The Art of Purposeful Study

A lot of things that an effective studier does are subconscious and don’t actually involve doing anything physical.These non-tangible aspects of studying are a lot harder to explain than the tangible aspects, such as writing study notes, making timetables etc.Luckily, I had an epiphany the other day about how I could explain an extremely important non-tangible aspect of studying.

Studying with purpose is something all academic achievers do.

These students sit down and think “right, for the next two hours I’m studying such and such, and then I’m going to go over this and that, until I really get it”.If studying isn’t purposeful there’s no point in doing it. If you fire an arrow without having a target it’s not going to hit anything.A huge danger exists if they don’t study like this. It becomes so much easier for them to go off topic, study irrelevant topics, waste time, and lose interest.All of these common issues can be largely avoided by applying this simple mantra of studying with purpose.

How To Study With Purpose

• When your child sits down to study they need to decide what they’re going to learn before they put pen to paper
  
  
• They should also start with the goal that they will understand the concept/topic/idea they’re going to study by the time they leave their desk

Basically every time your child studies they should have a target in mind.This ties in nicely with our Cardinal Rules 1 - identify what you need to know and 3 - study to understand.Studying with purpose essentially achieves both of these rules automatically. Talking about this with your child might be a good place to start before you launch into explaining the ‘Cardinal Rules’.