One Thing You Shouldn't Do If You Want To Ace Your Exams And... Life

What's that one thing you shouldn't do if you want to ace your exams? I'll tell you maybe tomorrow.

"I'm sure I can start my revision tomorrow. There is still time."

" Let me have fun for the last day. I'll start studying tomorrow."

"Bryan is going for LAN games after school. Let's join him. We can start our revision tomorrow."

All right, I shall not wait till tomorrow to tell you the answer.

The word is, "PROCRASTINATION." Enough of "maybe tomorrow" and "it's not time yet". If you ain't going to start now, you ain't going to finish.

The principle that is key to overcoming procrastination lies in something gleaned from Stephen Corvey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:  As far as possible, keep everything important but not urgent.

There are four quadrants of tasks:

• Quadrant 1: Important and urgent (e.g. last-minute assignments and projects)
• Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent (e.g. spending time with your family or exercising)
• Quadrant 3: Not important but urgent (e.g. some phone calls and text messages)
• Quadrant 4: Not important and not urgent (e.g. watching YouTube videos or going on Facebook) 

To be an effective student, you should spend at least 80% of your time on Quadrant 2 tasks; ideally 100%. 

This means..

• You should start clearing tasks in Quadrant 1 ASAP! Don't leave the tasks till tomorrow and allow them to snowball. 
• By the time, a task from Quadrant 2 ends up in Quadrant 1, you are already in panic mode. 
• Cut down time spent doing tasks in other quadrants, especially Quadrant 4.
• If you haven't officially started your revision for the exams now, then you SHOULD have the decency of mind to prioritize it over all other tasks.

Bottomline: START NOW!

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."

- Zig Ziglar