Keeping track of your studies is very important. It keeps you aware of where you stand and how much more you need to do in order to be able to achieve your academic goals. Keeping Track of studies can be overwhelming, especially if you have a vast syllabus to cover. But, with a bit of planning and organization, this task can be greatly simplified.
Maintain a Journal
First things first, you need to create a journal for logging your daily studies in it. This journal could be any notebook, diary, notepad, logbook, or even digital notes like Word or Drive documents. Add a few columns to your journal for entering the date, topics studied on that date and outcomes.
Entering Information in your Journal
Once you have created your journal, you need to keep updating it with information as and when you study. In the date column, enter the date. In the topics studied column, enter the topics or mock papers practiced on that day. In the outcomes column, enter the result of your that day’s studies. These results should reflect what you have achieved through what you studied on that day. It could be the completion of a topic or practice problems for a test.
You must enter information in the journal irrespective of whether you have studied that day or not. If you haven’t studied on a particular day, then add the date and write beside it the reason for not doing so. Also, besides the date, you may note down the number of hours studied on that particular day. You may also choose to write down the number of hours put into each individual topic on that day.
Keeping Track using Journal
Now that we have a Journal with information filled in it, it is the time to make use of it to keep track of your studies.
The first thing when you start studying for the day should be to have a look at the previous 2-3 days in the journal records and decide how much you need to study today and what topics should be studied. The number of hours should be more if you have been putting fewer hours recently, and it may be less if you are satisfied with the hours put in recent days. The topics for the day can be either decided based on the topics studied in the last few days or if you have an upcoming test.
At the end of the day, you should go through the journal and make sure that all records for the day have been entered into it properly. Then, interpret the records and decide what to study or how to proceed ahead with studies the next day.
Metrics Matter
A Metric is a piece of information that describes how well you are performing. These metrics could be test scores, or the number of hours of studies, or the number of topics studied. For different students, these metrics will be different. For example, for a student with an upcoming test, the number of topics completed could be the most important metric, whereas, for a student appearing for an entrance exam, mock test scores would be the most important metric.
Thus, according to your study requirements, you should decide your most important metrics, and keep a periodic log of it in your journal. While maintaining your journal, you must give special importance to such metrics. If mock test scores are your most important indicators of success, then solve the amock test every week and keep a record of it in your journal.
Add Comment