What do successful students have in common?

Do you feel envy of those students who are always getting good grades? They breeze through their studies as if it is not a big deal and get the good grades while you just look at your paper and wonder where I went wrong. But what you need to know is that even these students worked very hard to earn that success. Success is never something that comes in a fluke, and you have to earn it.
To be a successful student,  we need to cultivate a proper mind set and maintain a  few common yet constructive habits. These are the 10 most important habits we need to consider while studying:
1. Ensure a good environment:  We need to make sure we have an ideal study environment. We need to ensure that place of study is well organised and we have all the necessary things required like pens, books, notebooks, even water.
2. Say 'no' to distractions: Without determination, success cannot be achieved. We need to avoid any kind of distractions and catastrophic thinking. Also it is better to keep away our phones or any other distracting devices while we are studying.
3. Perseverance: No one learns at the first attempt. We need to avoid comparing ourselves with others because this will make us feel bad and lose confidence. Success only comes after many failures.
4. Maintain discipline and timetable: We should set a particular study-time. It is important that we plan when we are going to study.  We must create a consistent daily study routine. When we study each day at the same time, taking lessons will be regular part of life. Studying for four to five hours at a stretch with no breaks is not realistic. It is wise to take small breaks after finishing each subject.
5. Focus on progress, not perfection: If we set our goals to be perfect rather than progressive, we will eventually be disappointed. Therefore, it is better to concentrate on progression as this helps to develop ourselves little by little every day.
6. Go beyond academic text-books: It is wise not to completely depend on textbooks. Students should look for other related topics in the library, Internet or any other source. This will increase their knowledge, capabilities and eagerness to learn. The successful students gain more experience in more than one area. Gaining knowledge, skill and experience will make them a more equipped person to make a greater impact in the world.
7. Understand first, summarise later: We should never try to memorise without understanding anything. Memorising is one of the shallowest levels of processing and the shallow levels are the hardest to retrieve. We should try to summarise our lectures or notes.
8. Study with a group: There is a phrase, "Two heads are better than one." which is especially true when it comes to group studying. Working together with our friends allows us to get help, teach each other, exchange ideas and internalise the subject matter.
9. Review, review and review some more: The more we review, the more we will improve and the better we can remember. Before starting working on an assignment, we need to make sure we have revised our lecture notes. Another important thing, we need to revise what we have studied all our week on weekends.
10. Always test yourself: We can improve our exams by giving a pre-test or quiz at our home. We can solve the past question papers or quizzes. Testing helps to get immediate clear feedback on how much we know about something. Repeated self-testing significantly improves the remembering power. Successful students always learn and become aware from their mistakes.  
Learning should be like an investment. By investing more study hours efficiently throughout the term is enough to earn good grades. Successful students remain open to continual learning.  Most of us take study as a way of passing an exam, studying is an effort to learn and develop our skills. If we give our full dedication on learning in a constructive way, studying will be much more fun and successful.
The writer is a third year student of Economics at East West University,
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