Table of Contents
Personal Responsibility
What is personal responsibility? Personal responsibility means taking responsibility for your actions, in other words, it’s being able to take care of one’s well-being without expecting or blaming others to do it for you. Why is personal responsibility important? Nothing is more important to success than the ability to set, manage and achieve personal goals. Personal Responsibility helps users sort through how well they accept responsibility for their own actions whether they are successful or not.
How Does This Apply To Me?
Being successful in life requires taking personal responsibility for your actions. Personal responsibility is an important characteristic that most kids lack. In order to reach personal responsibility it is important to be focused on what you want to accomplish. Time management is a key element as well as making sacrifices in order to meet deadlines. These values are essentially useful in high school as you’re required to study, maintain your attendance, and submit your assignments on time when trying to achieve academic success.
Time Management
Personal responsibility is also knowing how to manage your time wisely, recognizing what sacrifices will need to be made to meet deadlines in order to achieve High School Success. Time management is an issue many people struggle with. We know we could be managing our time better but students like myself sometimes don’t realise what we are doing wrong, let alone how to improve. Some very common mistakes we make include failing to keep a to-do list, not setting personal goals, not prioritizing, failing to manage distractions, procrastination, taking on too much, thriving on “busy”, multitasking, not taking breaks, and ineffectively scheduling tasks.
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Failing to keep a to-do list – The trick with using To-Do Lists is prioritizing the tasks on your list. Some people use an A – F coding system (A for more important items, F for less important ones). I prefer using numbers, you can also color coordinate your to-do list if that’s what you prefer. If you have a large projects on your list break it down into smaller easier tasks instead of just writing down a vague task.
Not setting personal goals – Personal goal setting is essential to managing your time well, because goals give you a destination to work toward. When you know where you want to go, you can manage your priorities, time, and resources to get there. Goals also help you decide what’s worth spending your time on, and what’s just a distraction.
Not prioritizing – Sometimes, it’s hard to know how to prioritize, especially when you have a lot of tasks. It’s essential to learn how to prioritize tasks effectively if you want to manage your time better. I suggest whatever task has the closest deadline is top priority.
Failing to manage distractions – Did you know that some of us can lose as much as two hours a day to distractions? it’s important to know how to minimize distractions and manage interruptions effectively. For instance, turn off your notifications when you need to focus and let people know if they’re distracting you too much. You should also learn how to improve your concentration, even when you have with distractions.
Procrastination – Procrastination is my own greatest challenge to overcome. Procrastination occurs when you put off tasks that you should be focusing on right now. When you procrastinate, you feel guilty that you haven’t started, you come to dread doing the task and eventually, everything catches up with you when you fail to complete the work on time. One useful strategy is to tell yourself that you’re only going to start on a project for ten minutes. Often, procrastinators feel that they have to complete a task from start to finish, and this high expectation makes them feel overwhelmed and anxious. Instead, focus on devoting a small amount of time to starting.
Taking on too much – Have you ever heard the saying “Don’t bite off more than you can chew”? Having far too many projects and commitments on your plate can be very counterproductive. This can lead to poor performance, stress, and low morale.
Thriving on “busy” – Some people get a rush from being busy. The problem is that an ‘addiction to busyness’ rarely means that you’re effective, and it can lead to stress. Instead, try to slow down, and learn to manage your time better and you will most likely get better grades out of it.
Multitasking – Splitting your attention leads to both tasks being of poor quality. The best thing is to forget about multitasking, and instead, focus on one task at a time. That way, you’ll produce higher quality work.
Not taking breaks – It’s impossible for anyone to focus and produce really high-quality work without giving their brains some time to rest and recharge. So, don’t dismiss breaks as ‘wasting time.’ They provide valuable down-time, which will enable you to think creatively and work effectively. If it’s hard for you to stop working, then schedule breaks for yourself, or set an alarm as a reminder. Go for a quick walk, grab a cup of coffee, or just sit and meditate at your desk. Try to take a five minute break every hour or two, you will get less headaches too!
