BREAKING BAD STUDY HABITS
Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” The statement emphasizes the importance of education to us especially to our youth. There are developments in the area of learning, understanding and memorization. What is the contributing factor of study habits with education? Tests are taken place to determine how much we have learned and grades are the indicator of it. Therefore, study habits before the exam have a lot of influence with the results.
Bad study habits are the most common problems that you will encounter as a learner. How do we break these bad habits? There are a lot of things to consider before the whole process of breaking it. Let us understand first the importance of habits to us. As we age, we already have established our own individual study habits. From time to time we stick to this cycle whenever we are learning something especially in school. Well, a habit is something we repeatedly do and very important to establish a very good one.
It is hard to break old bad habits especially when it is common. "It's much easier to start doing something new than to stop doing our habitual behaviour," based on a neuroscientist Elliot Berkman. It takes a lot of will power and perseverance to improve it. We have to welcome changes in our lives and say goodbye to the old habits. Acceptance with what is coming is difficult as we try to be used of it and that willingness should go with it. When we are willing to do something by heart, we can never see things as burdens but as something we do for our future improvement.
Time management is everything; we have to give an adequate amount of time to study. Cramming won’t do any good as we are rushing ourselves about the amount of time still left and as a result we are pushing ourselves to learn things. Learning takes time for us to absorb information. It is easier to study when we are relaxed, not worrying about memorizing everything on the spot.
Focus is one of the key factors in studying. It increases your attention level while studying. Creating a schedule and clearing a time to concentrate with one activity at a time is very important that improve memory retention.
As Aristotle once said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” It clearly explains that everything takes time to be learned. Based on 2009 study, the researchers of University College London examined the new habits of 96 people over the space of 12 weeks, and found that the average time it takes for a new habit to stick is actually 66 days. Since, a habit takes repeating cycle of 66 days; you may want to start as early as possible and maintain to do it every single day. If we believe we can achieve then we definitely will!
— oOo— The author is SST III at Camachiles National High School, Division of Mabalacat City