
But the question is how to find time to work out. My answer is morning routine. I am going to talk more about a morning rituals and routines later in a post but a working out is something that you can do every time when you wake up. Do you need a gym membership? Absolutely no,you can do everything in a home so you can stay fit and healthy.
Only thing that I can recommend to you is buying some dumbbells and exercising with them. They are great for building a bigger biceps triceps and a great chest. The other thing that I can recommend is buying a pull up bar but if you are like me and you do not have a place to put it then you must say good buy to pull ups,or go to some park where you have a pull up bar and some pull ups.
Set a timer. Have you ever been in this situation? You are working ona project, studying or just trying to write an essay. You said that you are going to do that really good and finish it in about 4 hours.
You have about 6 hours to finish that and go to bed, 2 extra hours wow!! Lets relax a little bit.
1. Scene you started working and you are motivated to do everything, to read everything and to solve every single problem.
2. Scene you are going to get your phone and see how much hours did you spend on that so you can plan according to that. You feel like it was about 2 hours maximum.
3. Scene you got your phone and you see how much time did you spent. You want to kill yourself….You were doing that 4 hours and 30 minutes,and in one hour and 30 minutes you have to be in bed. You didn’t finished even half of the work??
This is what I call a big mind problem…In this situation you are really angry and you don’t know what you should do.
In order to prevent that from happening again I will give you a tip that will save you not 2 hours, not 20 hours probably more than 2000 hours if you use this every single time you do something.
The key is to set a timer. Timer is a great way to stay ogranised.When a timer runs off you know that you spent 30 minutes doing that (in case that timer is programmed like that),or 1 hour.
And you are not going to totally lose the vision of the time you spent. Another benefit of putting a timer is you are staying focused and you are filling the emergency. It’s the same like someone is telling you all the time,time Is going you must work faster,harder.
And that is going to really make you work faster and harder. One true story about this emergency thing.. I had been tested in history and I left with one more lection to be tested on. Next week I totally forgot that I have to be tested and if I would be tested then I will get great mark. I just needed one more lection.
The only problem was I had about 20 minutes t learn it and other friends couldn’t remember all years and stuff like that the hole day before. So I was supposed to be a superhuman and remember something in 20 minutes that somebody didn’t remembered in 4 hours…
And on the end I remembered everything I was tested and I got great mark. Do you know why I succeed in learning the hole lection in 20 minutes? Because of emergency!! I had 20 minutes to do that. And it was more likely to a situation where a person with a gun is starring at you and waiting these 20 minutes to run off and then kill you (if you don’t know the lection of course).
That was one of the best lections that I got from being at school,Emergency is making that you do things in very short intervals of time. And why my friends didn’t learned that? Because they had about 5 hours to do that…. Just follow this tip and you will see dramatic results.
SEE ALSO: How To Deal With Exam Stress: 10 Successful Study Hacks
3. Domino effect
Domino effect is the effect that all of us experience in our lifes but we never really thought about it. It is described in many books and a lot of people were talking about it but now I want to show you one example.
I am a big fan of physics competitions and I see them like a way to improve my knowledge. And I was free of going to school for one week.That sounded so great but on the other side at the same time we should have a lot of testing at that time.
I was stunned by a situation because I wanted to go to competition but marks were really important for me. And I saw that I must study hard and be tested in all subjects before that free week. That was a big challenge. I was studying hard but I actually didn’t know everything.
A lot of people will say that I was lucky and maybe I was but I saw the same thing a lot of times and that is domino effect. What actually happened was that I was tested in several subjects the same day but still a lot of subjects were left.
I had a choice,to be happy with several subjects done or to go for all of them. You guessed I choosed the second one… And I succed,I didn’t know everything like I told you but while I was being tested I was so confident by other results that I had that even if I forgot something with that confidence I would easily recall the information.
So actually a tip that you will get form this section is: be confident and always believe in yourself and when you start all dominoes are going to fall.
4. Concentrate on all subjects and make a tactic
Lets get back on studying specially. Most students don’t really think about all subjects.If they should have a test at Monday and oral testing on Tuesday they are just going to practice like crazy only for test on Monday. That’s why they are going to get bad marks on both tests…
Firstly your brain is going to remember information from one subject easier if you rotate things that you are learning.
I don’t want to say that you should change a subject that you are studying every 5 minutes (I tried in about 30 minutes and in was a disaster) but rotate several subjects on one day. And second reason is you cannot learn something in one day. Even if you succeed you are going to forget that information really fast and earning a lot of material for one day is not really a pleasant experience.
