Motivation Pages for Students by Brooklyn and Miranda for Proofreadingly.com

It’s not just another copy-paste collection of advice we’ve all read a million times on the Internet. It’s personal. And despite the cliche title of this post — each of the following advice is based on my own experience, good or bad. I hope to inspire you to remember the basics and remind you of the importance of being in sync with yourself and with life. Let’s begin.

Write everything down.

This is the basic principle of the world-famous GTD methodology. There is just no point in keeping everything in your head. Instead of spending energy on remembering your daily to-do list, use it to complete the tasks at hand. Take a sheet of paper, download a productivity app or buy a whiteboard — and write things down. They will do the memorising for you and you’ll focus on the things that matter.

Plan your day ahead.

This really helps to clearly see what needs to be done and what you should stay away from. I prefer writing to-do lists in the evening, straight after finishing my workday. This way I can clearly see which tasks are urgent or unfinished and which tasks can be postponed or maybe even neglected. Productivity is all about prioritising. And let’s face it, the only priority you have in the morning is to pee.

Do important tasks first.

It sounds simple, but in reality, we tend to procrastinate and postpone getting sh*t done. A simple way of doing so is to prioritise not only in your head but also visually. What I learnt doing is either highlighting my main tasks of the day with a marker or using a bigger font to make them stand out. I also promise myself a nice cup of coffee after finishing bigger assignments, so I usually tend to accomplish them ASAP. You can try this trick with any other treat of your choice and don’t give up if this doesn’t work straight away. Everybody has their bad days.

Use Dropbox.

Timing and productivity are closely related. And to be productive you can’t afford to waste time. Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you save files online and sync them with all of your devices. There is no more need to solely rely on a USB stick, especially if it’s left at home. There are many other cloud services on the internet, but Dropbox is by far my favourite. They are very user-friendly, minimal and still haven’t let me down. We’ve been together for quite some time and I love it ❤

Learn to delegate.

Some people mistakenly assume that they have to do everything by themselves. When I was on the edge of burnout in college, my good friend offered to help, but I couldn’t accept it. Only after going through seven circles of hell and paying to see a psychologist, I figured that nobody expects me to diligently produce amazing results at all times. And that it’s okay to get some help when needed. Just like some students get help from essay writing services, sometimes we all simply need to take a break. And to delegate our tasks, of course. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any point in this paragraph.

Strive for single-tasking.

If you are unfamiliar with this term, single-tasking means doing one task at a time with as little distraction and interruption as possible. Some people recommend starting by turning Telegram and Youtube notifications off or only checking your emails twice a day. I personally love putting my phone in Do Not Disturb Mode. This accidentally happened once and has been my favourite since. Simple, and yet very effective.

Eliminate any ‘rubbish’ from your to-do list.

A lot of people confuse actions with ideas. Sending an important email, feeding your cat or swiping the floor are actions. While working on the case study really isn’t. It’s an ambiguous idea with no specifications. Do you need to email a professor about something or collect some data for your project? Do you need to review university literature or create a survey for peers? It is unclear what task to start with and it will be quite challenging to focus on either of them, without thinking of the rest. When writing a to-do list, write it wisely and be specific.

Save documents _where _they truly belong.

Another fundamental idea that so many of us continue to ignore. You don’t even need a special storage system to get you started. Just make sure there is a ‘Work’ folder on your desktop where you’ll be saving work-related documents and files. If there is a specific project or a meeting that you are preparing for, enclose all necessary materials there. This won’t only save your time when searching for something but will also reduce clutter and save up some space on your computer. Windows users probably don’t even care, but guys with Mac will sure notice the difference.
Another piece of advice is actually naming your documents. Chances that you’ll remember what ejoijeioweowmjm.docx means are actually pretty low. And as we learnt at the very beginning of this article, there is no point in memorising everything. This just prevents us from being productive.

A great source of motivation for students.