Ineffectively scheduling tasks – All of us have different rhythms, that is, different times of day when we feel most productive and energetic. You can make best use of your time by scheduling high-value work during your peak time, and low-energy work (like returning phone calls and checking email), during your ‘down’ time.
Attendance
In order to be successful as a student, you must maintain your attendance, study, and turn all of your assignments in on time. The attendance rate is important because students are more likely to succeed in school when they attend consistently. It’s difficult for the teacher and the class to build their skills and progress if students are frequently absent. Too many absences can lead to failing the class, even if you somehow manage to turn in all of your work! A student could have a perfect one hundred in their class and with too many absences the students can still fail.
Studying
Studying is essential when trying to succeed in high school. It’s an important part of the process of learning, but different students will have different needs and will retain information better from different methods of studying. Some people wait until the last minute to cram in information before an exam, but that is only going to help you learn the information for the short term. The brain processes and moves information from short to long-term memory when you sleep, so it is important to study and then to get a good night’s sleep if you want to learn for the long term. Students should study everyday, even if it’s just 30 minutes. It will help you be prepared for whatever the next day brings.
Meeting Your Deadlines
When you’re lucky your teachers will allow you to turn in homework or late classwork up until the end of the grading period. If you’re really lucky your teacher will withhold a penalty for being late up to a week. Most teachers will take away ten points for everyday it’s late. My suggestion is to do your work on time. Even if you are really lucky and the teacher accepts your work, you may still have a zero in the grade book that will bring down your grade.
If you are unlucky you might have a teacher that does not accept late work. If that is you I highly suggest you do your work on time. One zero in the grade book can significantly lower your overall grade. Meeting your deadline is less stressful, won’t leave you with a bad grade, even if it’s just temporary, and it’s respectful to your teacher. It’s also a good habit to form, if you are continuously punctual now it will be a habit later in life. Showing you are punctual can prove to people that you are dependable and a hard worker, which is a very good reputation to have.
Sacrificing Deadlines
The most important reason why personal responsibility helps to manage your time wisely is because you learn to recognize the sacrifices that need to be made in order to meet deadlines. In order to achieve High School Success, a responsible person completes their obligations and gives special attention to its compromises in order to meet them. When assigned a paper due in three class periods you need to plan out what you need to do per day in order to complete the assignment on time. The best thing to do in my opinion is knock it out as quickly as you can, but that’s not always an option because we have many classes with many assignments, along with responsibilities outside of school.
If you can’t knock out the assignment all at once you need to schedule your time so that you know how much you need to get done at one point and ho much to do the next day. If I was assigned a six page paper due in the next three classes I would want to write two pages everyday so that on the third day I would have a total of six pages. Now, in order to do this I may not be able to go out with my friends nor would I be able to play video games, because I have a paper to write, but those are necessary sacrifices I would need to make in order to have an assignment of decent to high quality turned in on time.
In conclusion, although someone with personal responsibility values the consequences of their act, personal responsibility is also knowing how to manage your time wisely, recognizing what sacrifices will need to be made to meet deadlines, in order to achieve High School Success for two main reasons. First, in order to be successful as a student you must maintain your attendance, study, and turn all of your assignments in on time. Most importantly, a responsible person does their obligations and puts special attention to his or her compromises in order to meet them.
Sources
- Personal Responsibility. (2016, Apr 03). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/personal-responsability-essay
- 10 Common Time Management Mistakes by the Mind Tools Content Team https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/time-management-mistakes.htm
- Why Attendance Matters by GreatSchools Staff https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/school-attendance-issues/
- Unknown author https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-studying-important
References
- Dictionary.com – Personal Responsibility
- Success Consciousness – Personal Responsibility
- Verywell Mind – What Is Personal Responsibility?
- Harvard Extension School Professional Development Blog – How to Be More Responsible in Achieving Academic Success
- Mind Tools – Time Management: Taking Control of Your Schedule and Your Life
