High achievers show best ways to study smart
Olivia Gong and Shannon Gong say a survey of high achievers shows that studying smart - not just hard - is the best way to get top grades
Characterised by the increasing intensity of "tiger parents", education fever seems to have swept Hong Kong to an alarming degree. Advertisements for celebrity tutors dressed in fancy clothes and the billion-dollar "cram school" business are just some examples.
With the increasing number of secondary school students fighting for limited spots in prestigious institutions, the road to higher education is as competitive as ever. So parents continue to wonder: are the myriad extracurricular activities, the hours of studying and the constant push by parents enough?
According to a study of 50 high-achieving students in Hong Kong, The High School Omegas, the answer is no. It takes a lot more to become a top-achieving student.
The first issue is the difference between time management and task management. While schools stress the importance of the former, it is not often discussed how it can be done to maximise results. Studying should be about the outcome rather than the amount of time spent on a task.
Task managers will, for example, set a goal of understanding thoroughly all the content of a particular chapter of the course material and will continue until the task is finished, regardless of the time taken.
Time managers, by contrast, can waste a lot of time because they lack a result-driven goal. By focusing simply on how much time is spent, they ignore the elephant in the room: whether the studying actually produces specific results.