"How to Become A Straight-A Student" by Cal Newport

• The problem is not the amount of available hours, but rather how each hour is spent.
• The pseudo-worker looks and feels like someone who is working hard -- he or she spends a long time in the library and is not afraid to push on late into the night -- but, because of a lack of focus and concentration, doesn’t actually accomplish much.
• work accomplished = time spent * intensity of focus
• Pseudo-work features a very low intensity of focus. Therefore, to accomplish something by pseudo-working, you need to spend a lot of time. The straight-A approach, on the other hand, maximizes intensity in order to minimize time.
• Scheduling your work is meaningless if you don’t actually work in the time you set aside.
• The whole system can be summarized in three easy steps:
• Jot down new tasks and assignments on your list during the day.
• Next morning, transfer these new items from your list onto your calendar.
• Take a couple of minutes to plan your day.
• Every morning, spend a few minutes to update your calendar and figure out what you should try to accomplish.
• Transfer these new items onto your calendar. Write the deadlines on the appropriate dates, and write the to-dos on the days when you plan to complete them.
• Next, move the to-dos that you planned for yesterday, but didn’t complete, to new days on your calendar.
• Try to label each of your to-dos for the day with a specific time period during which you are going to complete it.
• Your final step is to record the tasks you will have time for into the Today's Schedule column of your list.
• A work progress journal is a simple tool that takes advantage of [your ego] to help you defeat procrastination. Each morning, when you work out your schedule for the day, quickly jot down in the notebook the date and the most important tasks that you are scheduled to get done. At the end of the day, if you’ve complete all of these tasks, simply jot down all complete. If you failed to complete some tasks, record this, along with a quick explanation.
• Mentally prepare yourself on the way over [to your study place] so that when you hit the study spot you can become productive within seconds.
• Become a ghost during the day. Like an academic ninja, slip from hidden study spot to hidden study spot, leaving only an eerie trail of completed work behind you.
• [Study] no more than one hour at a time without a break.
• Manage your time in five minutes a day:
• Jot down to-dos and deadlines on a list whenever they arise.
• Transfer these to-dos and deadlines to your calendar every morning.
• Plan your day each morning by labeling your to-dos with realistic time frames and moving what you don’t have time for to different dates.
• Declare war on your procrastination:
• Keep a work progress journal, and every day record what you wanted to accomplish and whether or not you succeeded.
• When working, eat healthy snacks to maximize your energy.
• Transform horrible tasks into a big event to help gather the energy to start.
• Build work routines to make steady progress on your obligations without expending too much of your limited motivational resources.
• Choose your hard days in advance to minimize their impact.
• Choose when, where and how long:
• Try to fit as much work as possible into the morning and afternoon, between classes and obligations.
• Study in isolated locations.
• Take a break every hour.
• Always go to class! The importance of this rule cannot be overemphasized.
• If you attend class regularly, you will significantly cut down on the amount of studying required to score high grades.
• Exams in nontechnical courses focus entirely on big ideas -- they require you to explain them, contrast them, and reevaluate them in the light of new evidence. If you are aware of, and understand, all of the big ideas presented in the course, these tasks are not so difficult, and strong grades will follow.
• The key to taking notes in a technical course is to record as many sample problems as possible.
• [In a technical course] don’t read your assignments, but do keep them handy.
• Students who do well in technical courses are those who closely follow the problems being presented and then insist on asking questions when they don’t understand a specific step.
• How to prioritize note taking in technical courses:
• Record the problem statement and answer.
• Question the confusing.
• Record the steps of the sample problem.
• Annotate the steps.
• It’s impossible to read every single thing assigned to you in every class.
• Don’t do all of your reading.
• Readings that make an argument are more important than readings that describe an event or person, which are more important than readings that only provide context (i.e. speech transcripts, press clippings).
• All big ideas can be reduced to a question, evidence, and conclusion.
• Students who pull sleepless study marathons are spending most of their time trying to learn from scratch the ideas that they could have been internalizing, bit by bit as the term progressed.
