Study Habit Formation and Tools for Building a Habit

By Nari

From Pexels.

안녕하세요! (Hello!)

Today I will be talking about a few study habits, but base it around the things I tried and those that have worked for me.

I am sure that many of those who are interested in self-improvement know about channels such as “Huberman Lab,” “Jim Kwik,” among others. These kinds of channels, podcasts, and sites are where I have drawn a lot of information that I have applied to my life (with varying degrees of success).

In this article, I’ll write about some things I recommend when it comes to habit-building and accountability based on what works for me and hopefully it can help you as well!

By ready made from Pexels.

Accountability Tracking Methods and Apps

Accountability has always been one of my strong points. A few questions come to mind whenever I am working on a habit:

• Am I doing the things that I need to do? How often am I doing those things?

• Am I struggling by self-sabotaging and overthinking?

• What do I struggle with exactly?

In the beginning, there is a lot of trial and error to find out what works, what sticks, and what doesn’t.

For habit tracking, my life saver has been apps. I want to mention two in particular:

• Habitica (used in the past): It has a social element and party grouping system where the members of a party can all keep each other accountable

Habitica is very versatile when it comes to habit tracking, and for those who are gamers, it can be quite enticing too. The social and gamification features made it a big sell for me at the time, especially when I didn’t have the discipline to follow through things on my own. The only caveat is that it can take some time to find a social group that is both beneficial and active, but they do exist, and you can actually make some good friends through there!

• Daylio (currently in use): It is both a habit tracker as well as a mood tracker

In Daylio, you can create personal goals or use ones that the app gives you, and you can choose whether they are daily, weekly, or monthly. Upon completing a goal, you can check it off, build up a streak over time, track which days you complete the goal, and your mood. In my case, when I study Korean, I can see that it actually does improve my mood, so that’s another personal motivator for studying!

There are other apps on the market, which you can use as well, but these two are the ones I have had the most success with.

You don’t have to use an app either. You can also write things down on paper. Think of it as crossing off days on a calendar with the goal of not skipping any.

Small Bonus Tip: Doing your habits early in the day and at a similar time can help make it easier to stick to them. You might have more motivation if you start earlier in the day!

By Leeloo Thefirst from Pexels.

Building a Habit Gradually

The next topic I want to talk about is how one can start small and improve over time.

Having spoken with a lot of people who are trying to improve their lives by building healthy habits, I noticed that many end up making the mistake of starting out hard and fast, completely overdoing the things they want to do, and subsequently burning out really quickly.

This is where my approach is very different, having made this mistake many times myself. These days, whenever I try to make a habit, I always start out small and gradually build up over time when I get comfortable with the current workload.

We can take my Korean habits as an example:

In the beginning, all I used was Anki (a flashcard app for vocabulary learning) to reach my daily Korean goals. It took me roughly 10 - 15 minutes — maybe 30 minutes max some days if my brain was particularly struggling with remembering things — and that was it.

Despite the short amount of time I studied per day, I was still actively learning something as I got into the habit of doing Anki and not giving up when I was struggling. Eventually, it became routine for me. The moment it became easy and I had no challenge doing it daily, I increased my workload.

This built up to where I am now, which is at least 2 hours of daily studying from Monday to Thursday, with the other days being rest days, so I don’t burn out on learning. I often do way more than just Anki, such as listening to a podcast, writing, reading, looking up stuff, using Korean in my daily life, and so on.

Remember to Have Fun!

Lastly, I’ll write about probably one of the most important parts of managing habits: Making it fun!!! You can only trick your brain and force yourself to do things for so long.

If you don’t see any positive gains from it, you’ll likely end up quitting and doing something else. This is why I advise anyone to find fun and positive ways to form healthy habits from day one.

In the case of language learning, we can talk about my experience with Korean:

One of the first things I had to do was learn the alphabet and just that by itself already unlocked some fun potential as I was able to read Korean words borrowed from English. Words such as 아파트 (apateu) which you can guess stands for…. Apartment!

There are also things such as easy-to-read comics, playing games in your target language, or finding native/fluent friends to try out the things you just learned.

Hope you got something out of this and can start making fun study/learning habits for yourself!

Until next time, remember to have fun studying!!

Editor Note: By the way we have a new accountability tracking channel in the Discord server, make sure to check that out!

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About Nari

Just a gal in her 20s who likes to learn from various fields that exist in this world, as well as strive for self-improvement so she can live a better life. Currently studying Korean, watching dramas and movies, exercising daily and likes playing games with her friends.