How do top students stay on top?

I was wondering this the other day and here’s what I found on reddit/quora. Most of them I use myself but some were new to me.
Maybe they’ll help some of you too.

1. Discipline over motivation. Waiting for motivation is useless if you are not interested in the class or just always feel too lazy. A better solution is to create a schedule and stick to it without letting yourself put things off and slack.

2. Organizational tools and stationary. I used to think that people that carry huge planners are just preppy but it looks like all those stickers, urgency symbols, bookmarks and all actually help. If you’re not into writing you can use an app on your phone or tablet, in my opinion that’s even more effective.

3. Active notes reviewing. Active reviewing is going over your notes or textbook consciously vs. just reading it over and over again. Here, everyone seems to have their own technique, but for me personally it helps to read out loud, write my own flashcard or use apps like Anki or Quizlet and when it’s something big like history or literature I make sure to tell the whole thing in my own words without looking in the book.

4. Don’t rely on the professor completely. This one didn’t actually occur to me but I always felt like it wasn’t my problem if the prof didn’t do a good job teaching. But it is. Our main job in school is to learn, so when you feel like you didn’t fully understand something in class, make sure you find a source like a peer, a youtube video, a book or anything else that will help you with that.

5. Spaced repetition. Another approach I didn’t use before is going over the material throughout the term, like every few days or so, and not just trying to go over everything the night before the test. This way is both a lot less stressful and more effective because the information sort of imprints on your brain permanently.

6. Remember what you are doing this for. This seems obvious but a lot of my classmates really don’t know why they are in school and so they don’t feel like they should do a good job. But I always wanted to study art history to become a better artist myself and land a nice job in private collection advisory and art authentication. So that’s why I have to learn as much as I can and stay on top of my class.

Hope this helps. Also feel free to add more tips/observations in the comments.