It’s easy to follow a routine during the school year. That is because of consistency and organization. You wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, go to bed. (Or, in the case of this school year, log in to an online class, do homework, go to bed.) It’s also easy to develop bad study habits as well! Therefore, how can you avoid bad study habits?
Many bad study habits occur in the daily routine, many that most of us aren’t even aware of! But some of the bad study habits that are part of the routine can cause more harm than good. Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid falling into these habits with helpful tips.
Identifying which habits are beneficial and which ones are ineffective is a key part of helping students learn. The choices and actions they make every day can contribute to making studying, learning, and school more manageable.
Whether students are learning in class or online at home, the more they understand how their study habits and routines impact their learning, the easier that learning, homework, and studying can become.
What’s the Difference Between a Habit and A Routine?
A routine is a sequence of actions regularly followed.
A habit is a behavior done with little or no thought.
Habits and routines are both regular and repeated actions. However, bad study habits happen with little or no conscious thought, whereas routines require a higher degree of intention and effort. Source.
For example, students that work on their homework after dinner, may browse on social media rather than just get started. Often bad study habits are actions that we are not even aware that we are doing!
Avoid These Bad Habits For Better Grades:
- Staying Up Late:
Sleep is essential to maintain a healthy body and mind. It’s tempting for students to relieve stress after a day of schooling by watching videos or playing games all night. Students of every age need their rest—between eight to ten hours per night, even for teens. Oversleeping can negatively impact your morning routine and not sleeping enough can seriously disrupt focus and comprehension in class.
Read: Is Pulling an All-Nighter Worth It?
2. Eating Unhealthy Food
Good nutrition doesn’t just make the body strong: eating healthy food contributes to healthy growth and development. It also contributes to chronic disease prevention, and strong school performance. Without a nutritious diet, students can too easily resort to getting their calories from snacking on too unhealthy foods. High sugar levels create mental crashes, and poor concentration levels make it difficult to accomplish tasks. These foods can reduce focus, make children more tired, and cause long-term health effects.
3.Waiting Until the Last Minute
Procrastination is an unhealthy habit to develop at any time for both children and adults. Most children want to relax after a day of learning with some screen time. However, the routine of putting off homework until last minute rather than getting started right away can cause a scramble. That scramble can lead to feelings of stress or becoming overwhelmed. Late-night studying or homework cram sessions also leave students feeling tired and distracted during class the following day.
Read: End Procrastination With Productivity
4. Too Much Time On Digital Devices
In this digital age, students can develop a habit of surfing the internet for hours or binge-watching a series. Screen time for kids can be unhealthy. A study found that kids who use social media for entertainment were 23% less likely to finish their homework.
Too much screen time also affects other areas of well-being. Screen time for kids impacts completing tasks, caring about doing well in school, and staying calm when faced with challenges.
Building a new routine with better habits is challenging! It takes self-awareness to recognize that a habit is detrimental and a lot of effort to change a habit. Knowing which habits are not helping school success is the first step toward making a positive change for this school year!
