Grades slipping...can't seem to get this under control

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

My grades are falling again after some pretty bad tests and another quarter of poor study habits. I’ve had this same problem sporadically since starting high school (I’m in 10th grade now) and each time it comes up I tell myself to quit slacking off and get it together, then proceed to go back to the same old habits a couple months later. I often find myself stalling time when I should be doing homework and rushing to finish assignments even when there’s really no reason to. I rarely study the material outside of assignments and class; kind of just trying to get school over with every day. The issue is that since I lack any real interest in most of my work, I tend to develop an attitude of just not caring about it, and forcing myself to get any work done with so many distractions is really difficult.

I guess I wouldn’t really expect anyone on here to have a clear-cut solution, since obviously this is something I’ll have to fix myself, but maybe someone has advice for staying focused. It’s easy to say “just suck it up and do your work,” and I’ve tried that before, but it’s proven not to be that simple. Unless I can fix this, there’s no way I can reach my potential.

2

just suck it up and do your work

or spend time in retrospection/thinking for a while, in a place with no distractions (Like under your blankets in bed) drink green tea.

or you can do something painful/keep a reminder or something, take cold showers every night and keep a pin on your arm for the rest of your life and live off its pain until you focus

be creative :smiley:

3

I’ve developed a way to create and maintain good habits, and it’s worked for me, may/may not work for you.
Got the idea from lovely ol’ Ben Franklin, (Homeboy Benny FrankFrank, as my APUSH teacher likes to call him):

I create a table, with rows of what habit I want to make (study for 30 minutes for Subject A, go jogging for 20 minutes, drink 8 glasses of water, remove your makeup, do 20 squats, review your notes for Subject B, etc.), and then have the columns numbered from 1 to 30. Each night, before bed, I check off what I did and didn’t do that day, and then I try to do what I didn’t do the next day. After about a week or two, you can see what habits you’ve formed and what you follow, but you can also see what you have the hardest time with. This can be motivational for some people, because I love seeing tons of check marks or dots on the chart, but it can also be useless, because some people simply won’t care.

People work differently. For example, my friend, let’s call her… Beyonce, likes to use the reward system. If she finishes a worksheet, she can go have a snack. If she has a big project, she’ll split into four parts and have a five minute break to check her phone each time she finishes a part. We got assigned this huge term paper for APWH, and she did it in two days over break because everytime she wrote two pages, she’d watch a Netflix episode. However, for another friend, let’s call him… Meek Mill, this does not work. I tried tutoring him and implementing that system to get him to finish the chem homework, and each break just becomes a full on Halo session.

If you know you have a test on Thursday, do all of your homework on Tuesday and leave Wednesday open so you can study for an hour, screw around for an hour, study, screw around, etc.

Get a parent to take your phone away for the night and see how you do. You need to identify what other things are distracting you, or the ways you avoid doing homework.

If it’s simply your lack of motivation, find a source of motivation. Convince your mom that if you get all A’s or A-'s, she’ll plan a vacation for the summer. Pick someplace cool, set a goal with your parents, and work.

Put in the work. Motivation is only a factor in the result. I can be totally unmotivated and still get things done. It’s doesn’t matter where you start, it’s when you do it; don’t start too late.

4

Many times we set out to change our habits/behavior with the best of intentions. Then we find that we are slipping back into the old habits and wonder why. That’s what is happening to you right? Well there is a very good reason for that and it is a well known issue. And “just suck it up and do your work” isn’t good advice because that is essentially what you have been trying that has not worked. You’ve tried to “will yourself” to change. Well that won’t work.

There are basically two principles to consider. The first is that just like you have a reason to change, there are reasons that you engage in the conduct (behavior, actions) that you do. it is not by chance and that is why you end up going back to it. The second is that you are not recognizing the entire chain of behavior that results in your slacking off. You are trying to intervene too late in the behavior chain. You can’t just change the endpoint because there are a string of behaviors that lead up to that endpoint. You have to intervene at the start of the chain of behavior.

Whenever we have a habit, it is never just a chance event. There are loads of things that favor the end result. So let’s just construct an example. The specifics will differ by person. But, let’s say you come home every day intending to immediately re-write your notes and complete your assignments. You arrive home, and are hungry. So you make a snack. Then you’re tired and decide to give yourself a quick break to lie down and rest for a few minutes. You do and while you’re not working anyway you turn on the tv. Then a favorite show is coming on so you’ll just watch that. Before you know it, it is now 9pm. You have a ton of homework so you decide to chuck rewriting the notes and you dive into the assignments due tomorrow because basically you’re now up against a time crunch and you are still tired.
The next day you are even more determined to get those notes re-written as soon as you get home, You get home and you are hungry.

