How To Become A Straight
How To Become A Straight
Not the whole story behind their success (straight-A students). What to actually do in
these short bursts is also crucial- technique is just as important as timing.
How to accomplish this transformation? - Overcome your urge to procrastinate, choose
the right locations, times of day, and durations to study. Because, scheduling your work
is meaningless if you don’t actually work in the time you set aside which requires self
motivation.
Step 1: Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day (should meet the following criteria)
1. Requires no more than five to ten minutes of effort in a single twenty-four-hour period.
2. Doesn’t force an unchangeable minute-by-minute schedule on your day.
3. Helps you remember, plan, and complete important tasks before the very last moment.
4. Can be quickly restarted after periods of neglect.
Update Your Calendar Each Morning (serious time management thinking skills
required):
1. Record all of your to-dos and deadlines on a calendar which becomes your master schedule.
Each morning figure out what you should try to finish that day and jot it down on your list in the
“today’s schedule” section. Throughout the day, when you encounter a new-to-do/deadline put
it in the list in the “things to remember section”. Next morning transfer the new stuff from your
list onto your calender And we’re back where we started.
2. Don’t be tempted to copy all of the tasks from your calendar into your list which you can
never accomplish. Simply move the remaining items onto the calendar entries for future dates.
3. Do instead: Be honest and reasonable about how long things really take and then, label each
of your to-dos for the day with a specific time period during which you are going to complete it.
Don’t plan to read two hundred pages in one hour. Group many little tasks (errands that take
less than ten minutes) into one big block and leave plenty of time for breaks. Give yourself an
hour for meals not just twenty minutes. If possible end your day at an appropriate hour; don’t
try to fit in work right up until sleep time because you need to be able to unwind and relax.
4. In general—though it may seem counterintuitive—be pessimistic (tending to see the worst
aspect of things). The equation is simple: If you overestimate your free time (which is the main
reason for breaking down you to-dos into time slots), then you are likely to put off work until
it’s too late.
Procrastination Battle Plan #2: Feed the Machine: Low energy breeds procrastination.
1. Drink water constantly. Hydration increases your energy, masks boredom-induced food
cravings, and staves off sleepiness. Don’t worry about the inevitable side effect of so much
drinking, as “Frequent bathroom trips keep you awake.”
2. Monitor your caffeine intake carefully. While a caffeinated beverage can heighten your
concentration, too much caffeine in a short period will make you jumpy and unfocused. If
you’re a coffee drinker, start off with a strong brew to jump-start your mind, but switch to
decaf, tea, or just water for the next hour or two before returning to another strong drink.
3. Treat food as a source of energy, not satisfaction. Try vegetables, fruit, anything whole
grain, lean proteins, peanuts, or natural granola bars. Refined carbohydrates, such as sugar and
white flour, will provide only a quick energy rush followed immediately by a damaging energy
drain and increased appetite. If you follow rule one, your frequent water consumption will dull
the cravings for specific foods, making it much easier to stick with healthier fare.
4. Don’t skip meals. Snacks alone are not enough to fuel your mind for long periods. Hunger,
and the corresponding low blood sugar, will rob you of your ability to concentrate and set you
up to succumb to procrastination. So keep your meals regular even on the busiest of days. If
you’re pressed for time, eat fast. Grab a sandwich from a less-populated dining hall and sit
alone, or bring part of the meal back to your study location.
Procrastination Battle Plan #3: Make an event out of the worst tasks:
1. Find an out-of-the-way restaurant, coffee shop, or bookstore café and set a time to bring
your work there.
2. As always, the hardest part is beginning. But once you start slogging through your
assignment, the pain of the horrible tasks, thoughts of which can send chills down your spine
will slip away, you will hit your stride, and before you know it, your ride will have arrived and
that once terrifying task will be safely completed.
ANSWER: Early.
1. Don’t fear a fractured schedule in which there are a few continuous stretches of free time in
the morning and afternoon. Bring your materials with you throughout the day, and mentally
prepare yourself to fill in any small patches of free time with productive work within seconds.
2. Avoid your dorm room or other public places as much as possible during the day to separate
your work mind-set from your relaxation mind-set and, to not let a potentially productive work
period slip away at the expense of a mundane conversation.
3. Remember: “Work hard, play hard” is always better than “Work kind of hard, play kind of
hard.” By taking advantage of daytime study pockets, you’re freeing up valuable nighttime
hours to go out and have the sort of fun that defines the college experience.
ANSWER: In isolation.
1. You need multiple locations for two reasons. First, it’s nice to always know of a nearby
hidden study spot (isolation of which is important to shield you from distraction)—small
libraries in the buildings of student organizations, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, or the local
public library are all potential concentration gold mines.
2. Second, changing locations prevents you from burning out at any one place.
3. If you give the little procrastination devil on your shoulder (who is an incredible salesman)
even a glimpse of an alternative to your work, then he will close the deal. To neutralize this
devil, isolate him. Don’t let him see your couch, the cute girls tossing Frisbees on the quad, or
your friends chatting in your dorm room lounge. These mind games are not trite. Don’t
underestimate the importance of psychology in becoming an effective student.
1. Use your laptop because, you type much faster than you write and also, it will allow you to
record more points in more detail which will make it easier to study come test time—and that
should be all you need to hear.
2. If you don’t have a laptop, have one notebook for every class and a pen that you are
comfortable with to write clearly. For technical courses pencil, paper and notebooks are
acceptable.
