De-clutter your school setup

While you get all the information together to get some time management going, let us have a look at some other things that go a long way to gettng yourself organised in such a way that success is more likely to happen, giving your grades every chance of improving. A good next thing in that direction is to de-clutter your school setup. What? School setup. Let's go. Do you use a pen with blue ink or black ? Maybe it's green or purple or orange. Maybe it's a mix of all of these or maybe even a pencil.

What about your notes where do they finish up? A stack of loose leaf pages all over your room, locker and scrunched up in your bag? Various size notebooks. Various quality notebooks. Subjects all mixed with each other in a confusing mix of vital information that is often hard to retrieve when we are under stress such as when we are studying for exams or trying to go over a particularly hard topic. If your parents buy your stationery, how do they know what to get?

It is better to get everything you use  at school as standard as possible. Use a notebook that suits your style. Pick maybe two or three colors of pen and a pencil and use them for all occasions. Do not use light colors as they get hard to read if you are working off your notes on a regular basis. As long as the colors are dark, it will be OK. Do not write in the same color your teacher uses to mark or comment on your work. They will find it annoying. It will be hard for you to distinguish positive comment and marks from your normal work. Annoyed people can't help but choose wrong if a decision is close.

What you need to do is standardise as much as possible. Funnily enough, you gain headspace by doing this. You don't have to think what color pen/pencil, what sort of notebook, what equipment should come to class, what bag I will carry it in???? It is just all right there ready to go. When it comes time to study, History notes will be in the History notebook, Math in the Math notebook ... Easy. It just puts a bit more relax in your life. When you read, the colors of ink you read will be the same for all subjects, easier because the brain does not think something different is incoming with each color change. Ink (your choice of color but dark, remember) means something important is being looked at, so let's think about it.

Does all this seem too simple? Well, it's not. Standardise what you can. Stop worrying about a stack of fancy colors or being lazy by putting four or five subjects into one notebook. Get a notebook for each subject, use only two or three dark colored pens, one highlighter, 2B pencil for easy erasure and easy reading. Get the minimum of necessary equipment. Do not clutter up your bag and desk with myriad trinkets. You need to be a Success At School. Take the line of least resistance.

Don't forget to keep collecting information about everything that uses up your time. Keep a notebook for this too. School, work, sport, leisure, time out, sleep, practise, community service; everything you can think of that takes time, write down.

Good luck with your studies. Have a great day

Time management I

Time management systems, workshops and advice earns millions of dollars for consultants. Time management applies to all activity associated with your endeavours to find Success At School. There are possibly hundreds of books printed every year on ways to manage your time. That means that it is an important topic for all of us to consider. There is an expert on every corner. We all need guidance as we go through life, especially when we have a myriad of tasks to be worked on simultaneously with due dates stacked one on top of the other as they are in school. The day to day requirements of school forms some of the most complex demands we will ever face. School life is very busy. We really do need help to cope.

How do you begin to model all that needs to be done so it is done in time, on time and represents your best quality of production? Math, English, History, Art, part time work, family commitments, sport, occasional entertainment and breaks, friends, sleep ... arrrrgggh. How will it all fit? Does fitting it all in just seem like a dream, something that has always been in the 'too hard box'? What if you heard that only a few hours of planning and preparation is all you needed to put everything into place so you knew from the outset that it all pieced neatly together? Well, it's true.

The first thing you must do is begin to record all you do outside school; include anything that uses up time, including recovery time for things like sport and late night entertainment. Try to find the key things that are repeated regularly and those that come up frequently. These can be catalogued a long time before they occur and will form a skeleton for your time management exercise. Leave out nothing. If you insist on watching television, put it down, especially if there are set times.