You can’t intervene by simply not watching tv because that is not the start of the chain that drives the end result. You are tired and hungry and giving yourself food and a rest…but that automatically leads to the next step. So you have to identify the factors that are initiating the chain of behavior and change things up. In this example, coming home hungry is already a problem so you need to back up even further. Lunch does not tide you over and it is likely that you need some marked change in the early part of the day. So, in this example, perhaps you would have a larger lunch and buy something that you plan to eat at school or on your way home. Thus you get home and you are not hungry. Eating something that energizes you will also help. The rest of the schedule should be as dissimilar to the chain of behavior that gets you into trouble. So in this case, go directly to the library rather than going home. Now you have had your snack, you are not hungry and tired and you are not in a place that would allow you to veg out on TV (or whatever). So the idea is to identify the entire chain of behaviors that inevitably leads to a bad outcome. Get rid of the reason for initiating that chain, in this case the hunger, and substitute a schedule that is incompatible with the problematic chain of behavior/events. This will work with most bad habits or difficult making positive changes. You are a prime candidate. Go for it. Make a plan. Good luck!

5

Thanks for the replies guys. The behavioral chain that leads to bad habits makes perfect sense. I’ll analyze mine and try and figure out how to get rid of the first link. For me my chain would be like:

come home from school/track practice --> decide to start homework later (dreading it of course); check social media, etc. in the meantime --> do some homework like 20mins after I intended --> get bored and screw around on the internet, watch TV, or whatever (stalling) --> half-@ss the rest of my homework at like 9:30 before going to bed at 10:00

So it looks like the first link in my chain would be deciding to start studying later and giving myself some time to relax first. This is probably what leads to being distracted, because the period where I’m not doing anything school-related ends up being a lot longer than I intend. The next link would be failing to structure my work time correctly and allowing myself to get distracted from the tasks at hand once I’ve started them.

If I’m gonna do what lostaccount said and develop a schedule that doesn’t facilitate the first link in the chain happening in the first place, it looks like I’ll have to start working immediately after I get home from school. That way I won’t be as susceptible to distractions, like taking time to relax first. Next, I’ll need to create some kind of daily schedule to prevent the second link from becoming the first in a new chain. Maybe it could be something like time blocks I can use, with X amount of time for each subject and X amount of break in between. That way I’d have a way to structure my time and ensure that I’m not getting side tracked.

Still, the thought of spending the majority of my free time on stuff I dislike (for the most part) is something I’ll have to get past. I have plenty of other stuff I do, like running track and flying model airplanes and stuff, but school is a real drag that I really struggle to care about. I have pretty high academic standards and even higher expectations, both from myself and from my parents and teachers, so I’ll need to fix this ASAP. I’ll definitely try what I outlined above and see how that works.

6

I didn’t read the other posts very closely but I’ve struggled this too, really badly. I’m a junior now and have managed to get things mostly under control.

What I did was experiment a lot of different methods for organizing my work. I’ve tried using extremely regimented schedules for each day, staying up all night and reading entire textbooks (which I do not recommend), and using no planning at all.

What has worked best for me is using only 2 things: 1) a goal sheet (a table with a list of goals I have to work towards and their deadlines, I.e. Studying for AP exams, my science fair project), and 2) a daily planner (just a list of things I should do by the end of the day). I give myself leeway with missing requirements, and go to sleep at a reasonable time even if I’m behind on work.

What has NOT worked for me is trying to force myself to start plugging away the moment I get home from school. It’s practically impossible for me, as it is for most people I know, to continue to work hard after 7 hours of intense focus on classes. I always end up getting extremely discouraged. I would suggest taking a break, eating a snack, etc. right when you get home, and then getting to work. I did this last year, in the form of a nap. This year I started working, and since I like my job this is effectively a long break, after which I am able to work productively.

Also, when you sit down to work, work productively. Put your phone in another room (I started leaving my phone at home so I don’t use it at school, and I get way more done during spare time there).

Everyone is different, so the main piece of advice I have for you is to find what is best for you. Try a lot of different methods and see which come most natural to you and which is most beneficial to your productivity. Who knows, it could involve simply finding the right study playlist, or putting your homework in an order that is easy to tackle (I start with fast and easy things). Finding my set of study techniques took lots of trial and error, but now I’ve optimized a method that has helped me immensely. Good luck :slight_smile: