How to pass exams – Part 9 – Don’t panic, I’m just going offline!

One of my favourite comedians is Michael McIntyre, I was at the BBC recording of his series. He was great, skipping around the stage and telling great stories. I was impressed. He’s one of the highest paid comedian in the UK now and one of the funniest. But how did he get there? He focused. Just four years earlier his career as a stand-up comedian was going nowhere and he had serious money problems, i.e. he didn’t have any! He was £40,000 in debt and the shops were cutting up his credit cards at the counter in front of him. But when his son was born that changed everything and he realised he had to re-focus. He sacked his rubbish management and decided to work seven nights a week and really focused on making it happen. It worked. He might still be there in his dingy little flat right now, if he hadn’t taken control, got the experience he needed and focused hard on the right stuff for him.

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

Any work is better done when you are 100% focussed on the job in front of you, school work included.

So going offline while you are working will make your writing or revision better quality than if you are constantly checking Facebook or Snapchat.

Maybe you can make an agreement with your mates to txt each other to say…”I’m going offline for a bit – I’ll be back later”.

Get your work done and then you can have fun later. Job done, and you’ll enjoy yourself more too.

Even listening to music has been proven to distract us when doing work. Dr Nick Perham from the University of Wales Institute did a study in 2010 and discovered that listening to music while trying to revise lessened the ability for us to recall the information! So, if you are serious about doing well – switch off your phone for a bit, but don’t worry he also says listening to your favourite music before doing revision helps you.

So play your music loud before and after – just not during your work.

Life is sometimes just about focusing on the right thing at the right time.

Life is about seasons. School doesn’t need you to focus for 52 weeks a year; but if you give it your focus when it’s really needed, you will aim higher.

And when you aim higher you will achieve more than you thought you ever could.

Tom Daley got A’s and A stars in his GCSE’s and he’s the best diver in the world. Why did he do so well in his exams, when he was training for four hours a day?

Lastly, when were you last validated or complimented? When has someone said to you – ‘you’re quite good at that’? This is how I ended up doing what I’m doing today. When I was a teenager someone said ‘you’re quite good at doing talks Lee’. I went ‘oh, am I?’ I decided to give it a go…and now I speak for a living.

More to come…

This an excerpt from Top UK School Speaker Lee Jackson’s book “How To Enjoy And Succeed At School And College” Available in paperback and on Kindle (for only £1.99 during pre-exam time) here now.