How to Become a Straight-A Student

by Cal Newport

pseudo-working.

wastes time, but it’s also mentally draining.

compressing work into focused bursts.

Pseudo-work features a very low intensity of focus.

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

spread out the intense work sessions so that you have time in between to recharge.

overcome your urge to procrastinate,

choose the right locations, times of day, and durations to study.

group many little tasks (errands that take less than ten minutes) into one big block (for example: “10:00 to 10:45—mail letter, return library book, buy new deodorant, fill out transcript request form at registrar”).

Monday—3/11/07

A work progress journal

At the end of the day, if you’ve completed all of these tasks, simply jot down all completed. If you failed to complete some tasks,

build a routine in which you use the same reserved time slot each week to do the same thing, with the goal of transforming these slices of work into a habit, something you no longer have to convince yourself to do.

By choosing them ahead of time, you can space them out so that you never have two hard days in a row,

Try to plan relaxing, nonacademic activities immediately before and after these days. This will ease their impact.

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

When during the day should you study? Where should you go to study? How long should you study before taking a break?

You’re most effective between when you wake up and when you eat dinner. You should accomplish as much work as possible during this time.

By 7:00 or 8:00 P.M., your focus is weak at best.

you must minimize the amount of work you do after dinner.

Don’t fear this fractured schedule.

sneaks in work between meetings or classes, using small blocks of thirty or forty-five minutes at a time.

You need to separate your work mind-set from your relaxation mind-set.

Become a ghost during the day. Like an academic ninja,

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

changing locations prevents you from burning out at any one place.

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

No more than one hour at a time without a break.

Read a newspaper article or send a few e-mails.

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

writing a long e-mail to a friend they hadn’t seen in ages, or building a list of options for an upcoming vacation—that they could work on bit by bit with each break they took.

fifty minutes is the optimal learning period to maximize the material synthesized per time unit.

If the test is worth less than 15 percent of your final grade, it’s a quiz; otherwise, it’s an exam.

You might even consider typing summaries of your notes at the end of each week.

classroom, date your notes and record the title of the day’s lecture,

create a separate notes directory for each class.

recording all your notes in a Question/Evidence/Conclusion format.

the evidence features a lot of aggressive formatting: It’s split up into lists, with words often bolded and capitalized to emphasize their importance.

Notes on excerpt:

CONCLUSION: The idea of a catastrophic decline and fall of the Roman Empire became popular in European circles, but it overstates reality…too much emphasis on what happened to the Empire in Europe.

Clearly label the topic of the discussion. If a student makes a point that strikes you as insightful, jot it down. If you think up a point that strikes you as insightful, first jot it down, then raise your hand and offer it to the class.

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

First priority: Record the problem statement and answer.

Second priority: Question the confusing.

closely follow the problems being presented and then insist on asking questions when they don’t understand a specific step.

minimizing the time spent on assignments while still learning exactly what they need to know.

“I try to sit down every Sunday night and plan out the week,”

“My goal is to make sure that I don’t have too much work on busy days and that I do at least a little bit each day.”

if you have a problem set due every week, complete one problem a day, one hour at a time. Don’t spend five hours the night before. The same goes for reading assignments—knock off a chapter a day, and you’ll never find yourself spend...

take advantage of this fortuitous situation to get ahead.