The Problem With 100% Dedication To School

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I write this as someone lucky enough only to have suffered a little with this problem. That being said, I’ve repeatedly watched close friends of mine drag themselves through the mud trying to solve some of these problems.

Some students obsess over school. They make sure that school is, by far, the number one focus in their life. They get disappointed at anything lower than an A+. They spend hours and hours studying every night. If asked, they’ll probably tell you they study “for fun,” but that’s usually just their rationalization for focusing so much on one aspect of their life. Sound familiar? Maybe even someone you’re close to?

Well… in many ways, this can be a really good thing. This kind of an obsession will certainly get you farther than an obsession with partying or building popsicle stick bridges. That being said, many students that have this “dedication” to school end up suffering from a number of problems.

If you ever find yourself obsessing over school then think about these problems and try to decide if it’s really worth it.

Life Isn’t Like School

Many students with this dedication end up graduating from college fine. Their problems don’t start until after they’ve developed their tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loan debt. Dedication to school is cool but as soon as you’re released into the real world you’re going to have to understand that most of what you used to survive won’t apply anymore.

In life, you are not graded on your performance. Sure, you might get a performance evaluation every few months at work but they’re usually useless. Most of your life, you’re going to have to assess your success and failure on your own. You can’t use any external scale to make that judgement because no external scale will fit. (Sure, the traditional good paying job, finding a spouse, and settling down works for some people but will it work that easy for you?)

It’s easy to try and grade yourself based on the evaluation of others (just like at school.) You can keep a close eye on how much your boss or lover or someone else appreciates you and try to grade yourself on that but you’re just going to run yourself in circles until you realize that their motivations aren’t necessarily your motivations. (There are some people that it would be good practice to not be liked by. If someone is lazy and only likes when you don’t outshine them then making them happy may make your life worse.)

Perfection is impossible.

You can’t get an A+ in life. You can only balance your priorities and hope that you end up getting what you’re going for. There is no right or wrong answer (most of the time.) It’s mostly subjective preferences.

Some students just can’t transition well into the real world. One particularly hard transition point comes around failure. In school, failure is something to be ashamed of. In life, if you’re doing anything really meaningful, you can expect failure virtually every time you try. It’s a process of failing your way forward. That can lead to many good students settling for a mediocre life. (Which is a particularly big shame because through school they showed just how exceptional they’re capable of being.)

Missing Out

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When you focus your time and energy on school, you’re missing out on some of the more important lessons you can learn in life. Sure, you might just happen to get them but you won’t have the time or energy to immerse yourself into them completely.

The first, and probably, most important aspect that many students miss out on is social interaction. No, I’m not just referring to study buddies. They’re not the kind of social interactions that help most. The most important social interactions that you have in life will probably not come from business transactions, they’ll come from times when people are having fun.

One of the most powerful tools you can have in life is a good network of people. Good networks don’t come from you being a good study buddy. They come from you being a charismatic and interesting person. If you happen to be a natural then great. If not, then this is a skill that you have to invest significant amounts of time into. If you’re at home studying, you can’t be at that social gathering making new friends.

Sure, you network at school can be good but it’s completely inbred and weak for that reason. At your school, the other students you meet will be more like you than different. It’s better to make friends in many different positions in life. Particularly important are friends of different ages. When you graduate college, it’s your older friends that can be hiring managers (or at least influential.)

There is more that good students end up missing out on though.

Being 100% dedicated to school means you’re not going to have time and energy to master any trade or hobby. Learning a trade or hobby is important for a number of different reasons. First of all, learning something outside of school is great for understanding the learning process better. It’s also attractive to colleges that are sick of seeing good students without a single damn skill outside school. Another point worth mentioning is that many great networks are developed from shared skills and interests outside of school.

The Most Important Risk

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The most dangerous risk for 100% dedicated students is one that I’ll use a rather broad term for: burnout. You’ll hear that term in a number of different contexts. It can come in many different ways but it’s all fundamentally the same thing. It’s the loss of motivation.

After years of a student being unbelievably motivated, something happens, and that motivation disappears.

