A Study Hacks Primer
Uncategorized November 20th. 2009, 3:10pmFixed-Schedule Redux
My friend Ramit, from the exceptional I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog, just published a guest post I wrote about fixed-schedule productivity (the idea that you should fix your ideal schedule, and then work backwards to meet it). If you’re a fan of this philosophy, you’ll love the guest post, which extends my original article with a series of in-depth profiles.
If you’ve found Study Hacks through Ramit’s blog, here are some canonical posts to introduce you to our quirky little world here…
Thoughts on living a remarkable life…
- Does Living a Remarkable Life Require Courage or Effort?
- On the Value of Hard Focus.
- The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian’s Advice for Becoming Famous.
- The Pyramid Method: A Simple Strategy for Becoming Exceptionally Good.
- Focus Hard. In Reasonable Bursts. One Day at a Time.
- Double Majors Don’t Publish Novels.
Thoughts on being a successful (and happy) student…
- What the Hell is Study Hacks? (The philosophy of this blog.)
- The Straight-A Method: How to Ace College Courses.
- How to Become a Zen Valedictorian: Decreasing Your Stress Without Decreasing Your Ambition.
- Diligence vs. Ability: Rethinking What Impresses Employers.
- The Study Hacks Guide to Beating Student Stress.
- The Unheralded Splendor of the A* Strategy.
Thoughts on being more productive…
- Plan.txt: The Most Effective Productivity Tool That You’ve Never Heard Of.
- Drastically Reduce Stress with a Work Shutdown Ritual.
- How to World’s Most Famous Computer Scientist Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months.
- Would Lincoln Have Become President If He Had E-mail?
- The Science of Procrastination Revisited: Researchers Rethink Willpower.
- How to Use Time Arbitrage to Maximize Your Productivity Profit.
And of course, if you like what you see, click here to subscribe via e-mail or RSS…
November 20th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I just read your guest post, great content, much more in depth than what you regularly post on study hacks! I’d love to see more of these kinds of long posts here.
November 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Super Useful–I graduated and am still using your tips. Keep us updated on the book.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Great splash/intro page full of juicy links. Looking forward to catching up on some of the posts here. Loved the writeup on Ramit’s blog (it was my first time there as well).
Have you considered a comment system like Disqus. I really love what they do as a heavy commenter on many blogs.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
I really love this post. You should post more like this. If you put out one solid post like this a week, I would kiss your feet!
November 21st, 2009 at 1:46 am
I agree with the other comments: your guest post is better than your regular posts.
I wonder how the content of your site will evolve as you graduate and start seeing the world maybe a little differently. I know I plan to keep reading as your content has really helped me. Thanks for that!
November 21st, 2009 at 6:53 am
Great round-up even for the accustomed Study Hacks readers (and owner of your books).
I particularly enjoryed reading plan.txt again!
November 21st, 2009 at 7:18 am
I like your post, Cal, but I find that I only have one gear.
This frustrates the hell out of me, but with anything I do I am guaranteed to be doing it forever. I can’t just say I want to time box things, and I will get them done during a set time because it will require me to work harder.
I’ve read your post about hard focus, but it don’t make sense to me; it seems made up. I’ve never experienced it. It is just unimaginable to me that greater focus x time will produce better and faster results. I can’t just say I will spread out a project over 4 hours instead of 10 straight hours because it ends up taking me 10.
It just seems like a hump I can’t get over. All the work I do is psudowork, apparently.
November 21st, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Cal, great post once again. I really like your work (that being your blog and your books as well).
However, on this topic, I’ve got a question: When I streamline my schedule to fit exactly the things I want to, how would you go about study techniques then? I mean, when you fix your schedule to your ideal, and then cut back on the number of hours of reading history, for example, you would have to be really efficient and really have the best techniques to get everything done. That being said, when you don’t yet implement any of the advanced/smart study techniques, or work at them too slowly, would you still advise a fixed-schedule ‘to the max’?
I’d love to receive your (or others’) replies.
November 21st, 2009 at 5:50 pm
A good way to ease into time-blocked, hard focus work is with an autopilot schedule for a small number of regularly occurring assignments. Over time you can reduce the amount of time needed in your block. This can act as the gateway to more aggressive time-blocked based scheduling.
Your ideal schedule still has to be reasonable. But lets say, for example, that you wanted to finish all work by 8 during the week. To get there, you might need a combination of more efficient study habits/scheduling, but also, perhaps, a more reasonable course schedule (dropping the double major, balancing course types), and starting work earlier.
In my new book, I have a whole section on achieve this sort of fixed-schedule for high school students. Maybe I should do a post on the topic for college students…
November 21st, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Thanks for your reply, Cal.
Given the number of tasks (History reading for an exam, History presentation, Composition research paper and a culture research paper), my goal would be to be done every working day at around 5pm. I definitely think this is possible. However, it would require some drastic new habits, as I am way behind on my reading (like 4-5 chapters, with the next two coming up this week..). So the largest investment time-wise would be the reading. For the papers and the presentation I am doing all right, gradually working towards a submittable document.
What’s more, I want to invest time in a new business/a grand project, in the same time as well. This should not be hard; my typical day requires me to only take one seminar/lecture for two hours, which is peanuts. Just need some beter habits for the history reading.. Which I find quite hard, as I am still juggling with the Q/E/C-format.
That sounds very interesting indeed. I’d be pleased to read something like that.
