New environments, same techniques. Here’s a quick post on how you can freshen up your approach to online learning.
1 Set SMART Goals
This is the most important part of the process. Your long term goals are what give you the mental stability to push through all the pain that comes with learning. Keeping in mind what you want to achieve 5 years from now will help you to be more respectful of YOUR time so that you don’t rob your future self.
Here’s a post on how to set smart goals.
2 Plan Ahead
Breaking down these wonderful long term goals into manageable chunks is the key to killing procrastination. Keep a firm grasp of what your immediate next step is, and don’t worry too much about the details to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Block out specific times to do activities and always include a DUE DATE.
If your plans don’t go as you intended, please don’t beat yourself about it. The feeling of failing a plan is what makes you feel like planning, it’s an effective strategy towards building your future.
A good rule of thumb is to always keep a 70% completion of your planned activities. Even then, if this doesn’t work out don’t beat yourself up! If you find you are having issues with making a plan consistently, then take a step back and look at how you are planning. Perhaps you are being too restrictive and you need to lighten up a little.
3 Manage Your Time
Scheduling your plans around your commitments is important. School and Work Life balances tend to share some similarities. In fact, I think that it’s during school days that you start to figure out what type of balance you’d like for your life.
Whether you want to learn to play an instrument, spend time with friends or volunteer on the weekends — rope in just the right amount of time for your studies.
If you do have an active lifestyle, then you’ll have less time to study — check out these tips on effective study strategies.
4 Recommit Often
Every couple of weeks or so, you’ll need to revisit those long term goals that you had at the beginning. This is key in online learning since there won’t be anyone looking over your shoulder.
Life gets in to a bit of a rhythm and you can find yourself losing track of your progress towards the goal you want to achieve. Sometimes, you might forget what that goal was in the first place! We almost never realize when this happens, so it’s important for us to schedule time to recommit in the future.
In your recommitting time, you just want to remind yourself of what you want to achieve and evaluate the steps to get there.
5 Get Some Rest
Sleep is the most productive thing that you can do!
If you’re like me, I often have trouble falling asleep because my mind is super active before bed. You can try some of these sleeping tips to see if they can help you.