One of the most important skills you can learn in life is to strategically take your foot off the accelerator. You can’t always be going faster and faster in life. You’re not a machine. Heck, even machines can’t always go faster and faster. Eventually you need to slow down for a while.

If you’re 100% dedicated to school then you’re at a high risk of burning out. Burn outs aren’t always deadly but they can instantly ruin months of hard work. Really, what’s the point of fighting hours a night to get 99’s and 100’s just to get a 65 on a test later when you’re depressed? It would have been better just to get consistent 90’s. Burnouts can cost major points.

It’s better to slow down consciously to avoid ever burning out in the first place.

Some students end up burning out right after college graduation. They fight for decades to get good grades then they’re stuck asking, “What was the point?” That can lead to tons of poor decision making in the future. Suddenly they’re required to get a boring job to pay piles of debt. Good luck getting the motivation to excel at work in that situation.

Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking school is the most important part of your life by a landslide. It’s not. Sure, it may be significantly important (if you choose to make it that way,) but ultimately there are other areas of your life that you can be focusing on.

Does that mean screw grades, quit school, and join the circus? Probably not but seriously reassess if the difference between scoring a 95 and a 100 really matter to you. Your life is definitely worth more than 5 points. So, slow down on that stressing out and have a little fun.

Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a night and still get amazing grades? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives for all the details. Also, check out the books in the sidebar.

Students Guide To Time Management

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“That’s when I take 15 minutes to eat lunch before I get back to studying Spanish until 1:30 when I head to class…” At this point I realized my little task of trying to help him study better was becoming something a whole lot bigger. It was something that I’ve seen a number of students doing and it makes it blatantly obvious the problem isn’t the student’s studying at all.

Some students get this time management bug. It causes them to schedule every minute of their day as closely as possible. While this can cause some short term gains in grades, and efficiency it’s usually a long term mistake. The students that end up creating these impossible to follow schedules usually end up driving themselves crazy until they give up on their schedule.

Schedules are okay. A loose schedule that says, “I’ll do this, then this around this time, and then this if I have time,” is reasonable. A schedule that requires you to stop and start tasks on a particular minute (or even with a 5 minute window,) is ridiculous. Sure, they help manage your time. The problem is that they completely limit your ability to manage your own life.

The Problems With Schedules

You probably already know that “time management” is a popular subject in adult non-fiction. Thousands of books are written on the subject every year. Each one of those books has hundreds of interesting ideas to improve a person’s ability to manage their time. I’ve spent way too many hours reading books on that subject. Despite all the time I invested, I never could feel comfortable on a schedule.

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Schedules are impossible to follow while keeping life in order. If you only have 15 minutes to work on something that requires 20 minutes then you’re given a choice, to keep your schedule and not complete it or to complete it and ignore your schedule. If you ignore your schedule, what’s the point of having the schedule? If you don’t complete what you need to complete then you’re going to have to pay the consequences for keeping your schedule. It’s a painful decision that virtually every major scheduling system requires you to make.

To some extent, it is possible to “kind of” follow your schedule. By nudging and adjusting your schedule daily, you can keep everything in order while adjusting your schedule to fit. That being said, a good portion of your day becomes a process of Frankenstein monstering your schedule from the dead. (“Oh I chopped 15 minutes here so I better plop 15 minutes here later in the day.”)

After a few weeks of following a schedule in that way, most people are driven completely nuts. It’s a mechanical, boring, and painful experience after a few weeks. Humans are not machines. We can’t continuously do the same thing over and over again without some major consequences on our mind. We need variety. We need spontaneity.

When it comes to time management, schedules are not the way to go.

Do You Even Need Time Management?

This is a question I consider fundamental. Time management is useful when you have a whole lot of important things going on in your life. It is significantly less valuable (and possibly harmful) when you only have a few things in your life because instead of letting spontaneity spark productivity, you end up forcing productivity into little time slots.

More often than not, a person looking for time management advice doesn’t need time management advice, he or she needs elimination advice. If you’re worked to the point that you’re unable to manage your time automatically and without stress then you’d do better just giving up doing the things you really don’t care about. Before proceeding with time management, make a list of the big things you need to manage. If you could eliminate one or two of them then time management is not the best solution.

