Life is too short to be ordinary. Don’t just
be an average student, be a super student. These tips will help to transform
you into a star performer at school or college.
1. Create and improve your own study system that produces result. Having a
study system is much better than no system at all.
2. Cultivate a burning desire to be successful at school/college. Every moment
think of success, talk about success, dream about success, and act for success.
3. Learn to motivate yourself. Make use of reward and punishment mechanism to
keep you going like a raging bull.
4. Defeat procrastination at all cost. Do you work according to your plan on
time, every time.
5. Have self love as your core value. It’s not about being selfish, but about
caring for your own progress.
6. Always support yourself. If you can’t support yourself, you will collapse
when no one is there by your side. Self support is a foundation to make you
strong.
7. Be independent. Make decision and take action on your own without relying on
other people all the time. It’s time to grow up from a boy to a real man.
8. Avoid spoon feeding. It’s for the weak. You have hands and legs to do things
on your own.
9. Be a positive person. Be both happy and optimistic.
10. Focus on your study goals. Don’t get distracted easily. Write down your
goals and stick them on the wall where you can see it every day.
11. Overcome peer pressure. You have to know what you really want and not
succumbing to your friends’ opinion and social expectation.
12. Develop a healthy pride. Not too much pride until you become an egoistic
monster, not too little until you lost your confidence. Be proud of your
success.
13. Don’t just compare performance with your friends. Compare it with yourself
as well. You are your greatest enemy, and constantly doing better than before
is a sign that you are progressing. Your value graph is moving upwards all the
time!
14. See you study life as a reality game. That makes planning more fun and
motivating. You tend to be a strategist if you see it as a game with
opportunities and loop holes.
15. Be humble. Learning never stops here and you have a lot of room for
improvement. Don’t show off your result too early. Play low key and grow
further.
16. Learn how to learn. The better you learn, the better you perform. There are
many learning skills out there for you to master. Get books by Tony Buzan and
Edward de Bono.
17. Master memorization techniques.
18. Master thinking skills – analytic thinking, problem solving etc.
19. Develop your creativity
20. Master speed reading. You save time and energy (efficient).
21. Play mental games that will sharpen your mind.
22. Meditate frequently. It trains your mind to be disciplined and cultivates
emotional control.
23. Develop word power by learning vocabulary. Learn no less than 5 new words
per day.
24. Keep a diary. It will make you a good writer, or at least it makes you a
prolific writer where ideas flow freely.
25. Read a lot of books – not school text books but non fiction and literature
books. More input equals more output (productivity). It develops your knowledge
substance.
26. Learn to develop imagination power – not just visualization, but other
senses as well, until you can simulate reality in your mind effortlessly.
27. Tke your health seriously. Your body affects your school performance
directly and indirectly. It sucks to feel sick and tired every time you study.
28. Make a commitment to sleep properly – with both quality and quantity. Bad
sleep leads to bad day, every day.
29. Eat properly, go for balance diet. Good food gives you sufficient energy.
30. Exercise regularly. Aerobic exercise and energy work helps most. If you
have extra time, develop your muscles and do stretching.
31. Learn energy work such as Qigong, Yoga, Tai chi etc. Its benefits are
countless.
32. Breath properly. Deep abdominal inhalation brings more oxygen to your body.
Proper exhalation gets rid of stale air. You are breathing all the time so
optimize it to benefit yourself every second. Good breathing keeps you
energetic the whole day.
33. Take emotional health seriously. Emotional problems might cause you to give
up on your study and drop out from school/college. It can cause serious damage.
34. Learn Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It’s very effective in combating
stress, anger, sadness, and other negative emotions. There a lot of information
and demo about it on internet.
35. Listen to motivating music while studying. Every one has their own
favourite types of music. Use them to spice you up.
36. Start to study early in the semester to avoid sudden panic attack,
procrastination, and other unexpected events that might cause you to fail exam.
Starting early also means you don’t have to work a lot in one day like those
late starters.
37. Always be efficient so that you put in less energy and time to get better
result.
38. Keep things tidy. Tidy place promotes productivity.
39. Master time management.
40. Convert long text into short bullet point form for easy memorizing.
41. Use highlighter, color stickers, note pads etc. to manage information.
42. Keep a list of content (with title and subtitle) of a subject. Tick those
that you have studied, highlight those that you are weak in. This way you have
a “map” to manage and plan your study.
43. Try mind mapping to organize study content.
44. Make complete databases for graphs, diagrams, formulas, definitions etc.
With databases you can study essential information easily. You won’t like to
study things that are scattered about in a textbook.
45. Cover all chapters of a subject instead of focusing only a part of the
subject. Go for the big picture and then slowly improve individual parts.
46. Being aware of subjects or chapters that you are weak in. These are spots
that will leak water into your ship. Take repair work seriously.
47. Do exercises smartly. Recognize the pattern of answering questions so that
you have a formula to solve further questions.
48. It is not wrong to copy or learn from friends’ homework as long as you
understand and learn something from it. It might save you a lot of time
(although I don’t really encourage it).
49. Take snapshots of writings on black/white board instead of busy jotting
down notes and miss the words coming out of teacher/lecturer’s mouth.
50. Master goal setting.
51. Organize your stationary. Pencils should be sharp at all time. Good
stationary is a sign of good efficiency.
52. Write important information on small cards so that you can bring them
anywhere for instant studying.
53. Be street smart and plan strategy for your exam. Things are not
straightforward all the time. Prepare to change to adapt to new environment.
54. Find good teachers who are motivating. If your teacher sucks, find a good
tuition teacher or mentor.
55. Learn about exam behaviour. Does your teacher give sure win tips? Is your
lecturer super strict or lenient? Which subjects have low passing rate? Lay
down your strategy according to each subject’s exam behaviour.
56. Maintain a good relationship with your teachers/lecturers. They have the
power to pass and fail you. However, you don’t have to be a sucker to do that.
57. Make friends, a lot of friends. Wide social network is beneficial to your
study.
58. Form intelligence network. Pass year papers, exam tips, and other
information can be passed around through email and photocopies. Your friends
and seniors form such network.
59. Create a study group. Having many brains is better than being a lone wolf.
Study group can act as intelligent network, work in concert for high
efficiency, exploit each member’s strength, and many more.
60. Do past year papers and learn the questioning pattern. Some questions might
repeat themselves.
61. Ask experts on internet. Learn from educational websites like wikipedia and
Howstuffworks. Watch demo on Youtube and VideoJug.
62. Keep a few information resources. You get info from newspaper and magazine
subscription, seminars and workshops, websites and blogs, and many more. Make
use of RSS.
63. Train yourself to have good handwriting. It forms good impression to sell
your image. Also, you are better at conveying massage when your handwriting is
beautiful.
64. Manage your risk. Make sure your risk can be coped by your ability. You
don’t want to take too many subjects in one semester or choose a too difficult
optional subject.
65. Always ask advice and tips from your teacher/lecturer.
66. If everything else fails and you think you might fail in exam, ask help
from teacher/lecturer. They might let you pass at borderline, which is better
than a big fat FAIL.
67. Avoid being a nerd who studies 9 hours a day. Nerds don’t prove themselves
to be smart. They are both hardworking and inefficient.
68. Learn things and develop new skills outside your course. The real world is
more than just what you are studying.
69. Master soft skills. Soft skills are far more important than your school
performance once you enter working life. I’m not kidding.
70. Learn to live life. Life is more than studying. You have to learn to be a
human and enjoy all aspects of life.