10 Proven Habits of Highly Successful Students | Become a High Performer

In our previous video, we talked about 7 Habits of first class students. But not every student is keen about graduating with a first class. After all, life is not all about getting the best academic grade. And getting a first class is not a guarantee of success. Some students just want an above average grades. You can win a prestigious scholarship program even with a second class.

So first class or not? Not really a big deal. You don’t have to be a first class student to be considered a high performer. In this video, we share with you 10 habits of highly successful students. You don’t want to miss numbers 2, 4 and 9.

By the way, haven’t already subscribe to our video channel to watch more interesting videos like this. We will be sharing loads of valuable content in the following days.

1. Time management:

The major difference between high performing students and the average students is how and what they do with their time. High performing students set small incremental goals and pay attention to a clock. They don’t do what they feel like doing. They do what they have to do. When they don’t feel like it, just the act of getting something down on paper is enough to set off the motivation that leads to homework getting done on time, and projects getting started earlier.

2. They distribute their practice (they don’t cram)

The average student waits until the last minute to study for tests and exams. Hence they tend to compensate the urgency with cramming their notes. This can pay off in the immediate term, but when you need to learn on a deeper level, it backfires. Here is why cramming doesn’t work? Cramming only puts information into short-term memory, whereas learning over many nights and sleeping on it stores information into long-term memory. This is because of a concept called Distributed Practice.

Distributed practice (also known as “spaced repetition”), is just a fancy way of saying: study a little bit each day rather than cramming it all in the night before the test. Studies show that when students distribute their learning, they are far more likely to do better. If you have a test on Friday, instead of study for an hour on Thursday night, you would perform better if you took the same amount of time and distributed it over multiple days — 20 minutes Tuesday, 20 minutes on Wednesday, and 20 minutes on Thursday.

3. They know how to take notes in class

Some students get into class, pull out their notebooks and a pen, and transcribe everything the lecturer says like an efficient note-taking machine. Other students just attend class and listen or not. High performing students are somewhat in the middle. They express their inner creative by taking notes as they see fit. Drawing diagrams, linking notes to a mind map, whatever helps them better understand and remember.

4. They study using active recall

Whether through an app or through physical note cards, students who practice recalling key information from memory almost always do better on exams. The official name for this practice is Active Recall and the method is pretty straightforward. Here is how it works:

Write down the term, concept, or problem to solve.

Write down or recite the definition, explanation, or answer without looking at any notes or information.

Check your answer against your notes, and correct your mistakes.

In direct contrast to passively reading the textbook, or leafing through notes, this technique has been proven by research to dramatically improve exam performance, and is one of the least talked about habits of high performing students.

5. They learn from their failures

High performing students are not perfect. They also experience failures like everyone else but they neither dwell nor avoid mistakes. They believe their skills and abilities aren’t fixed but can be improved over time with practice and effort. As a result they are willing to go through the process of learning. With this type of mind set, high performing students are much more likely to dig into their mistakes and work hard to improve on them for the better.

6. They make friends they can study with

Some students are extroverts and have a vast network of friends they can reach out to at a moment’s notice. For others, making friends in class can feel like climbing a mountain. Regardless of their natural temperament, a high performing student has at least a few other classmates she can reach out to for class work. They don’t just make friends for social activity. They intentionally make friends for study reasons.

7. They don’t rely on their parents

A young man who won over $200,000 in scholarship for undergraduate, and late on master’s degree, said his parents had no idea he was applying until he won. They even objected to his traveling to the US to study, but he insisted. High performing students seek out learning opportunities themselves. They don’t wait for their parents to tell them about available scholarship opportunities or valuable skill sets to learn. They seek out knowledge and information themselves and learn what it takes to make the most of them.

The more a student can expand their abilities and level of competence independently, the better – because it set the stage for success in life when it’s time to experience the real world.

Watch the remaining point in the video.

Small behavioral changes lead to big long-term results. If you are yet to subscribe to our video channel, this is likely a good time to subscribe. Until next time, YOUR SUCCESS MATTERS.