Also, time management is usually a short term solution. Sure, you can learn lessons that can be used throughout your life but strong time management can usually only be held in cycles of high productivity. This comes back to the schedule problem, the longer you keep the schedule, the more difficult it becomes to follow it.

Ensure that any time management you use is temporary to keep yourself motivated. For example, manage your time closely until you get your grades back up to B’s, or manage your time just for the month of finals. These are practical time management goals.

How To Manage Your Time?

Schedule.

Yes. After all that hatred of scheduling I discussed, it’s still the most powerful way to manage your time. That being said, by the previous discussion on time management, I’m hoping you’ll realize you don’t even need time management. You just need what the next section in this article is about. Until then, for all those of you that really need time management:

Set up a schedule and eliminate the unproductive activities in your day or limit them to a small period of time in your day. Considering this schedule is temporary, don’t try and make it practical to follow long term. Instead make it at least a little bit uncomfortable sounding to follow. Cut out as much pleasure time as possible. (Trust me, pleasure time sucks when it’s scheduled anyway.) The less time you spend enjoying yourself, the less time you need to keep the schedule.

For studying, make sure you don’t invest more than a half hour during each study session. The efficiency of learning decreases the longer you’re studying. It’s better to do 2 half hour sessions than 1 full hour session. If you’re studying by the recommendations in this blog regularly, an hour of studying is usually excessive in any number of sessions. That being said, it can be useful if you haven’t been keeping up with a class.

Better Than Time Management

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I hope you choose not to manage your time. It can work short term but it’s kind of like a drug. Eventually, you’re going to hit rock bottom and hate everything about your life. That can easily lead to significantly worse problems than not following a schedule in the first place. There is a much better alternative to most time management problems: Passion management.

Passion management is focusing your life on the things that really matter to you. Instead of trying to make time for everything. Make time for the things that are most important to you. Then let as much of the other stuff as possible go. Instead of trying to get perfect grades in every class, fight to get great grades in the classes you love and okay grades in everything else.

That idea can scare a good percentage of the students thinking about college. It’s usually an irrational fear though. If you’re competing to get into Harvard or MIT then you’re probably right to be concerned. The difference between a top notch, big name college and an average college is a big deal. If you’re worried about not getting into a particular smaller named college then it’s probably a waste of your time. (Most employers don’t know the difference between average universities.)

Anyways, grades are an almost impossible to compete with standard. Points often come down to impossible subjective standards and teacher quirks. Sure, it’s good to get good grades but great and top notch grades require an absurd and usually excessive amount of time investment for the return.

Instead of managing your time. Manage the things you care about. Whenever you realize you don’t really care about something (and you don’t have an objective reason to worry about it,) slide it down on your priorities and spend less time worrying about it. That leaves you with more time to think about the things that matter.

Doing this, you can virtually live your whole life without “managing your time.”

Do you want to know how to study in 15 minutes or less a night? That’s what this blog is about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives. Also, be sure to check out the ebooks for a crash course.

Mastering An Overloaded College Schedule

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It's a story I'm not completely sure I went over in any detail on this blog so far. I was a couple semesters into college. I had studying down to a fine art by that time. I was able to get most of my studying done in less than 20 minutes a day. (I hadn't made it quite into the perfect habit I would have liked. I took some days off completely.) Suddenly, I had plenty of extra time in my day.

At that time, I had a part time job for a little under 20 hours a week. I had a full load of classes in college too. To make it a little tougher, I had to bike or walk 5 miles in each direction to get to class and work. (I also ate crappy. It's amazing how resilient the body is to complete collapse.) After getting my studying down to less than 20 minutes a day, I realized that I still had a good 2 or 3 hours free everyday. I, being the maniac I am, decided that would be the perfect time to double my course load.

Yes, I ended up taking another class or two every single day in a relatively pointless effort to finish college a semester or two early. That, obviously, introduced a few new challenges that I got to learn from.

After a question from a reader. I thought it would be a good opportunity to share what I learned from that experience.

