Liz’s puppy Lola
Have you found yourself feeling anxious about your GPA, and wondering how you can boost it? Look no further! There are a lot of little tips and tricks for you to utilize to put your best foot forward and succeed. Besides the obvious doing the readings and studying, there are other more psychological hacks you can use to work in your favor. They might have subtle effects, but every little bit can help. Check out the ones we’ve put together below!
Listen to Instrumental Music
Listening to music can help students focus and prepare for homework and exams. Instrumental music is especially good for this, as your brain will not be struggling to comprehend the words you are hearing while at the same time attempting to learn and understand the material you are going over. Check out our Spotify playlist article for music for every study situation.
Avoid Multitasking
While multitasking can be useful in easy, mindless tasks, it is not helpful in studying. It can hinder your critical thinking, and bring down your productivity. It is hard for people to switch from one task to another without losing focus. More likely than not, if you have assignments or exams in multiple classes, the preparation you need to do for each class will be different. Instead of switching from one to another and completely changing your working habits, consider working on one class for a few hours, and then switching to the next. This will help you stay focused for a solid amount of time, and then give your brain a “break” when you change things up to work on another class.
Consider Your Colors
Colors can impact your mood and productivity. Depending on what you’ve got coming up, think about how you can use colors to your advantage. Consider using red notebooks or pens for a class that struggle to pay attention to, blue for calming down on the day of an exam, and white for starting a new topic. For more information on how a color can help you in the classroom, check out our article on it.
Structured or Productive Procrastination
You may be thinking, “Wait…what?” And that’s a fair question. It seems like it can’t be real, right? But it can! There is a concept called structured (or productive) procrastination, which is a fantastic way to trick your mind into working on the topics you are trying to avoid. Typically, people tend to generate lists of things they need to do, and order them by importance. In the case of structured procrastination, simply make the studying or homework you need to do “easier” than another task. If you know you absolutely hate cleaning your room, put studying on the list before that. Don’t enjoy doing the dishes? Do the same thing, and it’ll make doing your schoolwork much easier.
Baby Animals
This is probably one of the most enjoyable ways to boost your productivity, and thus help you in the classroom. A study done by Japanese researchers suggests that looking at pictures of cute baby animals was shown to boost productivity in research participants. Say what?! This is the perfect study break excuse; head over to your favorite search engine and look at all the kittens, puppies, and other cute animals that you can.
—
Besides using these tricks for improving your studies and getting better grades, you’re still going to have to put the work in. Use our college match tool to find out what schools are a great fit for you, and learn more about them on our site.
