about how to do well academically.

How to study effectively,

how to ace your tests

and how to crush those homework assignments

even when you have barely any time to do them.

But of course,

successful students don't just do well academically,

they do well all around.

So, that begs the question,

what separates truly successful students,

who have it all together

in all areas of their lives,

from everyone else?

Well that's what I wanna talk about in this video

and today we're gonna cover

eight habits of successful students

and yes, this is definitely a riff

off of Stephen Covey's excellent book,

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,

which I have read and loved.

But these eight habits are unique.

These come from my own observations

of people that I know who are successful

and things I've tried to cultivate in my own life

and I think every single one of them

is gonna help you in the upcoming semester.

So lets dive right in.

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To start things off,

successful students are forward thinkers.

J.R. Tolken wrote in, The Hobbit that,

"It does not do

to leave a live dragon out of your calculations,

if you live near him."

And as a student,

you have a lot of live dragons to contend with.

Not just on the academic side of things

but on all fronts.

You've got your career plans.

You've got relationships.

You have your living situation,

errands you need to run,

there is a lot to keep track of.

And when I was in college,

I had a lot of friends who always seemed to be scrambling

to get these things done at the last second.

They were basically letting life sneak up on them

but if you can build a forward thinking mind set,

this isn't going to happen to you.

And you'll also position yourself for opportunities

that would pass others by.

So if you're not already a natural forward thinker,

if you're not automatically thinking of things

that are coming up in the near future,

how do you become one?

Well I definitely think it is possible,

because I didn't use to be one

but now I am.

When I was a kid,

I remember my mom would just like look up

from whatever she was doing, oftentimes

and ask me,

hey Thomas, have you brushed your teeth today?

And I remember thinking, like,

how do you think of stuff like that?

I wasn't talking about brushing my teeth,

you weren't brushing your teeth,

it just popped into your mind.

And eventually I realized it was because

she cared about the health of her sons

and she was simply being mindful about it.

And I worked to become that kind of a person myself.

So if you're like I was back then,

you don't already have this mental machinery put into place,

the first step is to build some structures

into your everyday routines,

that remind you to think in a forward thinking manner.

One good way to start doing this,

is to create a reminder

on your task management system or your calendar

to sit down once a week

and think, what do I have coming up in the near future?

Do I need to sign up for classes?

Well then I should make a reminder for the exact time

that the class scheduler opens

so I can get in there

and get my classes before everyone else takes the good ones.

Or do I need to get an apartment soon?

If you live in a college town like I did,

then it's likely that every apartment complex

is gonna have their leases start around the exact same time.

And because of that,

everyone's gonna be signing leases

all in one big drove.

So, do yours early,

otherwise, come next semester,

you're gonna be living in a van down by the river.

And while you're going through this mental exercise,

also think about your relationships,

maybe you have somebody who has a birthday coming up soon

or you have a friend that you haven't talked to in a while.

I find that when you actually think about these things

and when you apple a forward thinking mindset

to your relationships,

you tend to maintain them better.

And this is important,

because as people get older,

they start to get busier

and they start to have less time for their friends

and it's only people who are deliberate about maintaining

their relationships that actually keep them.

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The second habit is that successful students

deliberately move towards adulthood.

They don't let adulthood sneak up on them.

And by that,

I'm not talking about becoming a person who hates fun

and tells kids to get out their lawn

but every human is going to have skills they need to build

and challenges they need to face

at some point in their lives.

And a lot of people try to push those things off

as much as they possibly can.

But if you can become the kind of person

who is willing to take on those things early,

I'm talking about things like having your own bank account,

doing your own taxes,

your filling out your own financial aid forms

or like, learning how to iron shirt

or do your own laundry.

Then once you have to do those things,

you've already got that base of skills to apply to them.

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Habit number three,

successful students strive to become,

what I like to call, solution finders.

They're the kind of people,

that when faced with a tough problem,

that doesn't have an immediately apparent solution,

they are willing to push through

and figure out how to solve it.

And sadly, a lot of students aren't like this.

A friend of mine named Matt is a web developer

at a pretty big company

and this company values this solution finding mindset

so much that they have a rule

for people who get stuck on problems.

They call it the 15-Minute Rule.

Essentially, if an employee gets stuck on a problem,

they have to spend 15 more minutes,

working on that problem

before they're allowed to ask for help.

And during that time,

they have to document everything they do

and write down what didn't work

so that way when they do ask for help,

they're able to give context

to the person who's helping them.

Additionally, once they hit that 15 minute mark,

they must ask for help.

And this rule creates a nice balance.

It makes them be independent

and solve problems on their own

but also ensures that they're not being so stubborn

that they never ask for help

and that ensures

that they're not wasting the companies time.

And adopting this rule

actually proved very useful to you as a student

because if you're willing to solve problems independently,

you're going to solve a lot of them

that you would've originally asked for help on

and if you do have to ask for help,

you're going to show your teacher

that you take the problems seriously

and that you're not just crying out for help

the moment things get tough.

(upbeat music)

Habit number four

is to start actively building relationships

with your teachers,

with your professors

and with other faculty members at your school or university.

When you do this,

you start to build a network of people

who aren't just in your immediate age group

or at your same level of progression.

And it also has a couple of other very good benefits.

Number one,

these people are gonna be able to tell you

about opportunities that you would've otherwise missed

and if you ever happen to need a letter of recommendation

for a job application or a scholarship,

those are gonna be the people who you can go to

because now they know you and they trust you

and they're gonna be willing to do it.

And you probably shouldn't ask for recommendation

from your roommate Jimmy.

So, how do you start building this network?

Well a great first step

comes at the beginning of a new semester.

Go up to the teacher at the end of each class,

introduce yourself briefly,

shake their hand

and just tell them you're excited to be there.

That makes a really great first impression.

Additionally in your free time,

if you happen to come across like an article,

that you think one of your professors

would be interested in,

email them that article.

Just say hey, I read this and I thought of you.

I remember back in 2011,

I was taking my first marketing class in college

and this was right around the time

that Val was getting ready to release Portal Two

and they did something really weird

with the marketing for Portal Two.

They had this weird, convoluted game set-up

where people could buy games on the steam

and play lots and lots of hours in those games

and that would all contribute to making Portal Two

release a couple of days early.

So essentially, they found a way

to let all these other games

that weren't selling all that well,

ride the coat tails of this big anticipated game

and I thought that was a brilliant marketing strategy.

So I found an article about it,

I sent it to my marketing professor

and said, hey I think you'd be interested in this

and the next week he actually talked about it in class.

So doing that definitely helped to build that relationship.

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The fifth habit is that successful students

are always trying to learn outside of class.

They're trying to learn from a variety of different sources

and they are branching out into different areas

that aren't on their narrow major path.

And I think this is really important to do.

Because once you start getting interested

in a variety of different subjects

and you start dabbling in different areas,

you start to build this diverse web

of connections in your brain,

that allows you to be more creative in your main work.

Plus when you take just a little bit of time

to branch out from your major path.

You might stumble onto something

that actually proves to be a huge boon

to your future career prospects.

One great example is my best friend Martin.

He's always been really interested in language learning

but he majored in MIS in college

but that didn't stop him from creating a blog

all about how to learn new languages