HOW TO BECOME A STRAIGHT-A STUDENT by Cal Newport

• The simple truth is that the brute force techniques used by most students are incredibly inefficient.
• Replace techniques you don’t like with ones that seem better.
• The problem here is not the amount of available hours, but rather how each hour is spent.
• As humans, our minds have evolved to prefer short-term tasks such as “run away from that lion” or “eat food.” Therefore, when you walk into the library on a Sunday morning with the goal of finishing all of your homework and writing a paper, your brain isn’t happy.
• 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.
• There is just no way to be well-balanced, happy, and academically successful if you’re regularly burning through your free hours in long, painful stretches of inefficient studying.
• work accomplished = time spent x 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.
• Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day
• once you figure out what work needs to be done and when, it’s like a weight being lifted from your shoulders.
• Try to label each of your to-dos for the day with a specific time period during which you are going to complete it.
• A little organization goes a hell of a long way.
• Anyone can spend five minutes to figure out what they should be doing. The real challenge is marshaling the motivation to actually do the work once it’s scheduled.
• To put it simply, some work just plain sucks, and you, like the straight-A students interviewed for this book, will want to procrastinate on this sucky work. It’s unavoidable.
• Having to record, in ink, on paper, that you procrastinated over a task for no good reason is a powerful blow to your ego.
• Low energy breeds procrastination.
• As always, the hardest part is beginning. But once you start slogging through your assignment, the pain will slip away, you will hit your stride, and before you know it, your ride will have arrived and that once terrifying task will be safely completed.
• Once you have accomplished one big task, it becomes much easier to tackle more.
• Don’t wait until the deadlines are so close that you have no choice but to buckle down. Instead, scout out one or two days to preemptively designate as “hard.”
• Take ownership of your schedule and you are more likely to respect it.
• You need to separate your work mind-set from your relaxation mind-set.
• Part One Cheat Sheet
• Step #1. 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.
• Step #2. Declare War on 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 you 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.
• Step #3. 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.
• Here’s a simple truth: Most college students are terrible at studying.
• Here’s the problem with rote review: It’s a horrible way to study.
• Most students incorrectly believe rote review is the only way to study.
• There are many, many different ways to study (and rote review is not one of the better ones).
• Better technique trumps more effort.
• First things first: Always go to class! The importance of this rule cannot be overemphasized.
• As Lydia, a straight-A student from Dartmouth, explains, if you skip class, “it’ll take twice as long studying to make up for what you missed.” This is why class attendance is so important. Not because learning is power, or it’s what your parents would want you do, but because it saves you time. If you attend class regularly, you will significantly cut down on the amount of studying required to score high grades.
• To reduce your study time, you have to also take good notes once you’re there.
• The key to doing well in these courses is straightforward: Identify the big ideas. That’s what it all comes down to. 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 central challenge to note-taking in nontechnical courses is deciding what to write down.
• The key to taking notes in a technical course is to record as many sample problems as possible.
• Most technical courses have assigned reading. These readings are usually textbook chapters, and they typically focus on a specific technique or formula. Don’t do this reading. It may sound blasphemous, but it’s the reality of college-level technical courses: Very few students actually do the technical reading ahead of time. Why? Because the exact same material will be covered in class. If you don’t understand a topic after it’s presented by the professor, then you can go back and use the reading to help fill in the blanks. This ordering of events is much more efficient.
• 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).
• Your problem set assignments are the key to your review process.
• Whether it’s philosophy or calculus, the most effective way to imprint a concept is to first review it and then try to explain it, unaided, in your own words.
• Ask questions during class.
• Develop the habit of talking to your professor briefly after class.
• Years of informal experimentation by successful students have demonstrated that the most effective way to tackle an exam is to answer the easiest questions first, and this is exactly what you should do.
• Double checking your work up to the last minute can make the difference between an above-average student and an academic star.
• A study system is only as useful as your ability to adapt it to your unique situation.
• For technical exams, you can never guess how well you performed until you get your grade back.
• Part Two Cheat Sheet
• Step #1. Take Smart Notes
• Always go to class and try to take the best notes possible.
• For nontechnical 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.
• Step #2. 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 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).
• 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.
• Step #3. Marshal Your Resources
• Figure out exactly what the test will cover.
• Cluster your notes for nontechnical courses.
• Build mega-problem sets for technical courses.
• Step #4. 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.
• Step #5. Invest in “Academic Disaster Insurance”
• Eliminate the question marks for topics covered in class or from the reading that you don’t understand.
• Step #6. 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.
• Paper writing is hard, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be as hard as most students make it. Let’s begin by taking a closer look at the paper-writing process itself, which can be broken down into three separate components:
• 1. Sifting through existing arguments.
• 2. Forming your own argument.
• 3. Communicating your argument clearly.
• Most students approach paper writing by combining all three of these components into one drawn-out and bloated process.
• Each of the three components described above is mentally taxing, but to do all three at the same time is downright exhausting!
• “The key to effective paper writing is breaking down the task into manageable units.”
• The required precision of your thinking works in direct proportion to the constraint of the material. That is, the more specific the assignment, the more subtle and detailed your thinking must be.
• Remember: A topic does not equal a thesis. A topic describes an interesting subject or area of observation. A thesis presents an interesting, specific argument about that subject or observation.
• Your thesis will change and evolve as you continue the paper-writing process. This is inevitable, because you haven’t done your exhaustive research yet.
• A good argument requires a solid grasp of all relevant information.
• If you can reduce your specific query to a group of related, yet succinct, general searches, you will have a much better chance of finding a relevant source.
• A good rule of thumb is: Don’t cite Web sites.
• In general, a good college-level argument should accomplish the following:
• 1. Draw from previous work on the same topic to define the context for the discussion.
• 2. Introduce a thesis and carefully spell out how it relates to existing work on similar issues.
• 3. Support the thesis with careful reasoning and references to existing arguments, evidence, and primary sources.
• 4. Introduce some final prognostications about extending the argument and its potential impact on the field as a whole.
• Part Three Cheat Sheet
• Step #1. Target a Titillating Topic
• Start looking for an interesting topic early.
• Step #2. Conduct a Thesis-Hunting Expedition
• Start with general sources and then follow references to find the more targeted sources where good thesis ideas often hide.
• Step #3. Seek a Second Opinion
• A thesis is not a thesis until a professor has approved it
• Step #4. 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,” loop back to #1.)
• Step #5. 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.
• Step #6. 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.
• Step #7. 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.
• Step #8. 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.