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Focus on Key Result Areas

When every physical and mental resource is focused, one’s power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously.

NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Succeeding in high school or college can be broken down into about five key result areas, seldom more. These represent the results that you absolutely, positively have to get to maximize the value you gain from your education.

With so many activities and opportunities competing for your attention, it can be difficult to remember what should take precedence. With seemingly endless options for clubs, sports, arts, volunteering, and more, it is possible to lose sight of the most important goal in school: doing well in your classes.

The single most important key result area for any student is your academic classes. Grades and performance in your major classes should always be considered your most crucial responsibility. This is why you are in school, and how well you do will largely determine what opportunities you will have once you graduate.

Other key result areas for students might include relationships with your teachers, which will determine what recommendations you are able to ask for, your ability to manage your own schedule and complete assignments on time, the student leadership you show in activities outside of your classes, and the community responsibility you demonstrate through volunteer work and community engagement.

Give Yourself a Grade

As a student, it is usually your teachers who will be giving you grades on your work. In this context, it can be tempting to see the situation as one in which you have no control, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. One powerful way to realize your own power as a student is to give yourself a grade on every assignment you do before you turn it in. Make sure to do this before the due date! Be honest with yourself about how you have done. If your teacher has given you a grading rubric, sit down with your assignment, pretend you are the teacher, and evaluate your own work. At a minimum, make sure to look at the original instructions for the assignment. Where are you strong and where are you weak? Where have you done excellent work and where could you improve your work?

This rule says that although you could be exceptional in four out of your five key result areas, poor performance in the fifth area will still hold you back and determine how much you achieve with all your other skills. This weakness will act as a drag on your effectiveness and be a constant source of friction and frustration.

You can also look at any individual assignment and determine the key result areas for that assignment. For ex ample, research is one of the most important steps in any assignment, no matter what subject you are working with. If you are grading yourself on an assignment and you give yourself an A on your writing and an A on your thesis but a B on how well you supported the thesis and a C on how much research you did, you will never write a paper that will get an A until you learn better research methods.

Poor Performance Produces Procrastination

One of the major reasons for procrastination is that people avoid activities in those areas where they have performed poorly in the past. Instead of setting a goal and making a plan to improve in a particular area, most people avoid that area altogether, which just makes the situation worse.

The reverse of this is that the better you become in a particular skill area, the more motivated you will be to perform that function, the less you will procrastinate, and the more determined you will be to get the job finished.

The fact is that everybody has both strengths and weaknesses. Refuse to rationalize, justify, or defend your areas of weakness. Instead, identify them clearly. Set a goal and make a plan to become very good in each of those areas. Just think! You may be only one critical skill away from top performance in your classes.

The Great Question

Here is one of the greatest questions you will ever ask and answer. “What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my school performance?”

You should use this question to guide your actions for the rest of your academic life. Look into yourself for the answer. You probably know what it is.

Ask your teachers this question. Ask your advisor or counselor. Ask your friends and your family. Whatever the answer is, go to work to bring up your performance in this area. Once you have asked, answered, and improved in one area, ask yourself the question again to improve in another key result area.

The good news is that all the skills you need to succeed at school are learnable. If others are excellent in that particular key result area, you might be discouraged and wonder why they are so good at it and you are not. To the contrary, this is a good thing! In reality, it is proof that you can become excellent as well if you decide to.

One of the best ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster is for you to become absolutely excellent in your key result areas. This can be as important as anything else you do in your life, school, and your future career.

Leverage Metacognition to Improve Your Skills

A powerful learning tool that you should develop is your sense of constantly assessing how much you know. This is called “metacognition,” which literally means “understanding of what there is to understand.”

The most exciting thing about metacognition is that it eliminates failure completely. When you ask yourself, “What do I know? What do I not know?” Your answer should include “Well, I don’t know that yet.” It doesn’t matter if you know something or don’t know it when you ask yourself these questions—the only issue is that you don’t know it yet. In asking yourself these questions, you are giving yourself the opportunity to identify what you need to find out.

When you are studying for a test, review your notes in the following manner¹:

This simple four-step process can make your studying more effective by a whole letter grade!

There is an amazing phenomenon, originally named by researcher Janet Metcalfe, called the “hypercorrection effect.”² Metcalfe’s research demonstrates that when you get something wrong and then correct yourself, you will actually learn it much more effectively than if you had never been mistaken about it.

Every mistake is an opportunity—seize these opportunities to learn more and better.