Saturday, April 11, 2015

Know How to set your goals for total Student life



Whether you have small dreams or lofty expectations, setting goals allows you to plan how you want to move through life. Some achievements can take a lifetime to attain, while others can be completed in the course of a day. Whether you're setting broad overarching goals or planning specific manageable goals, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment and self-worth. Getting started can seem daunting, but we'll show you how to build up to even the loftiest dream.

Determine your life goals. Ask yourself some important questions about what you want for your life. What do you want to achieve: today, in a year, in your lifetime? The answers to this question can be as general as "I want to be happy," or "I want to help people." Consider what you hope to attain 10, 15, or 20 years from now.
  • A career life goal might be to open your own business. A fitness goal might be to become fit. A personal goal might be to have a family one day. These goals can be incredibly broad.
Break the big picture down into smaller and more specific goals. Consider areas of your life that you either want to change or that you feel you would like to develop with time. Areas might include: career, finances, family, education, or health. Begin to ask yourself questions about what you'd like to achieve in each area and how you would like to approach it within a five year time frame.
  • For the life goal “I want to be fit,” you might make the smaller goals “I want to eat more healthily” and “I want to run a marathon.”
  • For the life goal “I want to open my own business,” the smaller goals may be “I want to learn to manage a business effectively” and “I want to open an independent book store.”
Write goals for the short term. Now that you roughly know what you want to accomplish within a few years, make concrete goals for you to begin working on now. Give yourself a deadline within a reasonable time frame (no more than a year for short-term goals).
  • Writing your goals will make them harder to ignore, consequently making you accountable for them.
  • To become fit, your first goals may be to eat more vegetables and to run a 5K.
  • To open your own business, your first goals may be to take a bookkeeping class and to find the perfect location for your bookstore.
Make your goals steps towards life goals. Basically, you need to decide why you're setting this goal for yourself and what it will accomplish. Some good questions to ask yourself when figuring this out are: does it seem worthwhile? Is now the right time for this? Does this match my needs?
  • For example, while a short-term fitness goal might be to take up a new sport within 6 months, ask yourself if that will help you reach your bigger goal of running a marathon. If not, consider changing the short term goal to something that will be a step towards meeting the life goal.
Adjust your goals periodically. You may find yourself set in your ways concerning broad life goals, but take the time to re-evaluate your smaller goals. Are you accomplishing them according to your time frame? Are they still necessary to keep you on track towards your larger life goals? Allow yourself the flexibility to adjust your goals.
  • To become fit, you may have mastered running 5K races. Perhaps after you have run a few and worked on improving your personal best times, you should adjust your goal from “run a 5K” to “run a 10K.” Eventually you can move to “run a half marathon,” then “run a marathon.”
  • To open your own business, after completing the first goals of taking a bookkeeping class and finding a location, you may set new goals to obtain a business loan to purchase a space and to apply for the proper business licensing through your local government. Afterwards, you can move towards buying (or leasing) the space, then obtaining the books you need, hiring staff, and opening your doors to business. Eventually you may even work towards opening a second location!
Make your goals specific. When setting goals, they should answer the highly specific questions of who, what, where, when, and why. For each specific goal you make, you should ask yourself why it is a goal and how it helps your life goals.
  • To become fit (which is very general), you have created the more specific goal “run a marathon,” which begins with the short-term goal “run a 5K.” When you set each short-term goal—such as running a 5K, you can answer the questions: Who? Me. What? Run a 5K. Where? At Local Park. When? In 6 weeks. Why? To work towards my goal of running a marathon.
  • To open your own business, you have created the short term goal “take a bookkeeping class.” This can answer the questions: Who? Me. What? Take a bookkeeping class. Where? At the Library. When? Every Saturday for 5 weeks. Why? To learn how to manage a budget for my business.
Create measurable goals. In order for us to track our progress, goals should be quantifiable. "I'm going to walk more" is far more difficult to track and measure than "Everyday I'm going to walk around the track 16 times." Essentially, you'll need a few ways of determining if you're reaching your goal.
