Self-discipline is the way to keep ourselves focused on our study. But, it can be difficult to stay self-disciplined throughout our student life. In this article, I am going to share with you the self-discipline tips I used as a student that actually works!
Self-discipline tips for students:
- Eliminate distractions
- Know your own inclinations
- Reward yourself after studying hard
- Have planned goals and strategies
- Use technology
- Make decisions in advance
- Create a routine
Further in the article, I will explain about these self-discipline tips. You will learn why they are helpful. Also, learn how you can apply these tips into your student life starting from today.
What Is Self-Discipline?
Based on the CollinsDictionary: “Someone who is self-disciplined has the ability to control themselves and to make themselves work hard or behave in a particular way without needing anyone else to tell them what to do.”
Simply, self-discipline is an ability to control ourselves to get things done.
Why Is Self-Discipline Important For Students?
During our time as students, we will have many classes to attend, assignments to complete, and exams to prepare. All these activities will require us to be self-disciplined to do them.
Being self-discipline is especially important when in college. This is because college is a place where we will have to manage much of our learning by ourselves. College is less structured and less guided in their instructional education.
Therefore, the ability to be self-disciplined will be important to get things done in school and life.
1) Eliminate Distractions
When we want to build our self-discipline, we should first identify the distractions in our life. Being able to identify our distractions demonstrate our awareness of them. Only then will we be able to eliminate them.
A common distraction that affects many of us are our smartphone. We may be caught up in messaging our friends throughout the day, or scrolling through social media to find the latest happenings in our friends life.
You will want to eliminate these distractions when building self-discipline, as they will drain your energy and willpower. Without your energy and willpower, you will find it difficult to stay self-disciplined on any tasks.
The advice here is to put your smartphone to “Do not disturb” or “Airplane” mode when you are working on a task.
Another distraction you may come across in your student life is over committing yourself to group activities. These group activities can be clubs and/or societies in your school. Over committing to too many group activities can be immensely distracting.
Like any distractions, you will find that over committing yourself to group activities can drain you of your energy and willpower. That means you might find it hard to stay self-discipline.
If you find yourself committing to more than 2 or 3 group activities, consider eliminating the group activities you are least interested with.
Find the distractions in your life that always make you less discipline, and begin eliminating them.
2) Know Your Own Inclinations
Take time to become aware of yourself
Knowing your own inclinations mean that you are aware of your own needs and uniqueness. A need might be your tendency to become hungry at specific time of the day. Or you might have a unique inclination towards certain time of the day, which you are most energized.
It is important to be able to identify your own inclinations, as they will help you to become more self-disciplined if you work with them.
For example, if you feel most energized in the afternoon each day, then it might be best to schedule your most challenging task at that time. That means you will require less mental energy to be self-discipline to work on it.
3) Reward Yourself After Studying Hard
Building and maintaining self-discipline is linked to your motivation. You will want to keep your motivation level high. It will help make it easier for you to stay disciplined on your task.
You should treat yourself to something, such as a break upon completing a task. This will be a small boost that energizes and recharge your mind. While it is a small effect, doing so often, can build the motivation that leads to better self-discipline.
4) Have Planned Goals And Strategies
Identify the goals you want to achieve, and plan them into your schedule. As the saying goes, “What gets schedule, gets done”. Also, you should always have strategies to reach each of your goal.
Together, a planned goal with a strategy to reach it can help you to stay self-discipline. The reason is because a planned goal with a strategy has a visible and workable path to achieve it. This helps to reduce the level of self-discipline you need to stay with your goal.
5) Use Technology
You can use technology to set reminders to help you stay self-discipline. For example, you might want to set a timer for casual website browsing to limit the time you spend on the activity. This way you would not get overly distracted by website browsing and forget about the next task.
Technology can also be used as a means of monitoring your daily activities. It can help tell you whether you are spending your time effectively to achieve your goal.
With technology, you can adjust your daily activities to be more aligned with your self-disciplined agenda to reach your goals.
6) Make Decisions In Advance
It is always good to make decisions in advance. That means you will be less likely to procrastinate on getting things done when it is time.
Some decisions you might want to make in advance will be prioritizing and scheduling of your tasks.
Take a no compromise approach to decision making. Once you have decided to do something, you should follow through. Try not to change your mind when it is time to do the thing.
By taking such an approach, you will be more likely to complete your task, and you will be able to stay disciplined.
7) Create A Routine
The best tip of staying self-disciplined in your life is to create a routine. The routine will help you to maintain daily consistency on your tasks. Once you have internalized a daily routine, it will become effortless, and you will not need to actively think of it.
Remember your goal of a daily routine is to help you stay self-disciplined in reaching your goals. Therefore, you need to structure a routine that maximizes the work on your goal.
A standard routine for a student’s day can be 2 hours of study revision at 3 pm to 5 pm daily. Maintaining this study revision daily will help the student stay self-disciplined in his study. Thereby achieving good grades for his studies.
Think of what kind of routine you would want to establish to help you stay discipline. Importantly, you have to be realistic, and establish a routine that you will likely follow. This will be crucial if you are trying to stay disciplined on a difficult task.
Keeping your routine realistic by focusing on tiny steps at the start can provide the required momentum to work towards the ultimate goal.
So, what routine will you setup today to be more self-disciplined? Share them in the comments below.
The Most Important Thing About Self-Discipline
After reading all these self-discipline tips, if I were to narrow it down to one thing you should do to help you be more self-discipline – It is CONSISTENCY. Being consistent will build up your self-discipline. It is unrealistic to expect yourself to be able to suddenly focus on your task, if you have always let yourself get distracted.
Starting from today onwards, think of the tasks you want to be consistent about. Then start working on it consistently!
Related Questions
Is self-discipline the same as willpower? Self-discipline and willpower are two different ideas. But their underlying ideas are very similar.
Is self-discipline a skill? Self-discipline is a skill. It is like any skill, where you can spend time and effort to improve on your self-discipline.
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