The Teacher Lottery

One of the most important factors in surviving, thriving, or failing in any class is the teacher.

There are some teachers that you can show up to class for and virtually always pass the class. They're so generous with points that the slightest bit of effort will make you a successful student. There are some teachers that require you put hours of studying and working in every night. These are teachers that give highly weighted busy work that makes loading up your schedule almost impossible.

In college, try to learn about teachers for classes before you actually sign up for the class. You can ask friends about the teachers or even look online for some colleges. While you can't always pick the winners, this should increase your odds significantly. One of the best things about college is that you get to try your teachers out for a few days before getting stuck with them for the semester. It's usually blatantly obvious whether a teacher is going to require loads of busy work.

Specifically, just look at the syllabus for a general idea. If the teacher provides the formula used to calculate grades (f/e 10% homework, 80% test, etc.) then look for obvious opportunities. Also, in the first class, you can usually ask the teacher how much homework (excluding studying, add that to clarify, and make it sound like you study. Teachers like that,) is assigned.

If you're planning on adding more than the usual class load or concerned about how difficult your class load will be then this it is absolutely fundamental. If you get a bad teacher or two, to look for better ones and switch classes.

After a few classes, you can even find students in other teachers first classes. Then ask them if you can check out their syllabus. You can quickly rule out some of your options. Pick the right teacher and most of the rest of your problems will solve themselves.

Prioritization Comes First

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For the most part, I was able to keep up with a double course load relatively easily. It was busy but it didn't offer any serious challenges. That being said, I did struggle during finals. Suddenly, every class was offering it's hardest (and often slowest) work at the same time and studying was essential. That meant that I had to make some sacrifices.

When you have a ton of work that needs to get done, you need to accept that some of it might not get done. Instead of staying up all night trying to prevent that, plan in advance to make it as small a problem as possible.

Some classes have work that almost completely doesn't affect your final grade. (If homework is 10% of your grade but you have tons of homework, skipping one day will barely change your final grade.) Use this to your advantage. While it can feel a little weird at first, getting comfortable with skipping work will help all your grades.

Sure, you could probably rush everything you have to get done but all of it will be crappy quality (including the things that really matter for your grade.) That means you may be sacrificing final grade points in exchange for not skipping a paper. It can be a tough choice but make the right one.

I survived finals only because I got comfortable ignoring busy work until I wasn't actually busy.

Effective Studying

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You need to have your study habit in pretty good shape to survive an overloaded schedule. If you don't then you're either going to get it in shape at that point, or you’ll fail miserably.

If you spend an hour a night studying for your classes then you're going to be getting miserable results for your time invested. By learning how to study as outlined in this blog, (or plenty of other resources) you can study in less than 15 minutes a night getting similar results. It's all a matter of perfecting the little things and ensuring your studying becomes a strong habit.

Unless you're particularly gifted or lucky, you're not going to be able to study for finals in extra classes effectively without managing this.

While I can't give you the information outlined throughout the pages of articles on this blog, here are the key concepts to consider in your study routine:

Short study sessions significantly increase your recall percentage.

Focus significantly increases your recall.

Habits can help you keep your study sessions short and increase your focus daily.

Learn these and you'll be able to handle just about any schedule you're stuck with. For more details be sure to read the archives of this blog.

Do you want to study in less than 15 minutes a night (while scoring higher than ever?) That's what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives. Also, there are some ebooks in the sidebar that might help.

How To Pick College Courses

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“How am I supposed to know that?” he told me. His eyebrow was lifted. He was looking at me like I’m an idiot.

Fortunately, I was returning the look at him. “How much are you spending on college every semester?”

“About 10 thousand.”

“And you’re telling me that you’ll pay a teacher 2k or almost 2k to teach you without looking them up first and asking a few questions.... By the way, I totally can teach you...” It took him a minute to get my point.

I tell this story because too many students forget this unbelievably important factor. In college, you could be paying thousands of dollars on every one of your courses. Maybe less, or maybe a whole lot more. You’re being absolutely stupid not to pick your college courses and teachers carefully.

