HABIT ABILITY: ACHIEVE GOALS NATURALLY

Your life is a series of habitual activities that make your daily routine. Your thoughts and repeated behaviours form habits. In short, it is your daily practice. Anyone who has ever tried to start an exercise routine, quit smoking, or change a sleep pattern knows how powerful a habit can be. Habits seem to be more than behaviours - they seem to be a part of who we are. In another way, habits are just that - part of us. I am used to wake up at 4 am every morning without the help of an alarm. This has become a habit. Whatever the time I go to bed at night, I cannot sleep beyond 4 am. Whether it is an off-day or public or mercantile holiday, it does not affect my wake-up time.

After waking up every morning in the above manner, I pour a cup of green tea and go through my in-box in the outlook after taking a quick face wash. The second step of my daily calendar is to take some physical exercises for about 20 minutes. In that order, every morning, I have a pattern which has been built in to my brain. It is my morning path-way. It takes me on this path-way even without my knowledge.

Habits

Psychologists have researched and established the fact that everything we do is governed by impulse firing across synapses, or spaces between certain cells that guide communication in the brain. When any behaviour or pattern is repeated enough, the synaptic pathways associated with that pattern get used to being accessed. As a result, it becomes easier for impulses to travel along those pathways, and the behaviour seems "natural." In other words, to the brain, wake-green tea-mails-exercises, in that order, is practically instinctive. One action triggers the next.

Habits occur repeatedly in specific situations. Some habits are good to practice and some are not. Fastening your seat belt or attending to homework assignments of school at a specific time frame are good habits to practice. Habits such as eating too much or viewing too much of Hindi or English films in TV are bad habits which you need to break immediately.

Some personality development scholars tell that you can form or break a habit in three weeks, it is natural to be skeptical. To me, this three weeks period is very long. As was told before, to getting into the habit of waking up from my bed daily without an alarm took a few days.

Habits can make you or break you. Most of the time, it is the bad habits that get all the publicity. Smoking is detrimental to your health. Procrastination can cause you to lose a better job opportunity. However, good habits play a strong role as well. Walking daily can have wonderful health benefits.

Writing everything down in your calendar can ensure that you do not miss an appointment. Creating good habits can lead you to achieve your goals and success.

Get organised

In my view, the first good habit that you must bring into your life is to get organised. If you start following 5S techniques in yourself, getting organised in a systematic manner will not be a much problem.

Find the things that seem always to pop up and killing your productive time. Maybe you will face a problem in finding your pair of shoes or socks. One thing you could easily do is to have a proper place in your house and learn always to keep your things there. Maybe you have a hard time finding your books when you need to take them to school. Learning to stack them in a labeled rack giving separate colours for the subject wise will make things all the easier for you. A clean work, organised workspace is easier to work in. A calendar makes it easier to remember appointments.

Another good habit is to develop a system. Getting up fifteen minutes earlier will help insure that you are ready to go to school. Learn to be consistent with it as well. A simple, every day routine will be much more effective than doing something just whenever you remember it. Knowing what you are doing and why you are doing it will help you to focus on the goals that you want to achieve.

Learn to be in control of yourself. No one knows you better than you do. Sometimes you just have to learn to listen to yourself. Maybe you do not want to go to any outside parties the night before your O/L or A/L exam. Sometimes, not only you, even your family members will refuse to attend the party.

Learn how to tell your friends no, not tonight. Learn to tell yourself no, no rewards until you are done with your chores. Being a pushover is not going to make you happier; chances are you will just be more tired, angry and frustrated. Learn to say no to the things that you do not want, and yes to the things that you do.

Another habit is to learn to break down your goals. Setting your sights on one huge, impossible task is going to be very discouraging. Breaking your goals down into small, manageable steps that you can do makes them easier to accomplish and stick with. Small steps add up quickly, and you might be surprised at how soon you have reached your larger goal.

How are good habits going to help you reach your goals? Consider this: good habits create good time management. Good time management means that you get more things done. Good time management saves your time. To me, there is nothing called time management. All what you have got to do is to start practicing good habits through 5S. 5S is a tool which makes people more organised and it is developed by the Japanese. How much time is saved looking for your shoes if you always put them in the same spot. How much time is saved locating correct books if you have kept your books in the dedicated rack under visual control? Having good habits will help you to identify those things that are important to you and the things that are just wasting your time. Good habits define your goals. Good habits make you feel better about yourself. Good habits focus on results.

Study habits

A habit is just a behaviour that is repeated until it is automatic - your study habits are the ways that you study. Study habits can be "good" - which means they work and help you to make good grades - or "bad" - which just means they do not work and do not help you make good grades.

You can always change your habits and learn better ones!

Here are some good habits that will help you do better when studying:

1. Start studying right when the assignment is made - the longer you wait, the harder you are going to have to work to finish it!

2. Go to bed early. Children and teenagers need to get eight hours of sleep every night in order to be alert and healthy! Most modern kids do not get that much of a sleep, and they feel tired and sluggish most of the day.

3. Eat a good healthy breakfast. Eating sugary food makes you to form a bad habit and it will put you on alert even at the very young age. Sugar wears off after an hour or so and you get a "sugar depression" where you suddenly feel even more tired and sleepy!

4. Pay attention in school. During class, listen carefully to the teacher. This is not being done by the students at present. Ask questions if you do not understand what the teacher is explaining. Try to think about how the information will be useful to you. Stop thinking about something else.

5. Plan - make a study timetable where you plan what you need to study on what day; think of that time like a job, and do not get distracted and go do something else instead. If you find difficult to make a timetable on your own, seek assistance from a counselor.

6. Make short notes. For this you could use Flashcards. Short-notes help you learn materials easily. The best way to memorise a list of facts - vocabulary words, math facts, dates, or anything at all! - is to make a set of short notes. Write each term onto a card, and write the definition or answer on the back of that card. Keep these cards with you at all times! Any time you have a few minutes of free time, take out your cards and study. Read the first card - if you know the answer, then put that card at the back of the stack and turn it upside down; if you do not know the answer, read the answer a couple of times and then stick that card back into the middle of the stack so that you will have to try it again later. When you get all the cards turned upside down, you have learned that material!

7. Study with friends - this means study, not socialise! Another term we use this method is combined study. Quiz each other - one of you read a question aloud and the rest take turns trying to answer, like on a TV game show. One person read the textbook aloud and the rest pay attention and ask questions or help each other understand it. Read over each other's work to check for mistakes. Alternatively, you can just study quietly at the same table.

8. Get rid of the distractions - turn off the chit-chat (cellphones, chat rooms, text messaging and live conversations), switch off the TV and video games, use the computer only for looking up facts or writing your papers, and turn the music down or off.

9. Take good notes - if you keep a notebook with important information for each class, then when you need to study, you just have to use your notes instead of reading the book over again. See related questions on how to take good notes.

10. Instead of procrastinating, work on long term assignments daily.

11. Organisation is the key, so start by writing down everything you need to do, regardless of whether you think you will remember it.

12. Instead of studying the night before, study a little each night.

13. Review what you learned in class every day when you get home, before starting homework. In addition, a good tip is to review what you did in class the previous day at the beginning of class when you have a few minutes before the teacher starts talking.

You need to update knowledge for every day. If possible every minute and whenever you get a chance, update your knowledge.

However, you must pay attention to the following summarised tips effectively, if you need to succeed in your exam as a ranker.

1. Take notes effectively.
2. Recognise that in order to succeed you need to make decisions about your priorities, your time and your resources.
3. Understand what you read.
4. Schedule your study.
5. Make better time to study.
6. Make good climate and surrounding to study.