How can I bring productivity to my study: Through reflective practice!
A question I am often asked by students is, how can I be more productive with my study or how can I bring productivity into my study? The answer is there are lots of ways you can be more productive with your study sessions. However, in this blog post I am going to talk about the power of practicing reflection in your study and how it will help you become more productive.
Reflective Practice
Reflective what?? Reflective practice isn’t something that you might commonly hear about when it comes to study. However, if you can take that one small step of reflecting on your study after a study session, you will reap the rewards when it comes to productivity.
Simply put, reflection or self-reflection is taking time to think!
Self-reflecting on what you have learned and, on your study, encourages critical thinking about how you approached the task at hand. It helps you consider what worked well for you in the study session and what didn’t well and how you can approach the task differently more productively in the future.
By reflecting on your study, it will give you valuable information to help you grow and develop in your learning.
My suggestion is to take two minutes after your study with a pen and paper to reflect and make notes about your study and learning. This will enhance your focus and productivity. To feel like you are being productive, some students like to use their break times for reflective practice. Your break time is your break time. This is the time where you should dis-connect from your study and your study session. I would not suggest doing your study reflections on your well-deserved break.
Let’s look at some useful questions to support you in your reflective practice. Its best to write your answers down. Writing your reflections will have a greater impact than just thinking about them.
- What worked well for you in this study session?
- What learning strategies were most/least helpful?
- Were you deep learning or surface learning?
- How productive was your learning and study?
- Did you use all the resources available to you?
- How realistic was your study schedule?
- When do you know you have really learned a topic?
- What challenges did you face in this study session?
- What will you do differently in your next study session?
- How could you make your next study session more productive?
The benefits of reflective practice
Reflective learning has lots of benefits, for example:
- Helping students evaluate their study and improve their learning.
- Helping students understand themselves better, what is working for them and what needs improving, tweaking, or changing.
- Increasing students’ feelings of control with their study and learning, as well as increasing their motivation.
- By understanding what is working well and what needs improving, this helps increase focus and productivity.
Reflective practice encourages student to take ownership of their own study and learning.
By reflecting on your learning, it helps shines a light on any struggles you might be having with your study sessions. It also encourages students to focus on their strengths. It’s always a good idea to start your reflective practice with a positive question like “what worked well for me today?” That will help increase motivation and will also have a positive impact on productivity.
Reflective practice encourages students to become more invested in their learning by focusing on the performance and learning goals they are working towards and the study strategies they are pursuing to get there.
What’s going well?
It can help you figure out how to improve your study, for example by prompting you to figure out which learning, or study techniques work well for you and which ones don’t. This in turn result in more productive study by reducing the amount of time spent on study techniques that are not working for you.
Motivation and productivity
It can increase your motivation to learn, by making you feel more in control of your study. It will gauge how well you understand certain concepts, and how difficult or easy you find a topic. Reflective practice will ensure you are staying in line with your goals which only serves to increase motivation and productivity.
It helps with the bigger picture.
Reflective practice allows students to step back from their study and get a full overview of their progress. It can help them become more productive and improve on future performance by analysing what they have learned and how far they have come.
Make reflection part of your study routine.
1. Build time into your study timetable or study schedule for reflection.
2. Use a reflective journal to write down and make notes of your thoughts and keep you on track.
3. At the start of your study session, have a read over your notes and reflections from your last session. This will give you an indication of what you need to study now. It will keep you focused and productive.
While there are many more ways of bringing productivity to your study, reflective practice is a great place to start. If you try it, let me know how you are getting on. For any further information, reach out to me.