When it comes to courses, many students end up spending an extra 10 grand on classes they’ll never enjoy or use. (This is particularly true for liberal arts students. Unless you’ve got that kind of money lying around, that’s sure as hell not an investment.)

What’s even crazier in my mind is just hoping you’re picking good teachers. A good teacher makes or breaks any course that you take. Most students have experienced this plenty throughout high school. Some teachers require you to invest hundreds of hours out of class just to pass the course. Other teachers require you to show up and occasionally do something to get an A+. Why wouldn’t you aim to pick that teacher? (I can think of a couple situations but those are rare circumstances.)

How do you pick the right course and teacher lineup?

Picking The Specific Courses

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Is the course required to get a specific technical degree that you’re trying to obtain? If yes, the answer should be obvious. If no, then it should be obvious but sometimes isn’t.

Don’t waste your money taking unrequired courses unless you have some VERY specific plan with it. You should virtually never consider it as an investment because any financial reward from it is tricky to predict. A degree has a clear financial reward. Extra classes, do not.

If you’re crazy enough to take an unrequired course then treat it as the luxury it is. Earn the money to pay for it and don’t pay for it with student loans. Student loans are a good when they’re an investment, they’re just another credit card debt for unrequired courses.

Picking The Time

Rarely pick a course in the time of day that you won’t enjoy.

If you’re not a morning person then don’t sign up for early morning classes. There is no reason to try and fight the person you are right now. Maybe, with a little work, you could be a morning person but when you’re in college is absolutely not the time to try and find out.

If you like to hang out with friends in the evening, you might want to avoid nighttime classes. You can usually get all of your classes in a time of day that you won’t feel as tempted to skip.

Of course, you can only be so picky and still get the courses you need. If required you can compromise a little on this point. How much you can compromise is essentially a balance you’re going to need to find yourself but with sleeping times in particular, many students overestimate their ability. (Sure, at 10pm you think getting up at 6am will be easy but at 6am you’re going to be thinking, nooooo way. Alarm off.)

Picking The Teachers

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This is one of the most important parts of selecting a course (for the strategies I teach.) If you want to spend very little time working outside of class then you’re going to need to pick a teacher that is very accommodating for that. Let’s face it, many teachers give boring slow busy work that no one can finish quickly.

If you want an A+ then you also better check out your teachers. Many teachers intentionally avoid giving really high grades. (Remember grading is subjective. One teacher’s B+ is another teacher’s A+. Find the one that will get you the A+.)

This information is usually readily available around campus if you’re willing to look.

First of all, check online professor review sites. They’re not great but they’re a good way to rule out some of the really bad teachers.

The best resource you have is the students around you. If you’re looking for an easy course then ask someone who has taken that teacher’s course about it. Ask them if they found the teacher easy. Then ask more details about how well they did, how enjoyable the class was, and things like that.

There will be some teachers that you can’t find out about. Sometimes you’ll have to sign up for their courses. This is okay because you always have your final option.

Final Corrections

After college classes start, you will often find out how wrong your estimated guesses actually were. Sure, you’ll have some really good courses but at least one or two of your classes are going to suck. The time to deal with sucky classes is early in the year. Switch out of them.

Really… it can seem like a pain but do whatever it takes to switch because this is a huge decision. You’re going to invest tons of hours into your classes. You might as well not hate every second of them.

The good thing about signing up for classes after the semester starts is that you can usually ask other students to look at other another teacher’s syllabus. When you can peek at a teacher’s syllabus, you get a great view of your time investment in the future.

For example, if the teacher explains that 90% of your final grade comes from a couple tests, you can feel pretty confident you won’t spend much time doing homework. (It sounds scary but these are the kinds of courses that you can spend almost no time on if you’re confident with your study routine. If you’re not confident about your study routine then make sure to check this blog out for help.)

Do not settle when it comes to picking classes. By spending a few hours researching, you can save yourself hundreds of hours over the semester. Take the time to look into your classes before you take them. Pick required classes at good times with good teachers.

Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a night? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to follow and check out the archives for more details. Also, get one of the ebooks for a crash course.