Self-awareness the secret to getting back on track

There are three main steps to academic success.

1. Setting goals

2. Devising a plan for achieving those goals

3. Sticking to the plan while making room for adjustment as better approaches become apparent.

However between goal setting and goal achievement, quite often life happens. We get offtrack and find ourselves being tossed to-and-fro by distractions and the like. Quite often we are not even aware that we have gone off course and by the time we wake up to what has occurred it is often too late.

So the question must be asked, what can we do to prevent this common problem? The secret is self-awareness.

Wikipedia describes self-awareness as an individual’s ability to “consciously know and understand their own character, feelings, motives and desires”. Basically it is an awareness of the internal factors that drive our behaviour. In order to ensure that we stay the course when it comes to our academic goals we need to check in daily with our ‘internal compass’ so to speak. This will ensure that we are not running on auto-pilot and will enable us to immediately course correct when we find ourselves veering off course.

There are many tools we can use to check-in daily with ourselves. I’ll discuss two.

Journal

This involves daily writing about your day and reflecting on whether your actions for that day brought you closer to the achievement of your goal. If the day was productive, then you can then set ‘mini-goals’ for the next day to bring you even closer to your main academic goal. If at the end of the day you find that you were distracted and didn’t stick to the plans you had for that day, reflect and write down what can be done to ensure that you still achieve your goal despite your deviation from the plan you had set for yourself.

Do a thought dump

Quite often we don’t get to work on our academic goals because we are unable to focus. This lack of focus may occur because we are feeling depressed. Or we may be worried about something. Or maybe we are distracted because our crush gave us a smile in class and the resulting flood of emotions that we are facing is just too much. The truth is all the above scenarios could be happening individually or simultaneously at a given moment and it is possible to be oblivious to it all. When you find that you are unable focus, just sit quietly and do a thought dump. When you are unable to focus, quiet yourself, ‘go inward’ and ask yourself ‘why am I not able to focus?’ Write down the answers that come to mind. There is no limit, write down as many reasons as possible. As you write, it will become clear as to what is causing your lack of focus. Once you see what is written, you will now be in a better position to course correct and you can take decisive action to get back on course.

Academic success is actually within the grasp of most students. It’s just a matter of staying the course and using self-awareness to get oneself back on track whenever one deviates from the academic goal that has been set.