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Read it.
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We really care about our clients at Proofreadingly. Nowadays, academia can be truly challenging and demanding, and more and more young adults experience difficulties balancing their lives with studies. Our mission is to make sure you can have a little moment for yourself, for your beloved ones and for the things that matter.

Our Study Positive Affirmations are created for busy students, who need a little boost in their spiritual journey, while our website is made to ensure you have somebody to rely on with your assignments. We won't let you down.

Share this post, if you'd like to see more Affirmations like this!

xoxo for now,
Proofreadingly team

What would set the tone of your day better than an inspiring start in the morning? Having a mourning routine doesn’t necessarily mean drinking coffee or applying face cream. It’s your commitment to improvement. Your time in a peaceful atmosphere that helps to ease stress or anxiety. While studying in a Top 100 University, I learnt the importance of dedicating a minute to sit down in the morning and reflect on my life as a whole. I learnt that any thoughful morning ritual is indeed helping me to stay productive during the day and feel happier. Hopefully you’ll get some inspiration from these ideas and find your own special way to start each day on a high note.

Write your thoughts down.
Journaling is the best way to clear your mind in the morning. Life can be really overwhelming and writing any unfiltered thoughts can help to understand your own emotions. All you need is a sheet of paper and a pen. Don’t try to overthink too much or even control your mind. Just let it flow through you and write it on the paper.

Spend a few minutes with yourseld.
The moment we wake up, all we can think of is unread emails, weekly meetings and other life hastle. We tend to rush into the day without giving ourselves a moment to reflect. A moment to be in peace with ourselves, like some sort of meditation. For those who find meditating impossible or boring, this could be a great alternative to try out. All you need is to be still for a few minutes, calm all hectic thoughts you have and just breathe. It will truly make a difference.

Do something you hate doing.
Mark Twain once said, ‘Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day’. I once had to write a really challenging paper, but instead of getting some help from essay writing services like Proofreadingly, I kept procrastinating for weeks! Any of us have been there: postponed house cleaning, college projects or phone calls. They continue to pile up, our minds get cluttered, we seem to be running out of time... This has to stop! Just get your least favourite tasks done and carry on with the rest of your day with a sense of achievement. If I could do it, you sure can too.

*Do morning exercise. *
Do you remember the feeling after accomplishing a 10 minute run in the morning? The feeling of getting fresh out of the shower and starting your day anew? It has been proven that exercising improves our overall mood, ability to focus and stabilises our nerve systems. Just 10 minutes of good-quality time beats an hour of pointless Instagram scrolling. And doing some easy morning activity is a great way to make your day better and build a health habit.

Make yourself breakfast.
I once come across a kids’ book ‘Happy Belly Happy Smile’ and it made me realise the importance of treating myself with some nice warm food in the morning. We all are different, I get it. Somebody simply prefers to start their day with a cup of tea instead of a full Irish breakfast. Personally, I’ve noticed that eating warm food does ideed improve my mood and stabises appetite for the rest of the day. If you’ve no time or resources to control your unexpected hunger at work, maybe switching to a solid breakfast is a good option to try out.

A great source of motivation for students.

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2. Read it.
3. Live it.

Education is constantly evolving. Even our parents would experience severe culture shock if they went to University today. Classroom equipment, as well as teaching methods and learning styles, have changed significantly in the past decade, without mentioning the impact of the recent pandemic on various industries, including Education and the whole world as a whole. Of course, a lot of these changes were generally beneficial and have provided society with hybrid learning, accessibility and inclusivity, growth of unconventional skills, and innovative study solutions. On the other hand however, more teachers and students started to experience previously unknown academic challenges and issues along the way.

One of them is confusion about studying in general. It’s not productive or effective to read all the articles and academic literature in order to prepare for exams anymore. And that is why, there is a huge demand for introducing latest study skills and tricks to the students, in order to help their adaptation to the modern implementations in the Education industry.

Your study schedule.

