This article will give a slightly different take on the topic of developing a good study habit. While most articles on the subject are telling you good habits to develop, this article will tell you how to actually develop them.

The difference between those who fail, and those who are highly successful, generally comes down to the development of habits. The difference between bad destructive habits and good productive habits can completely change your life. For example, bad habits could lead to a life on the streets; good habits could lead to a life on a private tropical island. Or to bring it closer to home, it could mean the difference between an A and an F.

Habits are Easy

One of the greatest things about a good study habit is that it doesn't require much discipline. To the observer it looks like it requires lots of discipline, but for the person with the habit it can be easy, enjoyable and completely natural.

So developing good study habits is as much about developing something enjoyable as it is about getting on with important work. As an example, I began university enjoying the subject matter of my course, but not liking the hard graft of writing 2000 to 3000 words essays. By the end of my course, I loved doing the work.

There are a few ways of making a task more enjoyable, but the simplest is actually to just get into the habit of doing it. Most tasks are not actually that bad once we start doing them, but if we in the middle of an enjoyable activity, it can be difficult to stop and get on with work. Turning something into a habit means you don't need to summon the motivation; instead you just start doing it without thinking about it.

Once you start doing a good habit, you will automatically begin to associate it with the rewards it brings. Start studying a little every day, and you will start getting better results. Develop the habit of eating well, and you will feel healthier and your mind will be clearer. The natural connection you make between hard work and results, will help the motivation develop itself.

Bad vs. Good Study Habits

But most people don't take the time to develop a good study habit. If there is suddenly homework to do, their pre-existing habits get in the way. If the default is to come home from school, for example, and watch a bit of TV, it then becomes difficult to stop that and get on with important homework.

But develop the habit of getting on with your work straight after you return home, and it's the watching of rubbish on TV that becomes the chore.

Cue... Habit

To make a good habit, there needs to be a cue that sets you off and makes you do the habit. If you have a routine, this may be connected to the time of day, or to the proceeding task. For example, in the morning, the first thing you may do is step in the shower. You don't really think about doing it, you just do because that is what happens every day. In this case the cue is getting out of bed. Everytime you get out of bed, you step into the shower.

Other examples include: getting home from school (cue) and beginning your homework (habit); going to bed (cue) and reading a book (habit); seeing an overflowing bin (cue) and emptying it (habit); or even realising you have a deadline tomorrow (cue) and finally getting on with your work (habit).

I like to work every day, 7 days every week. For most people this is not desirable or even practical. But since I currently work at home it makes sense. Since I don't head off to school, or to work, I associate home with work. The weekends are the same as any other day for me. My computer still works, my books can still be read, and I can still think just as clearly. It is far easier for me to keep up the same routine as in a normal weekday, and then just make my workdays shorter.

Since I am involved in the same routine everyday, it is easy and I don't think about it. The whole process is automated, and it would actually be difficult for me to sit down in front of the television and watch rubbish all day. I'm not programmed to do that.

However, I can still take time off. There are a few triggers that distract me from my work: If a good film comes on I can stop and watch that; if a friend comes round I'll spend time with them; or I can go out and leave my work completely behind. If any of these things happen I completely stop thinking about my work and I go and enjoy myself. But when I am at home on my own, my default programming is to work. I almost can't help it, a bit like some people can't help staying in front of the television all day.

Consistency

The reason I can't help working when I have spare time, is because I have developed the habit of acting this way and I am consistent with it. But if I were to take every weekend off, it would stop being a habit and become a chore.

This is the Monday morning syndrome. After a nice relaxing weekend where you've had the chance to lie in and catch up on your sleep, you suddenly have to go back to the old routine. And changing back is difficult. Yet so many of us do it every single week. It's not getting up early that's difficult (unless you're not getting enough sleep), the difficulty is not getting up early every day.

What you do need to do to create a good study habit, is to have a consistent routine based on some external factor. In my case my routine is exactly the same every day. I get up, shower, grab breakfast, sit at my computer, check for any important correspondents, and then start work. But if I were on holiday, this would be completely different. My routine is not just set to time, it is also set to my location and to other factors such as whether I have guests or not.

Consistency is key. If you decide you will go to the library 3 days out of 5, you are less likely to keep the habit. But if you go in there 5 out of 5 times, you will be more inclined towards success. You may even go in there accidently when you do not intend to! One comprimise would be to always go in there on specific days. In this case the cue becomes more specific. You may, for example, always go there after your Monday lecture with Dr Smith.

Location

One type of cue we can attach a habit to is location. If you can set a location where all you do is work, then all you need to do is convince yourself to go to that location. Once you are there, you will fall into your habit. The library, your office, or your study are obvious choices.

If I go to stay with a friend, my routine completely changes. I fit into the new environment and adapt. And I don't think about work. But as soon as I return home, I make sure I return straight to my good habits. I don't want to start associating the place where I work, with slacking off.

Doing work at home associates work with home, and you may never be able to divide the two. But give yourself an office, and it becomes much easier to separate them. Holidays are another great example. The links to our environment are one reason why it is important to change locations when we really want a proper holiday. You can act totally differently when you are on holiday because you are in a completely different location. I've also experienced profound changes every time I move house.

So work out what your cue is. Is it the time on the clock, is it walking past the library, is it getting out of bed, is it finishing breakfast, is it turning on your computer? Then follow that cue immediately with your desired habit. Make sure you are consistent. Whenever that cue, or a combination of cues, happens, make sure you immediately respond in the same way every time.

30 Day Trial

It is widely recognised that it takes 21 days to create a habit. Many, myself included, like to extend that to a whole month to be on the safe side. I make a commitment to do something for a month, and then allow myself to stop concentrating on it at the end of that time. This allows enough time to form the habit, but relieves the pressure of keeping it up for a lifetime.