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:11 am
[...] Study Hacks » Blog Archive » A Study Hacks Primer calnewport.com/blog/2009/11/20/a-study-hacks-primer – view page – cached My friend Ramit, from the exceptional I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog, just published a guest post I wrote about fixed-schedule productivity (the idea that you should fix your ideal schedule, and… Read moreMy friend Ramit, from the exceptional I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog, just published a guest post I wrote about fixed-schedule productivity (the idea that you should fix your ideal schedule, and then work backwards to meet it). If you’re a fan of this philosophy, you’ll love the guest post, which extends my original article with a series of in-depth profiles. Read less [...]
November 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
You’re featured on the Yahoo! homepage Cal! Congrats!
November 22nd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Thank you! (I found you through Ramit). Unfortunately, it came too late… I’ve already read all the posts you mentioned since yesterday!
And congratulations! Your writings are very thoughtful, and it’s great to see someone who live’s by his speech. I also really liked the fact that you offer logical background to your methods. It’s really nice to see you put some hard thought on a subject before posting it, which is reflected in some elegant and simple methods like time arbitrage!
I also find it comforting that there’s people out there like me! I simply refused to put my life on pause while graduating. I had a really tough time when, at the end of my first graduation year, I decided to not only quit extra classes, but also refuse some of the regular ones. Getting out of the flow, as i see, was hard because it raised my “responsibility awareness”. If the regular flow is unbalanced, that’s ok – you’re just following, and you’re par with everyone. When you move away and screw things up, you’ll hear a lot from others (and from yourself) “why didn’t you do it like everybody else?”
Thanks once more for sharing your thoughts (and specially your time, which I see as our only and most precious resource) with us! If you ever come to Brazil, feel free to get in touch!
November 22nd, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Hello new favourite blog!
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 am
I loved your guest post over on Ramit’s blog as well and as a huge Tim Ferris fan as well I also really appreciated the references to the 4HWW. – Joel
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
An interesting way to put your toe in the water with something grand is to adopt a “saturday morning project.” That is, put aside a few hours saturday morning, when you’re not going to be working on anything else, to explore the concept. As it gains momentum, then it can work itself into more of your regular schedule.
I was there earlier this year. Beautiful country.
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Great post, and I came here from Ramit’s blog. I just tweeted you too!
http://twitter.com/MusicSpirit
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Hello, I am currently a 2nd year Maths major and am finding it extremely difficult to be organised! Just take what happened today and last week to illustrate what a mess my study life is as a whole!
I had a coursework (Statistics) due in today and also, an Algebra test. Prior to this, I spent the whole of last week doing only Algebra problem sheets as well as working on the coursework (which unfortunately, was very hard!). As a result, I disregarded my two other courses and I am a very hardworking student to begin with, not someone who works last minute definitely! Still, I couldn’t find the time to study the other two courses and also I realized what did for last week was painful, energy sapping and honestly, somewhat a waste of time! Hence, I am very keen to try out this fixed-schedule productivity. Anyone have any ideas about how should I go about scheduling the day? Also, a silly question. What does it mean when it says we should work ‘backwards’? Say I listed some task chronologically from 1 to 10, am I supposed to work from tast 10 to task 1?
Any suggestion and help is greatly appreciated! I have been spending every single day in the library working long hours since the past 2 months. If I am to continue this streak of mine, who knows what will become of me in the next few months.
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Sorry about the grammar mistakes present in my previous post!
November 24th, 2009 at 9:56 am
That’s quite an interesting approach. I will try it out and report back on how it works..
November 25th, 2009 at 1:25 am
I just want to say Thank You Cal!! I’ve been reading some of your post and I have to say, they helped me so much today!! I came back from the library a happier and satisfied student! Thank you for your insightful posts!!
November 25th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
[...] MIT Computer Science grad student has an interesting list on his blog of posts that cover this subject of dedicated practice to master a skill. In MJ fashion, he calls [...]
November 30th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Thank you!!!
Google reader recommended your friend’s post to me, and now your blog is at the top of my blog subscriptions. Thanks for being so receptive and posting this guide to your blog, it is really helpful. You’ve got some very good advice on here.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Start with the suggested posts on the sidebar of my blog as well as the student-related articles listed in this post.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
[...] Another is a workgroup of students participating in the Study Hacks on Campus project. You can read more about Study Hacks here, and links to posts describing the Study Hacks primer here. [...]
March 7th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
[...] suggest that you go read Theo’s post for inspiration (and check out some of the posts in the Study Hacks Primer), start saying no so that you have a chance to assign time to bigger things, and try to find at [...]
March 8th, 2010 at 5:35 am
[...] Read these two articles from Study Hacks: [2], [3], and a few more of your choice from [4]. [...]
May 15th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
[...] 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment A great blog that won’t put you to sleep is Study Hacks by Cal Newport. Be sure to check out The Straight-A Method: How to Ace College [...]
July 8th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Hi there.
After a dismal first semester, I am almost approaching the second semester and was wondering what are some simple things I can do to quickly get my life into order? My main issue is organization- time and of my notes.
Thanks
Will
July 9th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Search for my four post series, “4 weeks to a 4.0″.
August 11th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
[...] Kellyak in Recent Posts My husband is a big fan of Cal Newport, the Study Hacks blogger/writer (and postdoc in something or other at MIT) who offers up solid [...]
November 28th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
[...] (check his blog out at http://calnewport.com/blog/. He’s got an introductory post here: http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/11/20/a-study-hacks-primer/). His readers are all enlightened students who are really “beating the system” so to [...]