The biggest lies we say to ourselves is that we are going to do something once we are in a good mood, it’s not raining outside, it’s Monday. In reality, we have enough time to like photos on Instagram, scroll down on our Reddit feeds or watch an ad to get some coins in a game. That’s all right, we’ve all been there.

While it’s okay to procrastinate, it just doesn’t necessarily help us be at the top of a class. To be more efficient with our time and more productive in general, we can make a weekly schedule, and use it to prioritise what needs to be done. There is no need in any fancy software or a mobile app to begin with. You can use Microsoft Excel or Word to track the tasks at hand and make a table for your schedule. I personally prefer to use both, Excel — to monitor my progress, and Word — for a timetable and a list of deadlines.

Once you’ve decided on your main weekly priorities, write them down and brainstorm all the necessary actions you need to take in order to complete them. Fill the table with both deadlines and steps to meet them, but use a different colour to differentiate between the two. When making a schedule, it’s important to remember to leave some space for ‘rest’. Chances that you would like to repeat a day where you weren’t even able to pee freely are pretty low. Make your schedule realistic and easy to follow, otherwise, your motivation will drop drastically a day or two after.

Your study space.

What is the main difference between watching a YouTube interview and listening to an online lecture? That’s right, it’s comfort. Our brains associate YouTube with something pleasurable and release dopamine, a ‘happy hormone’. It makes us feel more relaxed and happy when we do something enjoyable, like snuggling up on a sofa or cuddle up with a favourite pet. This doesn’t only have to happen then, however, as we can trick our brains by creating a pleasant atmosphere around studying too!
There are no certain rules about how to do it right or wrong. It’s all about what works better for you and what completely doesn’t. While some prefer to listen to white noise when studying, others enjoy listening to their favourite music instead, and so can you! Try to experiment and see what significantly improves your mood and your study space. Maybe, natural light or a poster with an inspirational quote right above a computer will do the trick, or maybe you simply need to declutter your desk and keep a phone away for a moment.

Certain distractions are easy to avoid, and we’ve talked about them a lot in our previous articles. Proofreadinly’s recent discovery, however, is ‘Focus Lock’ — an app that temporarily removes all of your distracting apps, while tracking your work sessions for free. If there are any other alternative resources that help you remain focused, please share them with us. We are very interested in getting to know more about different study approaches that are unique, modern and easily accessible.

Your study style.

Forget about passive learning. You should concentrate on being actively involved in every bit of your studies instead. If you are unfamiliar with the term, active learning is when you perform meaningful activities and become a centre of the learning process, rather than doing passive reading and note taking without grasping a topic completely. There are various strategies to try out, and we will only mention a few, that can be easily implemented into your daily routine and schedule.

1. Summarise it.

Summarising is an important skill for not only academic writing, but also reading and time management in general. Imagine yourself preparing for an upcoming exam with a few pages of notes to look through, rather than a pile of study literature and online lectures to review. Summarising enables you to extract most important points and key ideas, and rewrite them in a shortened form for your further convenience. It usually also helps students to fully understand the main details of a subject or a topic, which is an important part of succeeding in studies these days.

2. Relate it.

Scholars insist on finding relevance with any complex ideas we are trying to learn. Relevance is a fundamental principle for both teachers and students, because it is directly linked to students’ engagement and motivation. When we can find a connection between a concept and our past experiences, our brains perceive this information as something interesting and worth knowing. We tend to study it quicker and remember it easier, when needed.

3. Teach it.

You’ve come across this point many times in life. Remember how your friend effortlessly explained some core ideas of a lesson to you, which came in handy when writing an exam a while after? Being able to freely explain an objective to somebody means that you have subconsciously mastered the topic, or in other words — fully understood it. So when preparing for a class or a test next time, make sure you can talk with anybody about it freely.

A great source of motivation for students.

Download it.
Read it.
Live it.

