Jeremy Côté

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Going Through The Motions

When you know how to do something, it can often be repetitive and tedious to continue practicing. After all, you know exactly what you need to do, so why should you do more of it? This is something I’ve frequently asked myself, particularly when I’m in the middle of doing strength work after a run. I know I have to do it, but it’s not exactly easy to go and actually commit that time every single day. Likewise, many of us know that we aren’t giving our eyes the proper rest before sleep (and we probably aren’t sleeping enough), yet we stop ourselves from going and doing the thing we know we should.

This isn’t a new idea, and it’s one that I’ve mentioned in various forms here before. If we want to get better at doing something, we need to do it. It’s a nice idea that merely thinking about the thing will result in our improvement, but it’s not true. That’s why I find it so important to practice doing a bunch of questions before a test, or why I bother putting so much effort in assignments. It’s not because I necessarily like doing it all the time. Rather, it’s because this effort directly relates to the grades I want to get.

It’s not always fun to go through the motions of an activity, but it’s the best way to improve. On the whole, hard work is rewarded with better grades, and so that’s what you should do if academic achievement is your goal.