Setting up a new habit will be difficult for about a month, then it will become easy. Plan your new good study habit and commit to sticking to it for 30 days. Often we begin forming a habit, but we don't complete it because it doesn't seem effective. Usually, however, we are giving ourselves excuses not to do something that will prove to be worthwhile if we stick to it and learn to adjust. The nature of a habit is that they will disrupt everything else in your environment as you try to apply them. So make sure you stick to 30 days no matter what. This will give you a proper amount of time to test whether the habit is really worthwhile, yet, as Steve Pavlina suggests, you can always drop it after 30 days if it doesn't work out for you.

So commit for 30 successful days and if at the end it doesn't work out for you, go back to your previous habits.

Habits are easier to form if you do them everyday, but often that is not desirable or even possible. If it is possible, however, commit for 30 days and then cut back. So maybe you want the weekends free to do what you want with, but for 30 days you could commit to spending an hour in the evening practicing the piano. For 30 days this may be a disruption, but after that month is gone, you will find it easier to cut back to 5 days a week.

Or imagine you want to get up early so you don't have to rush to work. Even if you wanted to, you wouldn't be able to go to work on Saturday and Sunday because the office would be closed. But this is not an excuse to sleep in. Get up, and get ready as if you were going to work, and then just don't go. While it may seem pointless to get changed into your suit or uniform on a Saturday it will build up the habit.

Sometimes this is not possible, however. Imagine you wanted to get into the habit of doing an hour's work in the library after school. You can only practice this habit when the library is open. Decide at the beginning that this is your only excuse. Straight after school, no matter what, get in the library and do an hour's work. No excuses, no day's off. Do it. Then enjoy your weekend!

Building up skills

Many of the suggestions for good study habits are quite simple things. They include making sure you drink plenty of water, sitting where there is good light, sitting up straight and taking enough breaks. These suggestions are not complicated or difficult to do, but keeping track of them can be a nightmare. Once they have been made into habits, it becomes a lot easier.

By focusing on one new habit per month, you can quickly start to make yourself more effective at studying. Developing 12 good study habits per year is a lot more than most people's zero, but you may want to push yourself and develop several at a time.

If you have failed at developing a habit before, or if the habit is particularly difficult, I suggest you focus all your energy on just one. For example, if you were addicted to TV, jobless, living off junk food, and smoking a pack a day you will burn out if you suddenly land yourself a job, give up TV, start eating healthily and give up smoking. These are major things and would be best tackled individually.

If you want to change smaller things, and you've successfully created a habit in the past, then adding a few new habits in one go, is quite possible. However, it can still be difficult to keep track of everything.

If you want to take on several things at once, I suggest you:

• Make sure you know how to perform each new habit. Test it in real life to make sure there are no problems
• Give each item a priority, so you never sacrifice the most important habit, for a lesser one
• Make a written plan of all the habits you wish to apply
• Mentally rehearse that plan in your head. This will stop you becoming confused when it is time to perform an action. You will know what to do and do it.

More advanced subtle habits

One of the benefits of committing to challenges and installing habits, is your thinking will automatically change for the better. For me, studying has turned from a chore, to a delight.

However, often I make suggestions for ways to improve your thinking more directly. The memory techniques are a good example of this.

These new ways of thinking are also good study habits, but on a more subtle scale. They can, therefore, be installed in the same way as all other habits. Follow the same strategy:

• Link the habit to some cue
• Consistently respond to that cue in the same way
• Try to apply it for 30 days without fail

So imagine you wanted to automatically apply the strategy for learning vocabulary every time you encounter a new word. The cue would be spotting the new word as you were reading. Every time this happened you would apply the strategy. And you would focus on doing this every time you read something for 30 days. This would slow down your reading considerably for 30 days, but the long term benefits would likely make it hugely worthwhile.

Putting it all together

Say you want to make a habit of always using the SQ3R approach to reading non-fiction. First you would learn the procedure. You would do your research until you understand the procedure enough that you can do it. At this stage it may feel a little uncomfortable to read like this, and the desire may be to read in a more linear fashion, but make a commitment to give it a go for at least 30 days straight. After the 30 days you will have a much better perspective on which to decide if it is of benefit to you.

You want to implement this every time you pick up a non-fiction book, and sit down to read it. So make sure you have enough reading material to practice the technique on for 30 days. For the next 30 days, you will pick up a book and apply the method and you will apply it every time. Don't give yourself any excuses. If it doesn't fit comfortably for you, you can try to fix the problems, but you have committed to 30 days of applying this technique.

Another example of a habit I applied is touch typing. I began by doing daily practice until I was good enough that I could actually use the skill - albeit very slowly. Then I decided I was going to make it a habit. I was much slower at touch typing than I was using my previous method, but I knew that I would improve. So I stopped looking at the keyboard altogether, and became a touch typer. It would have been easy to have made an excuse and gone back to my old method until I'd gained speed, but I knew this was for the long term, and I accepted my slowed work progress. As a consequence I can now type faster than I can speak. This is a huge asset.

A final example I applied to my studying was to try out Tony Buzan's Mind Maps. Mind maps were a completely different method of taking notes to what I was used to, but I decided to give it a go. For the first semester of my degree I wrote all my notes using Mind Maps. I stuck as close to the rules as possible, and I didn't do any other form of note taking. After the trial period was over I had tried that note taking system in all kinds of situations, and I knew what it worked for and what it didn't. For the rest of my degree I mainly made my notes with Mind Maps and occasionally by freenoting.

There are many other good study habits out there for me to apply. Many of them, I'm sure, will bring me incredible success. I just need to experiment, and make them a part of who I am. Systematically add good study habits to your routine and your success will also improve dramatically.