  • “Run a 5K” is a measurable goal. You know for certain when you have done it. You may need to set the even shorter-term goal of “run at least 3 miles, 3 times every week” to work towards your first 5K. After your first 5K, a measurable goal would be “run another 5K in one month, but take 4 minutes off of my time.”
  • Likewise, “take a bookkeeping class” is measurable because it is a specific class that you will sign up to take and go to every week. A less measurable version would be “learn about bookkeeping,” which is vague because it’s difficult to know when you’re “finished” learning about bookkeeping.
Be realistic with your goals. It is important to evaluate your situation honestly and recognize which goals are realistic and which are a little far-fetched. Ask yourself if you have the all the things you need to complete your goal (skill, resources, time, knowledge).
  • To become fit and run a marathon, you will need to spend a lot of time running. If you do not have the time or interest to devote many hours every week to running, this goal may not work for you. If you find this is the case, you could adjust your goals; there are other ways to become fit that do not involve spending hours and hours running.
  • If you want to open your own independent bookstore but you have no experience running a business, have no capital (money) to put towards opening the business, and you have no knowledge about how bookstores work, or you’re not really interested in reading, you may not be successful in achieving your goals.
Set priorities. At any given moment, you have a number of goals all in different states of completion. Deciding which goals are more important or time-sensitive than others is crucial. If you find yourself with too many goals, you're going to feel overwhelmed and are less likely to accomplish them.
  • It may help to choose a few top priorities. This will provide you focus when conflicting goals come up. If it's a choice between completing one or two minor goals and completing one top priority, you know to choose the top priority.
  • If you’re working towards becoming fit and you have set the smaller goals “to eat more healthily,” “to run a 5K,” and “to swim 1 mile, 3 days per week,” you may find that you do not have the time or energy to do all of those things at once. You can prioritize; if you want to run a marathon, first running a 5K may be more important to your goal than swimming every week. You may want to continue eating better, because that is good for your overall health in addition to helping you run.
  • If you’re working towards opening your own bookstore, you may need to obtain a business license and be sure you can qualify for a business loan (if you need one) before you begin selecting specific books to carry in your store.
Keep track of your progress. Writing in a journal is a great way to keep track of both personal and professional progress. Checking in with yourself and acknowledging the progress made towards a certain goal is key to staying motivated. It may even encourage you to work harder.
  • Asking a friend to keep you on track can help you stay focused. For example, if you're training for the big race, having a friend to regularly meet up with and work out with can keep you on track with your progress.
  • If you are getting fit by working towards a marathon, keep a running journal in which you record how far you ran, how much time it took, and how you felt. As you improve more and more, it can be a great confidence boost to go back and see how far you’ve come since you started.
  • It may be a bit more difficult to track your progress towards opening your own business, but writing down all of your goals and sub-goals, then crossing them out or indicating when each one is complete can help you track the work that you’ve done.
Assess your goals. Acknowledge when you have reached goals and allow yourself to celebrate accordingly. Take this time to assess the goal process—from inception to completion. Consider if you were happy with the time frame, your skill set, or if the goal was reasonable.
  • For example, once you have run your first 5K, be grateful that you've completed a goal, even if it seems small one in comparison to your bigger goal of running a marathon.
  • Of course, when you open the doors of your independent bookstore and you make your first sale to a customer, you’ll celebrate, knowing that you have worked towards your goal successfully!
Keep setting goals. Once you have achieved goals—even major life goals—you will want to continue to grow and set new goals for yourself.
  • Once you run your marathon, you should assess what you’d like to do next. Do you want to run another marathon, but improve your time? Do you want to diversify and try a triathlon or an Iron man race? Or do you want to go back to running shorter distance races—5Ks or 10Ks?
  • If you have opened your independent bookstore, do you want to work on implementing community events, such as book clubs or literacy tutoring? Or do you want to make more money? Would you like to open additional locations or expand by adding a coffee shop inside or next door to your bookstore?
Use the SMART method to create actionable goals. SMART is a mnemonic used by life coaches, motivators, HR departments, and educators for a system of goal identification, setting, and achievement. Every letter in SMART stands for an adjective that describes an effective way to set goals.




