Tips to Improve Your Academic Discipline This Year
To succeed academically, you need to have good self-discipline. This means you need to be able to maintain your focus and get your work done on time, even when it’s hard or boring.
Self-discipline is an important life skill that will help you to achieve your dreams and develop resilience. When you have self-discipline, you can take charge of your own life.
These tips will help you develop better academic discipline this year.
Find Your Motivation
One of the best ways to develop self-discipline is by working out what motivates you. If thinking about your future career helps you to tackle your schoolwork today, use this to give you the inspiration to complete tasks you don’t enjoy much.
If you’re motivated by more immediate rewards, give yourself a little treat for finishing an assignment or sticking to your study schedule. This could be a nice snack or a fun time out with friends. Having something to look forward to makes it much easier to get your work done.
Set Realistic Goals
It’s important not to overburden yourself when you’re developing self-discipline. Setting unrealistic goals and then failing to meet them will only damage your confidence.
Start with small steps and build up to more as your focus and motivation increase. This might involve setting a goal to start your homework by a certain time each day. Your initial goal might be to just finish your homework, but as you become used to this new schedule, you can then increase the time spent on study and revision.
Write Things Down
Writing down your goals and having a study planner is vital for developing academic discipline. This not only helps you to keep assignments and homework in order, writing things down serves as a constant reminder of the tasks that need to be completed.
We recommend displaying your schedule, task list and goals somewhere prominent so that you see them several times a day. Even when you’re not thinking about studying your subconscious mind will be working on ways to help you achieve your goals and stick to your schedule.
Recognise Your Weaknesses
Everyone has certain things that distract them and undermine their self-discipline. Maybe you find yourself constantly looking at your phone or iPad when you’re supposed to be doing homework. Perhaps the sound of the television or other noises make it difficult to concentrate on your study.
When you identify your weaknesses, you can come up with strategies to manage them. If you’re distracted by your phone, give it to a parent while you do homework. If you’re sensitive to noise, get some noise-cancelling headphones, or find somewhere quieter to study. When struggling to concentrate for extended periods, it helps to take frequent short breaks.
Seek Out Help
Developing discipline isn’t easy, and although it’s something you need to achieve by yourself, others can help. Let your family know your goals. They can assist by removing distractions and leaving you alone during study time.
Your teachers can also help you plan your study schedule and suggest topics for revision. Tutoring is another great way to develop discipline as you get one-on-one attention from your tutor, allowing you to increase your focus and concentration.
Make the effort to develop your academic discipline this year! You can find out more about our tutoring services here.