As you record the outside of school time eaters, start to outline the demands that school places on your time. Gradually a detailed picture of your life's time demands will emerge. Now you have some really valuable information that will help you with study, work and play. Think about its significance. It will actually help you find more time in your life because time management is not about filling your time up, it is about freeing up time. The time is freed up as you get used to prioritising what devours and wastes time. Can you give up some TV time? Do you have other flexitime which can be moved to another time slot or even used for something more pressing? Do not forget our aim. Success At School that leads to success in life; to give ourselves more opportunity to get a firm foundation for a better future. That's what we want.

If you can, keep all this information in a notebook. You can then track time wasters and time savers over a long period and make this notebook a great tool. Take it seriously, it has grand repercussions. We will explore the next part, once you have some data to work with. Go on, get going.

Good luck. Have a great day

Success at School also means better comments

As you grow into this period of self reliance and perpetual improvement, it will seem that marks become only part of the picture. They are still one of the most important parts as it is these that will get your foot in the door. Also important to people taking you on as a trainee, a student for further studies or as an employee are the comments written about you. Many places of learning have an interview process to see if the potential student is both academically able to do the course and also fits into their vision of what the student body and future supporters of the alumni should be like.

Get yourself a few positive written comments. Get them from more than one source. Ask for them whenever you think someone will write you one. Try to add them slowly. There is no rush to do it all at once. People are suspicious of super rapid change. Maybe you could volunteer for something outside of school, something close to your heart. Help out in the community in an area you can see yourself working at for a while. Do not do it just for the sake of doing it. Have a serious think and do something useful; something that has some meaning for you. Selfish purpose always shows up. Written comments from the community are powerful allies in your step into the future.

Mixing work at school with that in the community reflects someone with maturity and can do attitude. It will gradually change you in a positive way. As always, make it small and grow the commitment to suit your timeframe and ambition. You will find that people come to rely on you, will ask for advice; you will become an expert. As your skills and knowledge grow, so will your position of authority. 'Good for you', 'Thank you for helping', 'I don't know what I could have done without your being here' are phrases you will be hearing. Hmmm. Don't they sound good. Very well worth it.

You will find it quite hard at first to juggle school with this new direction but stick with it and the world around you will change. Positive things will be attracted to you. The feeling of joy within will transfer to the sometimes mundane school classroom because you know there is more to it than those four walls. Success At School within those four walls will seem to flow more readily as planning and management skills grow. You will feel well rewarded.

So you may say your teachers don't like you, especially when you want to start improving your marks and make use of school while you are there. You may not fit the image of your teacher's ideal student at the moment but that will change. Good thing is, you don't have to change much to be successful and change your future to a full and prosperous one. Community work will lead to many crossroads and will definitely give you the positive comments you need written about who you really are to supplement improving grades and comments from the school.

Good luck. Have a great day.

There isn't a switch, there is a method

You have made the choice to ignore others, to give yourself a future career and do what you need to do to make that future align itself with your vision. It will not be a future determined by circumstance and environment that overwhelms your ability to choose life's course, pushing you into that rut that so many remain stuck in. Absolutely fantastic and good job for having the courage and strength to make the choice. Don't forget, you will always be able to find some sort of support; friends, family, teacher, fellow worker, even supportive blog. Be assured that once you get going, the whole process becomes easier and more obvious the more you do to make it happen.

So, now what? Flick the switch and instantly I'm on my way to a wonderful career and future happiness. Not so fast There is no switch that makes you go from off to full on. You can't expect to go from neglect of your learning and having vague goals, from little or no participation in group discussion, to become a focussed and achieving student overnight. Do not let anyone tell you there is a quick fix. That's often the way to make things stay just as they always were. So don't be fooled. Also, don't be talked into spending lots of money on a system guaranteed to change your life around. Often the only thing these 'kits' and 'solutions' change is that your bank account looks more sad.

Not to worry, it can still be done, at vey little cost, except for a bit of time and effort. The best sort of changes you want to experience are more a gradual build up of what you need to do, little by little, in order to set yourself up for a greater chance of Success At School. The growth you envision will come if you follow a few simple steps. Do not be worried or concerned that you will make mistakes, we all do. Do not be worried that it could get a bit hard at times. You will be able to overcome obstacles if you just persist with your plan to set your future along a positive path.

