How to Become a Straight-A Student

by Cal Newport

I was interested only in students who improved their grades through smarter, more efficient study skills—not through longer hours and more painful study sessions.

It took me most of my freshman year to construct, through repeated experimentation, a toolbox of sufficiently improved study habits. But once I had perfected them, the results were profound.

By eliminating stupid habits and wasted effort, I transformed exam prep and paper writing from a dreaded chore to a targeted activity.

work accomplished = time spent x intensity of focus

They replace long, low-intensity stretches of work with a small number of short, high-intensity sessions.

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. As shown in Figure 1, label each task with its time. That’s it. You can now reference your list throughout the day to remind yourself of what you should be doing and when.

Many well-intentioned students use a simple to-do list to keep track of their daily obligations. But without time labeling, they have no idea how much they can actually accomplish, leading to an unrealistic plan.

During the day you will probably encounter various new to-dos and deadlines that need to be scheduled. For example, a professor might announce the date of an upcoming exam, or a friend might give you the date and time for an upcoming study group. The key is to get these obligations out of your head as soon as possible so your mind is not unnecessarily cluttered. Jot down a quick reminder on your list, in the Things to Remember column, as soon as they occur.

Remember, to-dos and deadlines that exist only in your mind drain your energy, distract your attention, create stress, and are more likely to be forgotten.

Once you have learned the power of feeling organized, you will have a hard time going long periods without it.

He starts time labeling in order of importance until his schedule is full, and then moves the rest of the items to other days on the calendar.

Without a schedule, people don’t like to do menial chores unless they’re 100 percent necessary.

Without time labels, Stephen would have had a much hazier understanding of his free time, so he probably wouldn’t have started this reading until later in the afternoon

In other words, five minutes every morning and a sheet of scrap paper in your pocket are enough to transform you from a stressed-out student struggling to get things done, into an organized, relaxed, finely tuned academic machine.

It might be easy to tell yourself a few weak excuses for putting off a tedious assignment, but when you have to record these same excuses on paper their foolishness is exposed.

Once you have accomplished one big task, it becomes much easier to tackle more.

By proactively scheduling hard days on a regular basis, you reduce their negative impact.

You’re most effective between when you wake up and when you eat dinner.

For these reasons, you must minimize the amount of work you do after dinner.

You need to separate your work mind-set from your relaxation mind-set. By hanging around your room, or the student center, you are much more likely to become distracted and let a potentially productive work period slip away at the expense of a mundane conversation. Become a ghost during the day.

Identify a number of isolated study spots spread out across campus and rotate through these hidden locations when you study.

“to keep my mind stimulated, I regularly rotate between different venues.”

“Studying in bed has never worked.”

Your break needs to be only five to ten minutes, but it’s important that you take an intellectual breather during this period. This means you should find something you can concentrate on, for just a few minutes, which has nothing to do with the work you were completing right before the break.

Some students brought a novel or newspaper with them, and then read a chapter or an article at every break.

“Studies suggest you should study in 40 or 50 minute increments for maximum retention. After approximately 40 minutes, take a short break (5 minutes) and continue studying. Without a break, retention is about 30% after 2 hours.”

study for an hour, then take a break—

When students arrive at college, they’re on their own. No one ever takes them aside to teach them the right way to study, so most students just make it up as they go along.

Methodically trying to reread every source covered in class is an incredibly inefficient way to prepare.

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).

The more classes you take, the better you will become at summarizing a complicated conclusion. In the beginning, don’t be afraid to ask questions to help figure out if your conclusions are correct or not. If you’re shy, go up to the professor after class or become a regular during his office hours. Professors love this kind of student interaction. Use it to help polish your conclusion-sleuthing skills.

The key to taking notes in a technical course is to record as many sample problems as possible.

Smart students avoid these issues by working constantly on assignments, in small chunks, every day.

You don’t need to capture everything. Your goal is simply to mark a few solid examples that justify the conclusion as the answer to the question.

Label each point in your notes with the page number where you found it.

Concentrating on only one or two problems a day will help you avoid mental fatigue. Once your brain gets tired, it’s easy to stall—but if you spread out your work, you will end up spending fewer hours on the assignment than if you tried to do it all at once.

working in groups “can drastically cut the time required to finish a really hard problem set.”

Identify one or two students who share a similar skill level as you and then construct a regular schedule for working together on the class assignments.

So forget the conventional wisdom that more studying equals better grades. Smart students understand that if you’re studying hard, then you’ve done something wrong.

In fact, when faced with a looming quiz or exam, you have to do only two things. First, organize your material intelligently. Second, perform a targeted review of this material.

Both technical and nontechnical courses sometimes require you to do some memorization—formulas, chemical equations, artwork, dates, or chronologies—and the most efficient way to memorize this information is by using flash cards.

Don’t try to organize and study in the same day. This is a crucial tactic used by many straight-A students. When you review, you want your brain at full power. If you organize your materials the same day that you review them, your brain will be too tired to accomplish both effectively. So keep these two tasks separate and you’ll end up working more effectively, which reduces the total time spent and produces better results.

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. If you can close your eyes and articulate an argument from scratch, or stare at a blank sheet of paper and reproduce a solution without a mistake, then you have fully imprinted that concept. It’s not going anywhere.

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. As Lydia from Dartmouth explains: “I find that walking around and saying things out loud commits them to memory in a spectacular way.” If it helps, act as if you’re giving a lecture on the subject. Follow Lydia’s suggestion and pace around while providing your answer. Get your blood pumping. Put some music on in the background. Make it an event. Your study guide was designed to be portable, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a place to be alone. For this crucial step, think beyond the library.

The quiz-and-recall method is powerful because it does not depend on multiple reviews of the same information. Once you’ve articulated an answer out loud in complete sentences, or recorded it clearly with pencil and paper, it will stick in your mind. As Chris from Dartmouth explains: “[The quiz-and-recall method] takes much less time than people think it does—one day to make the quizzes for the term, and only a few hours to review.”

Once you’re done with the technical explanation questions, move on to the sample problems. Try to answer each. Again, don’t do this in your head.

“I write the important equations and concepts out by hand.”

As before, 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.