How To Form Good Study Habits

Forming good study habits can often be challenging and seem impossible. After all, there are so many other things that compete for our attention other than school work, whether it be social media, going out with friends or watching movies. At times, studying for exams or as a part of your general revision is the last thing you want to do. 

Given these challenges, how do you actually form good study habits? Perhaps you’ve been meaning to get into a good study routine for a while but just haven’t been able to find the motivation to do so. Or maybe you’ve tried absolutely everything and nothing has worked for you. 

Well, here are our top tips for forming good study habits that will actually stick. 

1. Start small

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” This applies even more with study habits. A good study routine often isn’t the result of someone waking up one morning, having boundless motivation to study and maintaining this motivation throughout the year; a good study routine is the result of small habits accumulated over time to produce an effective routine. 

And it’s not just me saying this. Here’s a nice quote from James Clear’s bestselling book, Atomic Habits: 

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”

James Clear makes some important points. Firstly, cultivating any habit (whether it involves study or something else) is a step-by-step process that consists of small decisions. As these small decisions become more entrenched, you build a solid foundation from which you can create stronger habits. 

Now, this all sounds lovely, but how do you implement this in practice? 

Well, let’s say you want to form a new habit where you spend some time on Maths every day. What’s been interfering with this thus far is your bad social media habit where you get distracted by notifications and news feeds. 

Here’s what you could do:

1. Start by placing your phone at the other side of your house. This will remove the temptation to look at it during your study period. You tell yourself that you can check your phone in 20 minutes.
2. Now, spend the next 20 minutes studying for any subject you like. For example, you might spend the time making summary sheets or attempting textbook exercises.
3. After those 20 minutes, you can go back to your phone and do whatever you want. 

And that’s it!!

Yes, this is only a small change and you won’t conquer Mount Everest in the one go. However, imagine if you do this every weekday for 1 week. That’s 100 minutes (almost 2 hours) of Maths study!! And you feel great about it!! Yes, it’s a small habit. But a habit is a habit; you’re starting to create a foundation from which you can build stronger study habits. 

For example, in the following week, you might decide to bump up the time from 20 to 30 minutes. And then to 40 minutes. And before you know it, you’ll be so engrossed in your study that time will fly!! 

All in all, start small and grow from there. 

2. Be reasonable with how much you plan to get done

Imagine this: You want to get lots of things done today. So you make a very large to-do list:

1. Write English essay. 
2. Attempt questions on quadratic equations. 
3. Make Science notes. 
4. Study for PDHPE topic test. 

You look at this list and immediately feel deflated because there’s so much to do. So you decide to take a 10 minute break. That 10 minute break soon turns into a 30 minute break. And that 30 minute break turns into a 2 hour break, dinner and a movie. 

And you get nothing done 🙁 

Why: Because you were unreasonable with how much you could get done in one study session. The key here is to start small, especially if you haven’t had an overly fantastic study regime before. Now, there’s two considerations at play here:

1. Reduce the amount of subjects you do. You might choose 1-2 subjects to study per day. Depth with your study is much better than breadth.
2. Be realistic with the workload for each subject. For example, writing a huge English essay is quite daunting at first glance. Perhaps you might break this task up into (1) gathering quotes and summarising them in TEE tables, then (2) making some paragraph plans for your essay, then (3) drafting things into written form. Stick to 1 of these ‘mini-tasks’ each day. Doing this makes everything far more manageable for you. It’s also another great way to see that you’re making progress on what you need to do because you can tick each task off. Celebrate the mini-victories!! 

In sum: Don’t overload your study days with lots of subjects and be realistic with how much you can get done in one sitting.

3. Block Your Time

Blocking time for particular subjects is a great way to stay in a routine. For instance, you might block in the first 30 minutes of post-school time for Maths for every weekday. For the rest of your time, you might alternate between English, Science, English, PDHPE etc. Having a routine for (1) when you are going to study and (2) which subjects you are going to study for makes the process of forming habits much easier.

Wrapping Up…

So there you have it: Our top three tips for forming good study habits. To recap, we have said:

1. Start small
2. Be reasonable
3. Block your time.

Good luck!!