If you are in the College Station, Texas area, and are looking for SAT help, please check at the A&M website for upcoming classes. If nothing is scheduled there, I also do private classes, either one-on-one or with a group.
Not near College Station? I also do tutoring anywhere in the world using free software.
Contact me at “blair+sat AT studyprof DOT com” for more details.
The Zenhabits blog has a great post on motivating yourself when you don't want to get started studying or working on that project.
Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto, kemosabe. There’s no reason you have to try to change those bad habits all by your lonesome. Here are a couple of good sources of help.
Friends and relatives can be a tremendous encouragement. Send them an email detailing exactly what you are trying to change, how you are going about it, and your target date (more about that later). But choose wisely, young padawan. Pick people who are interested in your success and will be good about following up! I usually ask my mom, dad, brother, and two friends to help me keep on track with my goals and to ask me how I’m doing on a regular basis. Thank them each time they bring it up; they’re doing you a real service!
Stickk.com is a nice little website that will allow you to support charities as you work on your goals. Stickk.com asks you to spell out the exact details of your goal and how you will accomplish it, and then put money down on it. You report on your progress on a regular basis, and if you’ve failed to keep your goal, Stickk will send a percentage of your money to the charity of your choice. At the end of the period you specified, Stickk returns to you any money left in the pot. For example, you could commit to studying two hours every day for the next month and send Stickk $300. Every day Stickk emails you to see if you did your two hours. If you didn’t, Stickk sends $10 to PETA or the NRA or whoever you picked. At the end of the month, Stickk returns any money that’s left. The trick is to pick a charity you REALLY don’t like!
Challenge partners are people who are working on their own goals and are willing to encourage and challenge you in exchange for you doing the same for them. The more people you get involved in this, the better. Schedule weekly meetings where everyone in the group shares their progress for the week. This is the idea behind twelve-step programs, Weight Watchers, etc. It’s been phenomenally successful for many years with those programs. It can work for you too!
Get leverage. Stickk.com is a great example of getting leverage on yourself to make meeting your goals much more doable, but you don’t have to use stickk.com! You could do the same process with your friends, relatives, and challenge partners. Clearly write down your commitment and then put something on the line. It could be money, as with stickk.com, but it doesn’t have to be. I know of two ladies who were trying to lose weight. Their agreement was that if they failed to meet their commitment, they would have to eat a full can of Alpo dog food! You could also blackmail yourself. Write down something really embarrassing about yourself and put it in a closed envelope. Give that to someone you really trust with instructions to open it only if you don’t keep your commitment. However you decide to get leverage on yourself choose something that makes failure unthinkable.
Did you just engage in your target habit? Then reward yourself! A little reward is appropriate at this point; something easy. How about a mental “attaboy!” Allow yourself a little self-congratulations and pride in your achievement. Sounds silly, I know, but it’s actually very effective and has quite a bit of psychological research to vouch for it. Check out covert conditioning at wikipedia for more info.
Have you been reliably carrying-out your target habit all week? Time for a bigger reward. Make a list of things you love to do but don’t get to do very often. At the end of a successful week, pick something from the list and enjoy!
Here are some rewards you might want to add to your list…
? Go to the movies
? Read a favorite book
? Eat something you love that’s bad for you
? Call an old friend
? Sleep until noon
? Play your favorite sport
? Rent a really nice car for the day
? Buy something you’ve really been wanting
? Save up gift cards you get for Christmas or your birthday and use one today
? Spend time at addictinggames.com
? Chat with friends
? Waste an hour of your day
Long Definition:
prag·mat·ic
Audio Help [prag-mat-ik] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. of or pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations.
2. Philosophy. of or pertaining to pragmatism (def. 2).
3. of or pertaining to pragmatics (defs. 1, 2).
4. treating historical phenomena with special reference to their causes, antecedent conditions, and results.
5. of or pertaining to the affairs of state or community.
6. Archaic.
a. busy; active.
b. officious; meddlesome; interfering.
c. dogmatic; opinionated. –noun
7. pragmatic sanction.
