Sleep on this

A recent survey found that 1 in 4 US high school students fall asleep in class at least once a week. Many students walk around half asleep or off in their own dream world.
To put it simply, students are just not getting enough sleep. Many students have to be up and ready for the bus at quite an early hour and with the infinite distractions available on the internet these days and the unlimited TV programs on show many students don't get to bed till after midnight. This leaves students with a limited amount of time for sleep. Now you might think 'I don't need that much sleep or what's an extra hour of sleep going to do?'

The answer is....a lot.

Numerous studies have shown that during deep sleep our memory functions are enhanced and information that was in our short term memory is transferred over to our long term memory. You might have had the experience of remembering something better after you've 'slept on it'. If so, this is why. Also studies have shown that after a good night's sleep there is an increased insight. Like a sudden gain of deep knowledge or understanding. That's like if you've ever woken up and had a solution to a problem pop into your head. This is all due to a good night sleep. By a good night sleep we're talking a minimum of 8 hours. 9 hours is even better but not realistic for many students so aim for 8 and a half hours if you can. Now this advice might sound old or overly simplistic but it's proven. And its advice given by all top students. They know the value of a good night sleep. Make sure you do too. Reward yourself with a good night sleep and see what happens to your grades.

Sweet dreams....

Mini Tip #1 - Get up close and personal

Hey guys,

This kicks off a series of 10 mini tips that I'll be posting on this site over the next month. These are simple quick tips that take seconds to apply but can have powerful affects on your studies, grades and learning enjoyment. Here we go....

#1 - Get up close and personal

Unless you have an oversensitive nose and your teacher has bad breath there is no reason to sit in any other row than the first row. The experience of many students right around the world is that when they sit closer to the teacher they are able to stay focussed for longer periods and engage in the class more. The further back you are the more 'out of it' we can feel and this reflects in a boring class from which we take little out of. So tomorrow or next time you're at school make the effort of sitting up close to your teacher and notice what happens to your involvement in that class. What happens to your focus, engagement and enjoyment? 

If what's holding you back is the thought 'sitting in the front row is for nerds' and you can't seem to bring yourself to do it just yet, then sit in the second row in the middle. This way you are still close to the teacher and in the middle of the action. However, my challenge is for you to sit in the front row for your classes for one full day and come back and leave a comment at the bottom of this post about your experience there. My guess is it will be one of the best things you can do!

Happy studying amigo. Catch you soon.

For more info on study skills and how to become a ridiculously awesome student head on over here 

Best wishes,

The Study Skills Guy

Motivation

If there's one question that I hear more than any other from students it's this...

How do I get motivated?

How do you maintain that drive for learning that will sustain you through those tough, dry and boring spots when all you feel like doing is eating chips and watching re-runs on TV? 

As students we know all too well that motivation is hard to come by. Often we'll feel motivated for the first couple of weeks of semester. We'll go out and buy our books and we'll decorate them. We'll go to the stationary store and buy all these cool colored pens and highlighters and we'll be all ready to go. Then what happens? 2 weeks later we've lost most of our pens and most of our motivation. 

But why? Why do we lose our motivation so quickly?

The reason is because we expect motivation to come from the outside. We expect to be motivated by an interesting subject or a great teacher or because we have a big important test coming up. But regardless of subject, teacher or test sometimes our motivation continues to fail. What we need to do is learn how to generate true motivation. True motivation comes from within. True motivation is internal and can be generated anytime for anything. 

In this post I just want to mention the first of three steps in generating true motivation and that is...

Perspective.

Perspective really means how you look at things. And here is the point....The way you view a task or activity will be in direct proportion to how motivated you feel to do it. In other words, if you view Math as boring and tiresome then your motivation will be so low you might not even be motivated to go to class! But if you view Math as a challenge and an opportunity to understand the world in a new way what happens to your motivation? It goes straight up. And all that changed was your perspective. 

The key to changing your perspective lies in a simple question:

How else could I see this?

Anytime you feel low on motivation to do something it's because you are seeing that task in a negative light. All you need to say is "how else could I see this" and choose to shift your perspective to a more positive empowering frame of mind....and watch what happens to your drive.

See the key reason why top students stay motivated is because they can consistently frame what they're doing in ways that inspire them rather than deflate them. 

And you can do that too. In fact, you can become an expert at it and become a motivation generating machine. So ask yourself this question often and continually look for all the positives you can find in whatever it is that you are doing....that next assignment you have to do....the next class that you don't like....how else could I see this? What is a more empowering way in which I can look at this?....they're always there...just waiting to be discovered.

Until we chat next - Enjoy your learning!

Thanks for visiting. 

For a more detailed description of motivation including the other two steps for generating motivation come along to my study skills site. There's tons of free information on study skills as well as free audio downloads. See you there!

Study Skills

We hear the term study skills all the time don't we? Like the importance of study skills and the need to have good study skills but what exactly are study skills? What do they comprise of? Study skills, of course, is a broad term. It pretty much means "How do you study?" So...how do you study? What do you do when you study? How effective are you being? The thing is that as students most of us rarely (if ever) ask ourselves these questions. We rarely stop and take a look at what we're doing. We just do our work and kind of think....'well if I do my work and work hard then I will do well.'

As you know, this reasoning is overly simple and misses out on the whole point of learning. When it comes to learning and studying it's now what you do or even how much of it that you do...it's how you do it. The how is the crucial element to study success. And it is that 'how to study' that I aim to share with you on this blog and my other pages. I have spent years figuring out how the best students study (check out about me section if you're interested in learning more). And what I've found, as I'm sure you'd guess, is that the top students all share similar study skills. They all do similar things on a consistent basis. And it is those things that produce their consistently high results. So what comes from that is that if we can do those same things then, over time, we can expect a strong surge in our grades. When we change the how (our study skills) we change the end (grades and enjoyment levels).

Please join me in learning more about study skills...