These five self-improvement tips will help you as a learner. They’ll improve your performance AND help you show your teacher, tutor, or boss what you’ve learned!
If you’re at school, college, or university, you presumably want to do as well as you possibly can. Did you know that there’s plenty you can do to improve your own performance both inside and outside of the classroom? Today we’re talking self-improvement – that is, the things you do to learn, grow your skills, and put them into practice.
Set SMART goals
If you want to learn new things and develop new skills that you can use, you’ll need to have a clear idea of where you want to go. That means setting goals. To be as effective as possible, your goals should be SMART:
- Specific: there’s no room for vagueness or generalities here!
- Measurable: can you easily assess if you’ve achieved success?
- Achievable: unrealistic goals will just make you feel frustrated and set you back.
- Relevant: how does each goal tie in with your larger plans and ambitions?
- Time-bound: the goal must have a date tied to it.
An example of a vague goal is “I want to improve my maths skills.” An example of a SMART objective might be “I will study a practice paper each week this term with the goal of achieving a B grade in the March mock exam.”
SMART goals give you a clearer roadmap. They also mean you can easily look back and see what you’ve achieved – and how you got there.
Understand and embrace your learning style
We don’t all learn the same way. I’m a book learner. I like to read information and make written notes to absorb it. Other people are visual learners, while some prefer audio or video content. Hands-on learning is a very common learning style in which people learn by doing.
What is your learning style? If you don’t know, How to Study’s learning assessment is a good place to start.
Once you know your learning style, embrace it. That might mean looking for resources in the format you prefer, asking a teacher or tutor to show you how to do something, enlisting a friend to study together and test each other, or changing up your revision style.
You’ll improve far more quickly – and enjoy the process far more – if you study in the ways that work for you instead of struggling along with a learning style that doesn’t fit.
Keep a record of your progress
Nothing is more motivating than looking back at your progress and realising how far you’ve come. Therefore, keep a record of your progress as you move towards your goal. This will give you something to compare your current and future performance against and show you just how much you’re improving.
Let’s return to our previous example in which you’re trying to improve your maths grade. Each time you do a practice paper, check your answers, and make a note of your score. You can use an Excel spreadsheet or just a sheet of paper to do this. Over time, as your understanding improves, you’ll be able to look back and see that your marks have been steadily improving.
Remember: the idea isn’t that you have to do better every time you try something. Progress is rarely that simple or linear. But you should see a general trend in the right direction. If not, it’s time to reassess your processes or try something different.
Put what you’ve been learning into use
The best way to solidify knowledge and make sure you really understand it is to put it into practical use. So keep your eyes open for real-world situations where you can test your understanding.
Sticking with the maths example, you might practice your newfound skills by calculating the total price of several items when you’re out shopping or working out a percentage tip on a restaurant bill without a calculator. If you’ve been learning a language, you might find a native speaker of that language and have a conversation with them to see how it works in real, everyday speech. And so on.
Very few things we learn are purely theoretical with no practical application at all. So get creative and find the practical applications for the skills you’ve been learning! Practicing them in real-world situations will embed your new skills much more effectively.
Support others in their learning
There’s a (possibly apocryphal) quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Whether or not Einstein ever actually said this, it’s a useful thought. One of the best ways to test your understanding of a subject is to explain it to someone else.
Once you’re reasonably sure you’ve got a good grasp of a subject, why not support others in learning it too? This can be very informal (such as helping a friend study), or through more formal arrangements such as mentorship and peer learning programmes.
Always remember that your goal is to break down a complicated concept and explain it in simple terms. In other words, to make something that seems difficult feel more accessible. You’ll help someone else, you’ll feel great about how far you’ve come, and you’ll be able to put your new skills to good use. Win-win!
Take charge of your learning
We can all take steps to improve ourselves and boost our skills through taking charge of our own learning. With a few simple hacks, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goals.
What are your favourite self-improvement learning tips? Share them with your fellow learners so they can benefit, too!
This article was published on 22nd December 2020.
This article was updated on 21st December 2021.