The further you go, the easier the path to Success At School becomes and the clearer your goals emerge in your mind. So don't look for that magic switch or a 'guaranteed (for just a few measly dollars) system', just begin. Use your energy and learn to use all the help and energy around you. Find the support that is there. Commit to some changes. Success will be yours through sustainable improvement.

Good luck. Have a great day

Prepare, for Success At School

As you slide into your chair in class, are you ready for what's coming up next? Biro, paper, text, paint brush, calculator. Do you have what you need to make a good record of what is going on? Is your brain switched on to gathering as much information as possible? Are you willing to ask questions if you are stuck? Have you pre-read anything or quickly reviewed the notes from the last lesson? No? Well, the more of these you can tick off, the more ready you will be for Success At School, the easier it will come.

If you are working at a building site, you are not much help if you turn up to work and you don't have the right tools or the required safety gear. Have you prepared the materials you need; maybe you had to order paint or bricks or roof trusses. It they are not on site, the building can't go ahead. You lose money. What if you do not have the knowledge to complete the task in a successful fashion? The tasks ahead may prove insurmountable. Not good for the boss's opinion of you. Not good for your Success At Work.

You are that worker. Get everything ready, be ready and success will be drawn to you. Do you just copy notes straight off the board or are you cleverer than that? Do you add your own personal comments and phrases to clarify what is discussed? Makes revision much easier, so doing this prepares yourself a bit more for important exams or builds stronger notes for future reference.

Be kind to yourself. Reduce stress created by bothersome teachers harassing you because you are ill-equipped for the job. Come prepared, be comforable, be assured that success will attach itself to someone like you who works for it, plans for it and is prepared to make it happen. You will be able to work efficiently and effectively, readily absorbing new materials and seeking help to fill any gaps as they happen.

Get to know what works for your learning. Don't kid yourself about what you do now. Be prepared. Be ready for Success At School.

As you can see most of what we need to do for Success At School is not about hours of study, swotting in the library, being an obnoxious nerd. It is about being serious in what we do and thinking about where we want to be in a few years and then aiming for it. Good luck. Have a great day

Make some sacrifices

So you don't have all the right class tools, including the proper mindset. We find times in our lives when things stack up against us and we find it difficult to set ourselves up for best performance and results. Some school equipment is expensive, some is not. How will you get the things you need to work effectively in school? Make sure you have the best chance of success at school. Do not lose focus on the goal. It may prove hard but just, step by step, tread the path that secures an improved future. Sometimes a little sacrifice goes a long way.

A small sacrifice can go a long way. For the cost of a burger? Well a burger may be good for your physical and mental, even social health if you eat with friends. Forgoing that burger gives you a few dollars that will buy a good notebook, couple of biros, some pencils, a cheap desk lamp could easily be bought if you are careful with the burger money over a couple of weeks. This little inconvenience (?) could well help form the backbone of your career. You will find other ways to buy the necessary materials and pay other costs to aid your learning. Is it worth it? You bet it is.

You can go to school with all the gear you need. It will feel neat to have what helps the whole learning process. Others around you may be ill-prepared and without focus but you are making small sacrifices (but travelling the right path) to change that and give you motivation to guide your steps towards a grand future. Just do it.

Empty your brain for exams??

In the last post the advice was to empty your brain in preparation for exams. It is the working part of your brain you want to empty to leave it free to do what it does best; solve puzzles, find solutions, suggest pathways. At first you may think it's a stupid idea to empty your brain just when you need it the most. So what are we talking about here?

What comes after 3? 4. After 121? 122. After p? q. What does c a t spell? At some stage in our education we came to know this automatically, often after a lot of perseverance on your part and encouragement from teachers and parents. Still, if you are reading this, you can recognise a lot of words and without having to think, know what they mean. Some years ago you would puzzle over the answer to 5+6=? You probably know this with little thinking required. You can write sentences. It is easy to put a label on trees, dogs, the urban landscape and thousands of things you are familiar with. All this was hard at some stage but now uses little brain power. Solutions come quickly. 'Without thinking' we often say. This is what we mean when we say empty your brain. It's all there, catalogued for future use, hardwired in and ready for retrieval.