The simple guide will be helpful for all Student in the World



School is an important part of your life. It helps you to determine what you will be doing in the future and learning how to learn well sets you in a good position for lifelong capability. There are many ways to improve your grades so that you do really well at school. Whether you're a failing student desperate for a higher grade, or a less-than-perfect student struggling to get the last point, or simply wanting to shift from the easy mark zone into the higher marks, this simple guide will be helpful for you.
Have your necessary materials all the time. You don't want to be unprepared for sudden note-taking or a pop quiz by discovering you forgot your pencils/pens/erasers/and if that happens you will waste time and might miss some important information.
Be organized. Being organized helps you work better, relax and be ready to find and hand in stuff on time. There are plenty of ways to self-organize and it is best that you find the method that works best for you. The key is to be able to find what you need with ease, including the retrieval of information and your notes. Set up a system as soon as possible, including things like a good computer filing system, a good paper filing system, a desk-clearing policy (at least weekly) and a neat arrangement for your textbooks, writing books and associated reference manuals and books.
  • Make use of highlighters, bright Post-It tags and other items to label and highlight your organized items. Color coding works extremely well for lots of people, especially busy people and those who can't abide reading labels!
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Keep a calendar. Choose one that can fit in your folder or binder. In this calendar, write down all your tests and assessments, and if your school has different academic classes on different days, write those down too. Also make notes of study sessions or time you plan to spend doing homework. This keeps you aware of upcoming tests and other events, so you can study and prepare for them properly.

Set long-term or short term goals. Even if you don't know what you want to do when you grow up or what college you want to go to, your goal can be just to give yourself as many opportunities as possible.

Keep your attendance up. Your attendance is important at school. If you don't go to school, your grades will obviously drop fast because you will have gaps in your learning that are difficult to backfill. If you have a genuine illness or other issue preventing you from attending school, have a parent, guardian or friend talk to your teachers about doing catch-up work from home.
Write down notes. Notes will help solidify material in your head and will also serve as important study tools before a test. Be sure to write down everything important that the teacher goes over. If it helps, ask for a print out of the material beforehand so you can focus on taking notes on what the teacher is saying, not just copying down what is on the board. If the teachers write something on the board and they underline it chances are it's important or it will be on future tests.
Make sure to answer and/or ask at least one question per class. This will show your teacher that you're actively participating in class. But more than that, it also forces you to pay enough attention to be able to ask/answer questions. As a result, you'll do much better on tests and quizzes. The ability to ask questions is a skill that you'll need throughout life, and ensures that you can keep check on the motivations and ideas that you come across in various walks of life.
  • When you pick a question to answer, make sure you know the answer and the question is not too easy. Don't worry about asking too many questions; it's the teachers job to help you.
  • Participation in class is often an important factor of your grade. Raising your hand once or twice in class doesn't do any harm, especially if you remember that "there is no such thing as a stupid question" when it comes to learning in class. Many times people will be wondering the same thing but lacked the courage to ask it!
·         Listen actively. Don't just ask questions or talk. Learn to listen too. Eighty percent of the questions you find on any test were explained in class. The key to many understandings of the materials presented is often through listening to the teacher's explanations.
Revise/study at home. Do this in a quiet place with no distractions. If the computer is in your room, take it out or go to another room. Don't study with the radio on! It might help you write more but on the day of the exam the only thing you'll remember will be the lyrics.
  • Make a schedule. Making a self-schedule could help you save time for self-study/revision as well as keeping you on track on what you're doing and what to do next.
  • Rewrite your notes. Yes this may sound boring and time consuming, but it's been proven to help you remember more of what you wrote down. It also help you to figure out problems you might have had in the class.
Put effort into your homework. Though it seems like a torture device, homework is a way of controlling and making progress outside of the classroom. This isn't very comforting the night you have two essays and algebra to do, though, so remember to do the actual homework and keep up with the workload. If you're having serious difficulties, talk to your teachers and parents to come up with a schedule for your homework.
Take breaks now and then. Instead of multitasking, set aside a certain amount of time to do homework. When that set amount of time is over, take a 20-30 minute break to keep your mind from getting tired. When that time is up, go back to doing 100% homework.
Start large assignments and projects early. If you have two weeks to do a project, rather than putting it off til the last three days before it's due, start working early. This way you can spend enough time planning, researching, and asking any questions you have about the project. The whole experience will be much less stressful, since you won't have to rush through it. You'll also have plenty of time to make the project as good as it can be, which means that you'll get a better grade.
Take a practice test before the exam to further your understanding of what you need to study. Be careful, though, taking dozens of practice tests is a much less effective way to study than combining one or two with other forms of study.
Study during the holidays and vacation from school. If after the holidays you have a test and have not reviewed over the holiday period, your mind will have switched off and you will have forgotten a lot of things that you have learned before the holidays. Therefore you are likely to fail the test or do badly in it.
  • Get a book at your grade level for any new class subject you will be taking next term such as chemistry, and read or scan it closely. Look at all the illustrations, charts, definitions, and learn things like the chemical symbols (C is carbon, H is Hydrogen, Zn is zinc, Au is gold, Ag is silver.). Read chapter summaries.
  • Treat the holidays like any weekends: Yes, you can relax and have fun, but study at least 3 times a week so you don't forget everything you have learned.
  • Ask your parents or friends to sit with you and review over what you have difficulty with, or that you need to memorize and recite.
Study with friends Reviewing with your friends during free time can help keep you focused.
  • Make sure that you work with people who you can focus around. Any time you spend chatting instead of studying is wasted time as far as the study group is concerned.
  • For some people, working in a group may be hard to do because friends can distract you from your studies. Or, you may be someone who actually works better without other people around; do not view this as anything wrong, it is simply about your personal makeup––for example, you may be a deep thinker who needs time and space to digest issues fully. Be aware that this does not mean you're not capable of working in teams; quite the opposite, you are more likely to be a good team player if you understand the issues properly.
Ask for clarifications when you don't understand things. Asking for help if you don't "get" what the question is asking is the only way you're going to find out what to do. Pretending you know and making you up as you go will only prolong the agony and can reduce your marks.
Learn from your mistakes. Don't see mistakes as personal flaws; failures are a guidance in how to do better. Pay attention in class when something is being corrected. Mark your work clearly and carefully so that it is useful in preventing other errors in the future. You will learn a lot more if you use your mistakes and failures to guide you to the correct approaches and results.
Meet with your teacher outside of class. If you do not understand a concept during class time, meeting with your teacher outside of class will help you understand it better and will also build a strong relationship with you and your teacher.
Ask for help. Looking over guidebooks may help you in classes with which you are struggling. Alternatively, you could go to the teacher for extra help, have a friend coach you, or ask your parents to hire a tutor.
  • Never be afraid to ask your tutor for help. They can help you with any subject, and there is no need to feel dumb or ashamed that you need help.
Be persistent! Don't only start well and let it fall apart. Keep your study plans active and working for your success. Reward yourself when you do well.
Relax. Don't freak out over tests. Start studying more than one day before the exam so that you have plenty of time to ask questions when you don't understand.
Sleep well every night. Sleep will improve your memory and concentration skills, which in turn will lead to you doing better in school.
Eat a healthy breakfast. Food is energy for your brain and having food in you before school starts can help you concentrate and focus. If you can't get breakfast for some reason, speak to your teacher about school programs or assistance for breakfast.
Join extracurricular activities. This will allow you to make more friends, do something fun, and have something to add on a college or even job resume to show people that you are a well rounded-individual.
  • Find something that you enjoy doing to balance out the work. But don't spend too much time on it that you don't get to your homework.
Make sure you study and be determined to do well. There is no need for hours on end of studying, but see how much time you have until the exam and divide the amount into equal amounts of studying each day. Remember to balance it out. Go out with friends at the weekend and maybe on one weekday, but make sure you don't forget about the work.

