If you think your study habits and employment prospects have little in common, you’re terribly mistaken. The way you treat your university curriculum is a pretty good indicator of your future approach to job-related tasks and obligations – and success in handling them, as well. Still, this doesn’t mean that you should put social life and hobbies on hold until graduation: it just means you’ll need a few smart study strategies to make the uni hassle easier to endure.

For a neat bonus, hard study habits established at the university will also help you land a well-paying job fast and keep it for years to come. If you want to pull out all the stops to top-of-class graduation and a whistle-worthy first job, here are a few simple yet efficient techniques you may want to add to your bag of study tricks.

A Positive Attitude is Key

As with all big steps in life, the right attitude is half your success. The way you approach an exam can make or break your success, and the same is true for a job interview. To ensure a positive outcome for every exam or job interview fate may throw your way, visualize success, and repeat positive affirmations about your own skills. Also, try not to think in absolutes: nothing in life is a matter of either-or, your results are no better or worse than anyone else’s, and you’ll always get something even from negative experiences. The takeaway: keep smiling like you mean it!

Plan the Road to Success on Time

To avoid last-minute panic, start preparing for the exam well in advance – and in depth, too. For example, you can go over past exams and see how other students tackled assignments in previous terms. Also, before you begin to study, don’t forget to organize study notes into a visual map, underline important parts using a highlight pen, and divide the study material into chunks. Preparing for exams is a great way to build time management and organization skills and hard working habits that will make sailing across career waters faster and far less troubled later on. In addition to that, the practice of preparing for tests will be extremely useful when the time comes to move from exams to job interviews and probation periods.

Environment for Peak Output

Your environment impacts your focus and memory, so try to keep the study area tidy and clean. If you’re having trouble focusing, try studying at the library: it’s easier to get into the peak study flow when you’re surrounded by other students with a similar task. If you decide to study in your dorm or at home, you should cleanse your study space of distractions such as phone, TV, and similar fun things that’ll shatter your focus in a matter of minutes. Bonus point: the habit of keeping your study space shipshape will lay down the foundations of promotion-winning work area organization later on.

Take Breaks When Focus Dips

Practice may make perfect, but overdoing the practice part and spending the rest of the time in a cloister is a shortcut to disaster. When your concentration and/or willpower takes a nosedive, it’s better to take a break and do stuff you love than to flog a dead horse in hopes it’ll come back to life. By taking the time to rest and recharge your batteries when you need to, you’ll boost your attention span and motivation for the hard study sessions ahead. If taken at the right moment and used wisely, even a ten-minute break will have you returning to the desk with a fresh mind and zero mental clutter that can hinder your focus, data retention and retrieval, and overall learning efficiency.

It Takes a Team Do the Trick

Should all else fail, you can always call a wartime conference and find allies for the times of trial. Team up with fellow students during study sessions and gamify the exam prep with the help of memory games, flashcards, and other techniques to infuse study sessions with a dose of fun. If you’re enjoying the study session, odds are you’ll remember more of the study material and you will also look forward to the exam rather than dreading it – and that’s the best attitude to have for every challenge you may come across both at the uni and in your career later on.

In both education and career, medals are made from mental sweat, timely preparation, and self-discipline. Use your university years to build hard working habits and prepare yourself for career ropes later on: the business arena is merciless, so try and toughen up before you scamper into the rink where the big boys are. Fingers crossed, keep up the good work!

Alex Williams is a journalism graduate, a rookie blogger and a regular contributor at Bizzmakr Blog. Contact her on Facebook or Twitter.