8. Archaic. an officious or meddlesome person. Also, prag·mat·i·cal (for defs. 1, 2, 5).
[Origin: 1580–90; < L pr?gmaticus < Gk pr?gmatikós practical, equiv. to pr?gmat- (s. of prâgma) deed, state business (deriv. of prssein to do, fare; see practic) + -ikos -ic
—Related forms
prag·mat·i·cal·i·ty, prag·mat·i·cal·ness, nounprag·mat·i·cal·ly, adverbDictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
NOTE: I've only seen definition 1 above used on the GRE.
Short Definition: Practical
Sentences:
Mmmm…. Pretty sure MIT should not have these test prep materials from ETS available to the general web-browsing public. You can get them from ETS when you register anyway, but it's nice to have them handy for practice.
(Continued from previous post)
Change your environment
Getting rid of temptations makes it much easier to get rid of your bad habits. Changing your environment is a quick and easy way to get closer to your goals. Some concrete examples should help clarify.
Trying to lose weight? Throw away all the chips in the pantry and the ice cream in the fridge. It’s tough to throw away perfectly good food; that’s okay. It will make it much more memorable and strengthen your commitment.
Want to watch less TV? Unplug it and put it in the closet. You can still lug it out on weekends, but it’s just not worth it most of the time. Remember to find a good habit with which to replace your TV time!
If you’re trying to concentrate on studying, rather than talking to friends or messing with your cell phone, turn off your cell phone and put it somewhere you can’t easily reach it. Systematically eliminate everything that distracts you. Have a friend drop you off at a distant coffee shop to study—somewhere that none of your friends go—with instructions to come pick you up in four hours. Take only study materials so you really have absolutely nothing to do and no one to talk to; oh well, might as well study.
How can you change your environment right now to make your habit easier to perform? Make a list and put it into practice!
Practice
Habits arise from doing the same thing over and over again. Just like training a pet, you have to train yourself to perform the desired behavior by practicing it repeatedly. The best way to do that is to put yourself in the situation over and over again and practice performing the good habit. If you can’t do that for whatever reason, then mentally rehearse.
As any top-level athlete can tell you, mental rehearsal works! Watch those Olympic high jumpers before they make their run. You can see them staring intently, sometimes even bobbing their head in time to their imagined footsteps as they picture themselves making their approach and jump. You might also take a look at the research behind cognitive behavior therapy which makes heavy use of mental rehearsal to bring about behavior change.
Set yourself a goal of practicing (or mentally rehearsing) your desired behavior several times a day for the next month. In your mental rehearsal, make sure to include the initial situations in which you will perform the behavior, the behavior itself, and your mental feeling of satisfaction and pleasure for having accomplished it.
(continued from Change a Bad Habit: Step Two)
Start NOW
Don’t wait until tomorrow or next week to get started. Start right this minute! Do something—anything!—to put your new commitment into effect. When I decide something like this I’ll write it on my wrist and keep renewing the ink until I’ve performed the habit five times.
Whatever behavior you pay attention to will tend to increase, so keeping a simple record of each performance of your target habit is a really easy way to increase its occurrence. Don’t worry about getting fancy with a calendar, spreadsheet, etc. Go for simple. Every day I get out a 3×5 card and label it with the date. Each time I perform the behavior, I make a check mark on the card. Then I total them up at the end of the day. Try to beat your record. You’ll be amazed at the results!
OPTIONAL: Keep track of your daily totals and add them up by week or month. Gives you a real sense of accomplishment, and makes it more likely that you’ll continue building the habit.
An article in the New York Times clearly explains how SAT scores can be the key factor in getting scholarships. Sample…
With admissions, the colleges say they are practicing holistic review," said Donald E. Heller, an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University and an expert in student financial aid. "But with scholarships, some use flat cutoff points with the SAT score. They say if you score above 1,200 or 1,800 on the SAT, you are eligible for a scholarship. If you don't get that score, you don't get that scholarship.
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