Hard-working

Hard-working  is a set of three behaviours which are needed to learn new things, to get better at them and to have a mindset that allows you to keep going when the going gets tough. 

They include:  practice; perseverance and resilience. 

1. Practice is the ability to: 

• concentrate and focus on what you are learning - so that you can improve what you do. 

Research shows that mastery of anything does not come easily; it requires a great deal of practice–10,000 hours to become a world-class expert at something. 

Practice works best when: 

• it’s regular, it’s well planned and 
• you practise what you can’t do well, rather than what you can. 

2. Perseverance - This is the ability to:

• keep going and not give up, even in the face of obstacles and difficulty; and 
• not be satisfied until you’ve delivered your best work. 

This is a willingness to keep going when the going gets tough. Perseverance is the single most important behaviour needed to become a high performing learner. If you can keep going through the hard learning times, despite discouraging experiences and setbacks, you have perseverance. 

3. Resilience - This is the ability to: 

• overcome setbacks, and
• remain confident, focused, flexible and optimistic; 

The ability to succeed academically comes not just from practice but from resilience. The life stories of the truly successful prove that they were never overnight successes, they had difficulties to overcome on the way up, but the ability to bounce back from problems was essential to their success.