Every time you are studying,consider all subjects and try to make a good plan how to learn all of them a little bit every day so you are going to remember it easier and a lot better.
That is the key to having great marks and a lot of times the only thing that you need to know is this tip. A lot of great students are learning a lot earlier and then the result is getting great marks.
Just think about the situation if someone would give you to learn the same material for 5 hours and you have day to do that or you have 5 days with 1 hour each. Just think about that and you will find out that this is really useful tip.
5. Use a keyword technique
One problem that I found really big is losing concentration.You read and read and when you finish whole lection then you ask yourself what I learned and I had a lot of situations when I said to myself Nothing.
In order to get rid of that problem I suggest you to use a keyword technique. Here is how it works:
If you are reading about Abraham Lincoln for example then every tim you see that you are losing focus you should say: Lincoln Lincoln Lincoln…
That is going to put you in a state where the most important thing is Abraham Lincoln…And you should think just about him. That is going to help you with studying or just reading about something that you have to remember.
When you are well concentrated on something then you can remember it a lot easier and really fast. But on the other side if you are not than you will have a lot of problems with remembering some simple things.
6. Keep your desk clean and organized
Did you remember last situation when you got home and you are tired enough from school and you just want to sleep or 30 minutes and than work.
And there was a surprise….Your clean desk. Your mum says that you have to tidy up a little bit. You are angry, tired and you don’t know what to do,and to be even worse you have a test tomorrow…..
This is just one situation where not cleaning up your desk is a bad idea. But I want to talk about some other situations and problems.
When you see an organized desk you are ready to start working you feel like you can do that.
But on the other side if you have a lot of mess on your desk then it puts you in a state that you have lot to do, not just to clean up a desk but it seems like everything that you are going to do is going to be so hard and mostly because of that you are going to fail in a lot of stuff you do. Also while you are studying an organized desk means useful desk.
While studying you need a lot of stuff nd you need your personal part of a house,doesn’t matter if its 1 m/2 you must have it,where nobody is interrupting you and you have everything you need.
So the thing that I want you to remember is you should make your own studying place and keep it clean and organized.
SEE ALSO: Effective Studying Techniques For Students: 10 Secrets For Success
7. Study hard things first
You have several things to do, you have 2 tests next week and several homeworks t do. What are you going to do first?
Probably you are going to get that homework and spend all day and when you finished it you will think that you done something big,but actually you didn’t…
If that is an important homework to do than do it,but don’t think that you have less to do if you did your homework because your test is more important. It is all in how much certain task is important to you.
On the other side if you practice for a test than you will fill like you done something big, something that will help you. And when you get rid of big problems these small ones are really easy to do.
That’s what my mum was telling me all the time and I didn’t listened t her,but that was one of the best tips that I got from her even if it looks so simple it has to do a lot with your brain and your motivation.
And one bonus tip is: try to estimate time needed to do such a big task,and then try to beat that time and reward yourself maybe with some kind of food or a game you can play or whatever it is, its important to reward yourself and just have a reason to do something.
8. Focus on one thing and concentrate
A lot of you are making your to do lists every day or sometimes. When you make that list you are just trying to get rid of all these tasks as quickly as possible and you don’t care which one is first, in another words everything is important for you… That’s one big problem that you must consider when you start doing something from your to do list.
Successful people has just one thing that they think it is important and they do it for whole life. There is one thing that is most important, for Steve Jobs it was softwer and computers for Albert Einstein it was physics and they were the best in that.
There is just one thing that is the most important, in your life, in that year, month, week, day, hour…
Every single day when you make your to do list you should ask yourself what I the most important thing that I have to accomplish today? And when you do that you will fill great,happy.
And everything else is just something that you have to do if you can. Don’t spend your time when you are in the best state for some stupid things. Use that time to become a better person, lider, friend and just to make yourself happy.
9. Morning and night routine
You heard about routines and rituals,and about how much they are important and I just want to tell you the same thing one more time and give some examples.
I personally don’t have a morning routne that has 200 steps,it has several really easy ones,and that is getting up, exercising, getting a shower, eating and watching a episode of some series. This is while I have a break and I try to enjoy my school break but still to be in a good shape for continuing my school, I am writing a article that you are reading, I am studying physics for a year ahead, I am writing a song…so I try not to waste It totally and routine can put me in a state in which I can try to achieve some goals.
All successful people has their own morning ritual.
Also having a night ritual is a good idea and while I was having a certain time when I go to bed I got best marks at school, I got enough sleep and I remembered a ot better. Its all about having something that you will repeat and repeat and make it a habit.
I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to be a successful student. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.
