Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

In a great roundup post at Study Hacks Cal Newport reveals & recaps the unique blend of productivity strategies he’s using to cope with a tough semester. He calls his personal mix his “special sauce.” He covers all the bases, from the day-to-day grind (”Without an autopilot schedule I think I would drown in a sea of small but time-consuming tasks”) to the wide-angle lens of life strategy and happiness:

“Happiness takes work. I didn’t realize this in college. But I’ve come to appreciate it more and more as I get older. I now go out of my way to forcefully integrate many of these principles into my daily routine. My thought: life will never be perfect, so stop focusing on what you wish you had, and starting getting the most out of what you do.”

My special sauce takes a solid GTD Moleskine base, throws in a dash of mindful awareness, and finishes simply with a todo.txt file. What’s in your special sauce?

So today’s special treat is a guest post from Calvin Newport, from Study Hacks and author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win At College. Hopefully this is the first of many guest bloggers, and Cal is certainly welcome back anytime.
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If David Allen — productivity guru and creator of Getting Things Done — spent a week following students on a college campus, he would likely have a heart attack. To be fair, some college students are just plain idiots (evidence: collegehumor.com), and we can’t be held responsible for their antics. But even if we constrained Mr. Allen to only follow those undergrads whom most of us would consider “organized” — they plan their day, keep a calendar, maintain a faithful to-do list — he still would suffer distress.

The culprit: the word “study.”

“Study” is an ambiguous word. In the lingo of Mr.Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), it’s a Project Verb. It describes an overall goal (to prepare for a test), but does not capture the actual Next Physical Actions that need to be done to accomplish this goal. One of the keys to GTD (as captured here) is to always schedule specific, concrete, next actions — not ambiguous projects.

When faced with a project, such as “Plan Spring Break,” the urge to procrastinate is overwhelming. This isn’t an action we can do, it’s a goal that’s going to require many actions. If, instead, we put down a physical action, such as “look-up cost of plane tickets to Cabo in April,” well, that’s much more reasonable. I know exactly how to do it. How long it will take. And when it will be over.

Students, however, tend to ignore this distinction when planning school work. The project verb “study” is used all the time. We say:

• “I have to get some serious studying done tonight.“
• “I’m headed to the library to study.“
• “My plan is to use all day Sunday to study for my history exam.“

This leads to two major problems:

1. More procrastination. Studying is so vague, and amorphous, and large, and time-consuming, that you will do whatever is in our power to delay starting.
2. Less Useful Work. Because the word is ambiguous, so to becomes your work. When you think of studying only as a generic task, requiring lots of hours, you are more likely to fall into the trap of pseudo-work — where long hours and fatigue trick you into feeling like you are being productive; even though your actual work might be woefully inefficient. As we have discussed before (here and here), simply putting in the hours doesn’t automatically give you results. It matters what you do, not just how long.

The solution for students is the same recommended by Mr. Allen. Be specific. Banish the word “study” from your vocabulary. It’s meaningless. Talk in terms of the specific physical actions you plan to do to prepare for a test. For example:

1. Attempt to answer the questions from the first three problem sets.
2. Review notes from first four weeks, type up related study guide
   questions.
3. Make three separate runs through date flashcards for art history exam.

When you deal with specific actions you gain two immediate benefits. First, your urge to procrastinate dies down. No longer are you talking about a large, painful, vague task. Instead, you’re planning small, specific actions, with clear endpoints; easily slipped into the many pockets of free time that line your morning and afternoon. Second, you stop wasting time. When you tackle a specific action, you get in quick, get it done, and get out. When you sit down to spend the whole night “studying,” you are more likely to be inefficient, wander over your notes, let your attention wander, and, in general, tire yourself out needlessly.

The key to performing well academically without becoming a loser is learning to eliminate stupid inefficiencies wherever possible. Banishing the word “study” from your lexicon is one of the easiest steps you can take toward this goal. A small change that yield significant improvement.

Related articles from
Study Hacks:

• Straight-A Gospels: Pseudo-Work Doesn’t Equal Work
• Straight-A Gospels: Studying is a Technical Skill
• Why Most Students Don’t Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking
• Monday Master Class: Three Trivial Study Habits that Provide Significant Results
• The Vital Five: A Crash Course for Turning Around Poor Academic Performance