Understanding Successful Habits & Mindsets
How to Succeed
What does it mean to succeed? More importantly, how exactly do you succeed? Are there steps to take or life hacks to be successful? In a way, yes, but there are a few tips that are out there to help you succeed, not only in life, but also in the classroom. I’m going to list three that I found the most important, and in the end, if you feel like it has helped you, let others know how you succeeded by using these methods.
When looking for ways to succeed, my English Professor at San Francisco State University made us look up different methods. Some of which included having grit, utilizing deliberate practice, and repetition to achieve your desired outcomes. These three techniques are just some of many out there, but methods that I believe will be effective for me in order to succeed; and I’ll explain why.
Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk on Grit explains it as being able to bypass an obstacle that has approached in your life or career and learning to learn from it and better yourself in the future — to build on it, and to grow on as grit.
Grit has allowed me to understand and speak Spanish at an intermediate level; and I am now able to carry a conversation in Spanish to speak, listen to conversations, order food and be able to experience their culture that comes with it. All things I wouldn’t have been able to do without the grit I put early on in high school.
By showing grit in school, I was able to pass Spanish 5–6 and learn how to effectively use the language despite my previously limited knowledge. I had doubts that I would be able to pass, yet I was able to succeed, even passing with an A and being able to utilize the language— I can now understand their culture and language, while at the same time expanding my linguistic capabilities. If I didn’t have that grit mindset during high school to pass, I wouldn’t have been able to pass or learn something new. Now I know that if I set my mind to succeed, to work on it and adapt around the obstacles, I can absolutely pass it with flying colors.
In an article by Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt, Anders Ericsson— a Psychology Professor at Florida State University — states that people can be extremely good at something to near perfection simply by executing such tasks in a meaningful process, not just being born with the skill. As such, you are bound to see results from such method and receive a deeper understanding of how to improve your skills. My preferred method of deliberate practice was the feedback you had to receive in order to understand your mistakes and improve on them, allowing you to realize what mistakes you had made.
One example is from my Explorer Program, I was slotted into scenarios for an annual competition against other Explorer Posts across the State. I had no idea what I was doing, yet went through and practiced each scenario every Wednesday evening and Saturday mornings. Luckily, I had officers who were our advisors, telling us the cold hard truth that, we sucked. They then gave us tips on how to become better, faster, and more effective, and I immediately saw the result of the changes implemented to the dynamic nature of our training as we successfully cleared each scenario. I was able to execute scenarios smoothly and correctly without much interjection by the advisors by the end of our training.
With deliberate practice, I was able to see and realize the mistakes I had made, and receive real-time feedback from advisors, and implemented them in order to see the various outcomes of the changes made. I was able to visualize and understand the mistakes, right there in front of me, allowing me to adapt and become better than I originally was before hand. Without that real-time feedback, I simply would have orchestrated the wrong movements and commands, without progressing any further in order to improve.
One of the final strategies for student success in writing and life is to think how experienced writers accomplish their writing. By thinking like them, you can create writing that is flawless and easy to comprehend. Like how Nancy Sommers describes what experienced writers do differently from student writers. Sommers herself did a study to identify the different strategies that experienced writers used, and compared them with strategies that student writers used. She then wrote an article highlighting the differences and published it here as Sommers’ Article.
The best strategy that I thought was most useful for all writers was to create multiple drafts of your work, not just one draft that center all the other drafts around the first only. It would be even better if you created at least three drafts in the beginning, one for the main context, one for structuring and transitioning, and one for word phrasing. Then create a fourth draft to piece it all together, then a fifth to edit and revise, and so on until your work has become the paper readers can easily read and understand, and your main context is clear and precise. This way you have the central understanding of the context, without interference from vocabulary or lexicons that you might think is more important than the main idea.
An example of this is in 11th grade of high-school for English, assignments would be given to write a multitude of essays. And unfortunately I made the error of putting all my effort on to my first draft, and centering the rest of my drafts around the first, not concentrating on the context or how it would reflect on whether or not the reader can easily understand the writing altogether. The effect of the mistake was that I didn’t clearly state the main points thoroughly; instead focusing on grammatical errors or lexical changes I should make, clouding the central point of the essay. Of course I got a less than desired grade of a low A instead of getting the full 100 points on the assignment.
If I had created multiple drafts in the beginning like what Sommers’ article suggested, I would have had the main point in the first draft, and add all the additional writing centering around the main context later, I would have a clear and easily understandable main concept of my essay, giving me a better grade. So because of my adamant nature to stick to my first draft, I completely forgot that the main point could have easily blended or become distorted within the text. A mistake that I know now, not to make.
In the end, the techniques listed in this writing has helped me overall to become a better writer first off, and second, it has also shown me that I can absolutely refine and hone my skills on nearly anything that I put my mind to. As long as I have the grit to push through, the deliberate practice through active feedback to know where I was wrong and fix those mistakes, and to center my thinking around the main point, not just the flashy accessories around it.