3. Have one folder for each class in which every piece of paper or problem sets you receive
during a lecture— outlines, assignment descriptions, reading excerpts— should be dated and
put, which will make it much easier to find materials when you need them later for review.
4. A lot of “experts” recommend needlessly complicated additions to this basic material list like,
using multiple colored pens, special notebooks, and organized class binders equipped with
portable three-hole punches. Real straight-A students ignore this nonsense.
Work Constantly:
1. 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 spending a lonely night with a textbook and a six-
pack of Red Bull.
2. Even if you get caught up on all of your assignments for a given class, you should continue to
work. But on days where you happen to be ahead of schedule and you have already put aside
time to work on a certain class, take advantage of this fortuitous situation to get ahead.
a) Match the lecture to the problem set that covers the same material.
b) Copy sample problems from these lecture notes onto a blank sheet of paper. You don’t have
to copy the steps or the answers, just the questions.
c) Label the blank sheet of paper with the date of the lecture. This will help you later figure out
where these problems came from (and more important, where their answers can be found).
d) Fasten this sheet with a paper clip to the problem set you matched it to in step one.
3. Finally, you must augment your mega-problem sets with technical explanation questions (to
understand the underlying concepts).
4. One last note: If your professor makes a practice exam (great review tool) available, then
print out a copy of it and store it with your mega-problem sets.
2. What follows are quick and powerful techniques for taking your imposing piles of study
material and imprinting the key ideas on your mind as efficiently as possible. Use them with
confidence. They get the job done fast.
2. The same is not true if you merely read over something. Passively reviewing a concept is not
the same as actively producing it.
2. If your notes contain some really broad questions, break them up into several smaller
questions that, together, cover all of the relevant points. On the other hand, if your notes have
a bunch of really small questions, you can combine some into larger questions to save space
and time.
3. If you can answer all the questions, then you understand all the big ideas. Don’t do this only
in your head! If you’re in a private location, say your answers out loud using complete
sentences or act as if you’re giving a lecture on the subject. Be creative. Studying doesn’t have
to involve long hours sitting at a desk. However, if you are forced to review with other people
around and you need to be quiet, then you can write out your answers. If you don’t say or write
it, don’t consider it fully reviewed.
4. Next, put little check marks on your quizzes next to any questions that you had trouble
answering. Glance through your study guide to remind yourself of the right answers to these
questions. Take a quick break. Now, repeat the first step, except the questions that you have
already answered and repeat the step if the problem persists. Once you finish a round without
any more check marks, you’re finished, and not a minute is wasted. The quizand-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.
2. As before, check mark the questions that give you trouble. Review the solutions for these
questions. Take a break. Then repeat the process, except the questions that you already
answered. Follow this method until you finish a round with no checked problems.
3. In this case, wait until after you finish your quiz-and-recall, and then try to complete the
exam under timed test taking conditions. Consider this a final check that you understand all of
the needed concepts. If you have trouble with a few questions on this practice exam, review
them carefully. If you have trouble with a lot of questions on this practice exam, then
something went wrong with your previous review, and you need to go back through the
material.
• Ask questions during class. If a topic slides by you, raise your hand and ask for a clarification.
The more question marks you eliminate on the spot, the less work you will have to do later.
• Develop the habit of talking to your professor briefly after class. Take advantage of the time
when professors stick around for five or ten minutes after the bell and see how many of the
question marks of the day you can get eliminated.
• Ask classmates. Send an e-mail or corner them in the hall soon after the lecture. If they
understand the topic, it will take them only a few minutes to explain it to you while it’s still
fresh in their minds.
• Come prepared to exam review sessions (if offered). Go to the classes that offer a formal
review session the week before the exam. Before you arrive, jot down all of the topics from
your notes that you are still unsure about. Then, during the session, try to get all of them
answered. If, however, despite your best attempts, some of these unclear topics persist until
your review, your last-ditch defense is to skim. But this situation can still be dangerous, so
follow the first four strategies to reduce the topics you don’t understand as much as possible
before your studying begins.
2. By taking the first few minutes to carefully review the exam, you break this mounting
tension. You’ve seen the questions, and (hopefully) none seem impossible. You begin to say to
yourself: Okay, maybe this isn’t all that bad. Your confidence rises, your heart rate lowers, and
your stress begins to dissipate. Now you can turn your full attention to providing standout
responses.
2. For an exam with a small number of questions, mark right on the test pages the time when
you should begin and finish each one. For an exam with many questions, divide the exam into
equal fourths, then jot down the time you should begin and end each section.
2. For the difficult ones, you might not know the best answer, but you can spend some time to
devise a reasonable answer, as you have nothing else left to finish, you can spend the
remainder of the time polishing this answer, thinking, and re-polishing.
2. Usually, you can underline and isolate three or four mini-questions from a single essay
question, which will help you flesh out your outline and avoid an incomplete answer. Record
only a few key words for each point to save time and space. Next, go back and check the
question parts you underlined in the first step. Make sure each is adequately addressed by the
points you just noted in the margin.
3. When you’re sure that you have identified all the relevant information for the essay, number
these points in the order that you want to present them. Now you can follow your outline and
begin writing your essay.
2. If there is a problem you feel particularly shaky on, use this time to go over it in detail,
augmenting the answer wherever appropriate.
3. Don’t worry about using carets and arrows to add in new phrases and facts to your essays, or
to point out added steps in your technical problems. Neatness doesn’t count on exams; it’s the
content that matters.
4. Finally, double checking your work up to the last minute can make the difference between an
above-average student and an academic star.