Mixing Things Up

« Back to blog

An interesting post over at Study Hacks that suggests that changing study patterns can help you to study better. I think that changing your work patterns can also make you better at what you do regardless of whether you are a student or not. Asking yourself "is this the best way to achieve my goal?" or "is there a better way to do this?" or otherwise just realising that "this is stale I want to try something different and let serendipity help me along" can help you to break out of those patterns that you just fall into. Taking into account the results of this kind of reflection can lead to an improvement in your work habits. Sometimes though we do need to take a step back, tear down the set of habits and work patterns that we have constructed, and start to build something new and ideally more effective. Some of the benefits of this approach are listed in the Study Hacks article, e.g.

It frees you from the grasp of particularly devastating hidden assumptions.

It acknowledges the fact that you learn more about studying as you progress through your career.

It introduces novelty.

I have edited benefit 2 however because I don't think that this is a good technique only for students, as an academic at the start of my career I am still trying to refine effective work habits that will lead to a sustained output of high quality research. Partly this is of course just down to putting in time and hard work, just like in everything else, but I can improve my chances by improving my work habits.

Posted

Views

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo.

Strange Aeons

My Other Sites

Affiliates

Tags

Archive

Mixing Things Up