  • Make sure you can see the board or multimedia in every class. It is better to see than to seat yourself awkwardly just so you can be with your best friend.
  • Read more to improve reading speed and comprehension. If you can't read well, find a tutor such as an older student, a teacher, someone who is willing to listen as you read.
  • Being smart is cool. Don't panic if you think that just because you are smart, you are a dork. Clever people are people who will do well in life. If anyone bullies you over being smart, stand up to them and say something like "Well, when I am the successful one, you'll still be trying to keep up!."
  • Involve your parents. Ask them to check your work. Maybe you or the teacher marked the work incorrectly.
  • Double check your answers if you are not sure it is right.
  • And most importantly, relax!
  • Use the Internet as a tool rather than for entertainment. Switch off all tabs containing games, videos or social networks so that you are not tempted to be distracted.
  • Don't worry about the other kids in your class not doing their work; they are not your problem. If you focus on your work, you will get the good grades, not them.
  • Read all kinds of books. This way, you'll learn how to understand different kinds of text and it'll become interesting.
  • If you have a friend that distracts you in class, tell them you will see them at recess or lunch and sit beside someone who will not distract you. Friends who distract you can be the downfall of your school grades.
  • Be attentive in class and listen carefully what your teachers say.
  • Don't sit by someone you know will talk to you. Focus more on your studies.
  • Don't stress too much. As long as you've done your very best, you can be satisfied. Besides, worrying won't make your grade any higher, and it'll just distract you from other classes.
  • Sit straight. Posture is important, if you're aching in class it could distract your concentration in general.
  • Don't give up hardworking. Getting bad grade once isn't the end of the world. Just keep working and trying!