Please, share it if you'd like to see more of these. At Proofreadingly we strive to help students of different ages to overcome the difficulties they experience along the way. It's not only about academic assignments, essays and capstone projects. It's also about who we are and how we get there. With these affirmations we hope to inspire you and motivate for your studies. As well as to remind you that you are a wonderful human being, who is worth of everything and is capable of everything too.

xoxo for now,
Proofreadingly team

Self-affirmation is a psychological technique that is effective in increasing receptivity to interventions — National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Indeed self-affirmation is not about telling lies to yourself. Instead, it’s a way of remembering your core values and believes and changing them, if needed. It is an art of breaking free from the mindset limitation we grew up with. It is an art of changing our belief system and therefore the world we’re living in.

We grew up with certain mindsets that impact our perception of reality and direct our actions. These mindsets, our core values, influence the words we say, the actions we do, the people we like, the way we are thinking. The biggest problem about our core values is not where they come from, like cultural background, religion or moral principles learnt in childhood. They can be rational and irrational however, and this may greatly affect our lives. Thinking about winter as the coldest season of the year is rational. If you’re not from Australia at least. Thinking about yourself screwing up an upcoming exam is an irrational fear, that can indeed influence your productivity. You may become nervous at tests for no particular reason and therefore make more simple mistakes. You may become stressed about the upcoming deadline, and procrastinate more often, or even have difficulties focusing on the material you need to learn. The good news is — you can change it. And we hope to help you with that.

My Affirmation journey began with You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, a book that changes the world around me in just 4 days. There are some absolutely essential phrases there, which became my own beliefs, truly shifted my thought pattern and my personality.

Just like a lost soul needs some guidance through the darkness, students need some enlightenment and motivation to overcome academic challenges in their ways, says Proofreadingly an Educational platform for study solutions. Here is a collection of 10 study affirmations to help you keep going.

_- I am focused and I think clearly.

• All my needs and desires are met before I even ask.
• I possess the qualities necessary to achieve all my educational goals.
• My confidence grows when I challenge myself.
• The more I learn the more I grow.
• I deserve the best and I accept it now.
• I now free myself from all destructive fears and doubts.
• Life supports me in every possible way.
• My study habits get better as days pass by.
• This is a new day and a new me._

How to use this list?

Affirmations became popular because of the core idea they are based on — the belief that our thought patterns shape reality around us as much as our personalities, and this can be changed. It can be changed by television, advertising, our parents, teachers, friends, lovers, and most importantly ourselves. We can use affirmations as a tool to control the way we are thinking, the way we perceive the world, the way we feel. This change doesn’t happen overnight however, and we need to invest a solid portion of our time and effort in it.

A good way to start your affirmation journey is by reading this list a few times first thing in the morning. Later you’ll be able to adjust it better into your schedule and see how much time you’re willing to spend on repeating these affirmations yourself. When I discovered the power of positive thinking my life was pretty hectic, so I had to find a creative approach to fit it in. The solution was recording my list of affirmations and playing it while I was getting to work for solid 30 minutes each morning. I found it so effective, so uplifting, and inspiring that couldn’t start my weekends without it after that. And this is the best thing about positive thinking. It does make you feel better about yourself. And once you feel this difference, you don’t want to go back.

There is no need to search for inspiration on Pinterest, try to find it around. Rearrange your plants and buy a nice vase for spring flowers. Use an old candle holder to decorate your coffee table and add a finishing touch to your living room. Experiment. Inspire yourself and continuously improve the space around you. They matter just as much as pictures on Pinterest.

Another great empowering quote to remind yourself of importance of being a human. Not everybody can.

It's so easy to get lost in the Internet these days, download something with copyright and get yourself into trouble. Unsplash is a great source to discovering beautiful photography free to use in your own projects, blog or editorials.

have you always wanted to start journaling but you weren't sure where to even begin? well get your notebook and pen and a cup of tea, get comfy, and let's st...