In your brain you have gradually built a huge store of information. So read the information you need well before the exam. Learn the formulae off by heart, just like you did years ago with alphabets and counting and spelling. Practise each type of problem until the stucture is familiar at least. It is the familiarity which is important. What are the correct steps for a math problem, order for an essay, style for a history report? Let yourself know these and you will be able to empty your brain ready for exams. Let your mind do its best. Don't clutter it by cramming information in at the last minute. If you do this, there are few connections that have been built between the bits of information needed, and you have to work extra hard on each problem solution to get the right pieces together.

What this means is reviewing, asking questions and consolidating your knowlege in smaller chunks, basically as you come across them in class. As soon as you can re-read the material, see if you can complete work without the use of notes or friends. If you can't do this ask questions and fill in the gaps. Let your mind do its best work at exam time. Start 'emptying your brain' from your very next class.

We'll gradually go through notetaking and study skills later. That will help with exam preparation too.

Good luck with your studies. Have a great day. If you want a hand, feel free to email.

For best exam results, empty your brain

How often do you go into an exam after a cramming session? Up till early morning. Night after night up late for the whole exam period. Poor diet. Little exercise. Feeling bleahh. Head full of a gooey mixture of math, history, art, english, language, social needs, work annoyances. Arggggh.

If you go into an exam with your brain in this condition, you will add to the stress of the situation as well as impede the information flow around your brain. All the answers, clues, suggestions your brain has to offer will be smudged and blocked by too many irrelevant signals and queries. Best to get rid of them. Just as we suggest you de-clutter your study area, you should also de-clutter the working part of your brain. Mmmmm. Yes a big Mmm because it sounds a bit hard. Well, not really. Just like the rest of this site, we are looking for doable ways to ensure Better School Marks.

So your brain is presented with a problem in a test. This is placed into an area that begins to work on the solution under the frame of key words it recognises and signals it adds to that frame to begin a solution process. If this area is full of bits and  pieces you are trying to hold there in temporary (until end of exam) storage as a result of recent cramming, then it is really hard to sort out useful ideas from all the rest. There is too much to do to make sense of the question and pull out relevant information from that mixed in with everything else. Brain goes into overload, stress builds, brain now has to cope with this too. Poor brain. Poor me. Recognise the situation?

Sounds like a disaster. Sounds like you? I think we've all been there. The fix? Empty your brain. That sounds a bit wierd. Empty your brain just as you are getting ready for testing. How does that work? Well, if you have nothing, or much less than usual in the working area, the area where questions go to be dealt with, your brain can easily view the information and draw more relevant pieces from storage. The pieces of information are then fit together easily to make up solutions. The less clutter in this working area, the easier it is for your brain to see exactly what is asked, figure out what you know about it, and retrieve what it needs to solve the puzzle and bring you a solution. Utopia. The exam becomes a more comfortable environmnent with greater chance of success.

So, how can we make this happen? You need to make it happen. Become familiar with each topic. So familiar that recall of information when you need to outside of the exam situation is relatively quick and easy. This means that the content you need is being hardwired into your brain where it is catalogued for easy future reference and retrieval. The only way to do this is through practise, review and careful reading of your notes. If you can achieve this, your mind can relax when you sit exams. In this relaxed state it can operate at its most efficient and effective best. Treat each subject as a sport you are trying to get better at. More practise gives more skills gives more success and more pleasureable feelings about oneself. Oh yeah, I like me because I can do things I found hard at first.

Just like all your workspaces, the brain too needs de-cluttering. Make its solution solving processes smoother and you will get Better School Marks.

Good luck with your studies. We wish you every success. Follow us to see if we can help. Email if you want to.