Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

If you’d like to check out the bit of guest writing I did for Cal’s “Study Hacks” you can check it out here.  It covers the basics of those necessary, cornerstone parts of education where technology isn’t so much a factor.

“The Intersection of Technology and Productivity“

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

A few quick things. I’m experimenting with the setup around here, trying to work out a more efficient way of allowing people to find information. So I’m moving off of traditional wordpress categories and moving to a tag based system. The tag’s can already be seen in the column to the side.

A few other things, I’ve began to use a tumblr blog to quickly publish a bit of info before I come back to it. You can find it on its own page here (it’s feed is here) and more conveniently, on the side of the page as well. So, you’ll be seeing links I will post about eventually, as well as some I won’t, and little bits of information I plan on discussing later (or not, as well!)

We have some interesting things happening this week, as I mentioned before. Cal Newport from Study Hacks and author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win At College (both of which I cannot endorse more heartily). Next week, Russ at The Student Help Forum and I will be presenting a week of goodies. There’s more to come along this vein, and I’m very excited about working together with other bloggers. If you’d be interesting in doing some guest blogging or co-operating on a project, just let me know.

Now, for a bit of shrill commercialism… I’ve added an Amazon search box to the site, please feel free to use it. The kickbacks I get from Amazon help cover the costs of the site, which is handy. There’s also some google ad-sense links, use as you see fit. I’m surprised at both how handy some of them are, and how totally inappropriate others are. And lastly, there is a little block of links at the bottom of every post - these are buttons to easily post to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, etc. If you use such sites and find the information helpful, please do click them. Every little bit helps!

Okay, now I’ll never mention those above things ever again.

So, look for Cal’s post later in the day!