Name: New Year's Resolutions for Students - Study Tips - Good Habits
Uploaded: 2020-03-06T17:42:23.000Z
Duration: 6 min 33 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We’re here to help you be a GREAT student.

Here’s a personal question: Do you make New Year’s Resolutions?

We do, both in January and at the start of the school year (which feels like another

It’s a great feeling, getting a fresh start and thinking about how to improve.

That’s really the whole point of this series, isn’t it.

So let’s talk about how to MAKE resolutions, and how to KEEP resolutions.

First, let’s think about what makes a good resolution.

I’m not going to resolve to become President of NASA.

A good resolution is one that is actually achievable, with a little focused effort on

This should also be something that is personally important to you.

I’m not personally excited by marathons, so I’m not going to make a resolution to

My resolutions always seem to be about learning something - big surprise.

Don’t make a resolution that’s vague, like “I’m going to get healthy.”

Pick something very specific you want to accomplish.

Break it down into small, concrete, do-able actions.

As in if I want to get better grades, I will set aside 30 minutes every day after class

Or if I want to improve my Japanese reading skills, I will study 10 Japanese characters

Think how I’ll be able to take very specific actions to keep this resolution.

I’ll put 10 flashcards in my pocket every morning.

That makes it easy to pull them out and study a little when I’m taking a coffee break

Another way to pick a resolution is to think about what’s a good habit you want to adopt?

I want to take a 20 minute walk every day.

Exercise is good for the brain, it reduces stress, and it’s a good way to spend breaks

If I genuinely stick to taking a walk in the fresh air every day, I’m going to be much

And I’ll have developed the kind of habit that could last a lifetime.

Or maybe there’s a bad habit you want to break?

If you smoke, you really, really should stop.

It stinks, it’s expensive, and it causes cancer.

Now don’t go overboard trying to remake yourself into a completely different person.

It’s much easier to keep track of one resolution than a whole bunch of them.

Especially since people who break resolutions often say it’s because they’re just too

There’s just too much going on in my life to pay attention to!

Every day, I’m putting 10 flashcards in my pocket.

It helps if you keep track of your progress.

Have your heard of this trick from Seinfeld: Don’t break the chain?

If you mark off every day you successfully kept your resolution on a calendar, you see

It plays a nice little trick on your brain.

You can see how much good work you’ve done, and you don’t want to mess it up!

It’s a little added incentive to keep going.

Our friend Simone Giertz (you’ve probably seen her work making interesting robots) made

a beautiful engineered version of the resolution calendar.

Every time you do your resolution, you get to light up a day.

She made this beautiful thing to help her keep her resolution to meditate every day

for a year, to make that a new healthy habit.

Hey, that gives us an idea for another video!

That’s a really useful skill to help you be a great student.

If you succeed for 350 days of the year, isn’t that something to be proud of?

How would you treat a friend who slipped up?

You’d be understanding and encouraging.

Another thing that can help is to keep a daily journal entry about your resolution.

Make a note of the days that were easy - what did you do that made it so easy?

Or, put another way - on the days that were really hard, can you figure out what made

Did you forget to pack a healthy lunch and so you got fast food instead?

Did you forget to write down your assignment in your planner, so you didn’t write your

This kind of self-reflection can lead the way to real change, where it becomes easier

and easier to make your resolution a true habit, something you always do, as a regular

Have you heard the standard wisdom that it takes 21 days to make a new habit?

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New Year's Resolutions for Students - Study Tips - Good Habits

specific

genuinely

routine

progress