• If you’re studying hard, then you’ve done something wrong.
• Your problem set assignments are the key to your review process.
• The most effective way to imprint a concept is to first review it and then try to explain it, unaided, in your own words.
• Once you’ve built your practice quizzes, go through them one by one. For each question, try to articulate the matching conclusion and provide some highlights from the supporting evidence. Here’s the important part: Don’t do this only in your head! If you’re in a private location, say your answers out loud using complete sentences.
• If you can’t explain exactly how you got from the question to the answer, then you don’t yet understand this problem.
• Check mark the questions that give you trouble. Review the solutions for these questions. Take a break. Then repeat the process, except this time try to answer only the questions you marked on the previous pass. Follow this method until you finish a round with no checked problems. When this happens, you’re done.
• The most effective way to tackle an exam is to answer the easiest questions first and this is exactly what you should do.
• For technical exams, you can never guess how well you performed until you get your grade back. Problems that you couldn’t solve may have stymied everyone else as well.
• Take smart notes:
• Always go to class and try to take the best notes possible.
• For non-technical courses, capture the big ideas by taking notes in the question/evidence/conclusion format.
• For technical courses, record as many sample problems and answers as possible.
• Demote your assignments:
• Work a little bit each day on your assignments; avoid suffering from day-before syndrome.
• Read only the favored sources on the syllabus in detail. To decide how much time to spend on supplemental sources, remember the importance hierarchy:
• readings that make an argument
• readings that describe an event or person
• readings that only provide context
• Take reading notes in the question/evidence/conclusion format.
• Work in groups on problem sets, solve problems on the go, and write up your answers formally the first time.
• Marshal your resources:
• Figure out exactly what the test will cover.
• Cluster your notes for nontechnical courses.
• Build mega-problem sets for technical courses.
• Conquer the material:
• Embrace the quiz-and-recall method. It’s the single most efficient way to study.
• Spread out memorization over several days. Your mind can do only so much at a time.
• Invest in “Academic Disaster Insurance”:
• Eliminate the question marks for topics covered in class or from the reading that you don’t understand.
• Provide “A+” answers:
• Look over the whole test first.
• Figure out how much time you have to spend on each question (leaving a ten-minute cushion at the end).
• Answer the questions in order of increasing difficulty.
• Write out a mini-outline before tackling an essay question.
• Use any and all leftover time to check and recheck your work.
• The paper-writing process itself, which can be broken down into three separate components:
• Sifting through existing arguments.
• Forming your own argument.
• Communicating your argument clearly.
• Separate your research from your writing and your writing from your editing.
• Target a titillating topic:
• Start looking for an interesting topic early.
• Conduct a thesis-hunting expedition:
• Start with general sources and then follow references to find the more targeted sources where good thesis ides often hide.
• Seek a second opinion:
• A thesis is not a thesis until a professor has approved it.
• Research like a machine:
• Find sources.
• Make personal copies of all sources.
• Annotate the material.
• Decide if you’re done. (If the answer is “no”, repeat.)
• Craft a powerful story:
• There is no shortcut to developing a well-balanced and easy-to-follow argument.
• Dedicate a good deal of thought over time to getting it right.
• Describe your argument in a topic-level outline.
• Type supporting quotes from sources directly into your outline.
• Consult your expert panel:
• Before starting to write, get some opinions on the organization of your argument and your support from classmates and friends who are familiar with the general area of study.
• The more important the paper, the more people who should review it.
• Write without the agony:
• Follow your outline and articulate your points clearly.
• Write no more than three to five pages per weekday and five to eight pages per weekend day.
• Fix, don’t fixate:
• Solid editing requires only three careful passes:
• The argument adjustment pass: Read the paper carefully on your computer to make sure your argument is clear, fix obvious errors, and rewrite where the flow needs improvement.
• The out loud pass: Carefully read out loud a printed copy of your paper, marking any awkward passages or unclear explanations.
• The sanity pass: a final pass over a printed version of the paper to check the overall flow and to root out any remaining errors.