Study Hacks

Note to Readers: I’m hitting the road this afternoon for a four-day trip. Because of this, I’m posting Friday’s article one day early so that you’ll get a full three pieces this week. Please excuse me if I’m slow to moderate comments or answer e-mails in the near future, my computer access will be limited. Enjoy your weekend!

Med School Mania

Students looking to medical school are often some of the most overworked, overstressed students on campus. It has become accepted wisdom that going pre-med is one of the toughest academic paths you can follow.

But does it have to be this way?

Over the past few months, I’ve heard from a variety of students who have recently gone through the med school admissions process. I also had the privilege of talking with someone who could offer an insider view of how the admissions decisions are made at an elite medical institution (which will remain nameless). In this article, I have two goals. First, I want to draw from these conversations to identify the factors that really matter for med school admissions. Second, I want to discuss how to design a low stress schedule that still maximizes these key areas.

Following the standard Study Hacks approach, my goal is not to offer hidden shortcuts, but, instead, to help you eliminate the waste and inefficiency that makes what could be a reasonable journey unnecessarily hard.

What Matters for Med School

To the best of my understanding, the following factors are what matter for a med school admissions decision:

1. Where you went to school.
2. Your G.P.A.
3. Your MCAT score.
4. Evidence that you have a real interest in medicine and a good understanding of what the lifestyle entails.

That’s it. Keep this in mind: med school is not college. The admission decisions do not come down to who has the more extravagant (and punishing) collection of extracurricular activities and the hardest possible combination of majors. For most schools, if you have high grades and MCATs, and a solid collection of relevant activities, you’ll get in. A big goal of this article will be to free you from the degenerate mindset that if you’re not suffering on your way toward med school then you’re doing something wrong.

How to Accomplish these Goal with a Minimum of Stress

The happiest med-school bound students I’ve met, have followed, more or less, the following advice:

1. Major in whatever you want. Just make sure you also take the required pre-med courses.
2. Spread out your pre-med courses to avoid killer terms.
3. Don’t participate in any time-consuming extracurricular activities during the school year. Just do light things that you find fun and that relax you without eating up your time. (Worry not, we’ll return to when you can do extracurriculars in points 6 and 7.)
4. Make your courses your main focus. If you find yourself working late the night before exams, you have too much on your plate. Cut back on activities and spread out hard courses more to keep your schedules more manageable.
5. Definitely do not double-major in biology or chemistry and something else hard. This will make avoiding killer semesters almost impossible. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to avoid majoring in biology or chemistry all together. For someone who is not naturally drawn to these subjects, taking the required pre-med courses is easier than taking the required pre-med courses plus all the other courses needed for those particular majors. A lot of pre-med types feel like they are so supposed to have punishing course loads. This is not true. Go out of your way to avoid it.
6. Every summer, focus on something that exposes you to the real world practice of medicine. This is perhaps the most important point underpinning this low-stress philosophy: isolate med school related extracurriculars to the summers. The resulting stress reduction is intense without reducing your impressiveness.
7. If you’re competing for spots in the best possible med schools — those in which all applicants have top GPA’s and MCATs, here’s the secret to making your extracurricular pop: organize your own program. Often this entails taking an experience from earlier summers than adapting it somewhere new. For example, perhaps you intern at a clinic one summer, then the next summer you organize a similar internship program at a different clinic. Another insider tip: consider a senior thesis on a topic involving community-level health issues. This provides the rationale — and makes it easier to find student funds — to launch a pilot program or gather firsthand experience. Under no circumstances, however, should you try to pile up a large quantity of vaguely related extracurriculars during your school year. I know this is your instinct. I know this is what you think got you into college. But med school is not college! Such an approach will saturate your schedule in stress, and it still won’t provide more impact four summers of focused, medicine-related, self-initiated work.
8. Start studying for the MCAT very early. Get to the point that you can score high without breaking a sweat. These are really important. Much more so then the things that cause pre-meds the most stress (i.e., too many majors, too hard course loads, too many unnecessary extracurriculars.) Take advantage of this reality by putting your focus here, where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Why This Works

This approach generates what has been identified to me as the ideal med school applicant: someone with high grades, high MCAT scores, and a solid collection of relevant medical activities. The key, however, is that you can accomplish these goals without having to have your semesters overflow with multiple hard courses and demanding activities. Or so I hypothesize…

As usual, I conclude by turning things over to you guys — the real experts. What are your insider tips for finding a relaxed path into med school?

(photo by Okky Pyykko)

To Start or Not to Start

Three weeks ago I published a controversial post titled: Getting Started is Overrated. My basic point: If you want to become truly impressive, you have to focus on a small number of things, for a long period of time, to the exclusion of other activities. I don’t like the “just get started” approach to accomplishment because it makes exclusive focus difficult. As Steve Martin taught us, getting good enough to reap major rewards requires incredible dedication. Jumping at every project that catches your attention derails such monastic devotion. Instead, I suggested, you should resist starting — resist until you are absolutely sure that a pursuit is perfect for you. Only then will you able to give it the longterm dedication required. Anything less wastes time.

As you can read in the comments to the original article andin Ben Casnocha’s response, this post generated a lot of discussion. Some people agreed. For example, Stella said:

Great post! Having worked for a large multinational travel agency that forced the Culture of Start down my throat for many years, I have become very skeptical of the Richard Branson type of entrepreneur. Over the years, I have had many business and investment ideas that I’m so glad I never got around to

On the other hand, many others disagreed, such as Grad Hacker:

Starting is often the best form of research, and how do you develop a passion without starting something?

And Ben, who noted:

Some tasks give feedback faster if undertaken right away in a small dose as opposed to analyzing it from afar. Take Cal’s examples: If you want to become a writer, sure you can talk to writers and study the profession, but is there a better way to understand whether writing girds your loins than actually putting pen to paper?

The odd loin reference aside, we are faced here with a clear dilemma: who is right? I was struggling with a good answer — I see wisdom in both points of view — when a real gift came along; a gift delivered from my friend Scott Young, who recently posted a insightful dissection of this issue. His approach brings clarity to a confusing situation.

It goes as follows…

Separating Experiments From Goals

Scott makes the following observation:

I like to separate my pursuits into two broader categories: experiments and goals. Experiments are the activities you take with almost zero commitment… Goals are beyond the stage of experimenting. This is when you’ve had enough experience in an area that you want to accomplish something important within it.

Be careful about getting caught in the middle-zone. This is an area which is no longer an experiment, but you don’t have the focus and commitment to achieve anything meaningful. [Having] lots of activities in this middle-zone means you’re wasting a lot of energy that could be better spent achieving something important or finding new opportunities.

Right on, Scott! I think this model captures the best of both sides of the getting started debate. It’s okay to have both high-value goals — which require focus to the exclusion of other high-value goals — and small, low-commitment experiments — which require a small amount of time and are used only to explore. The real insight is to note that separation is key. The danger is letting an experiment reach a “middle-zone” in which it starts sapping time and energy away from your high-value goals but is still not producing meaningful results.

After thinking about this model for a few days, I want to add a few thoughts of my own:

1. Make a distinction between achievements and habits. This discussion becomes clearer when we separate out our lifestyle habits, such as fitness, reading, social events, and even minor hobbies, like biking or joining a kickball team. These all fall under the category of enjoying your life. They don’t compete with your high-value goals. You can identify them by the following two features: (1) they aren’t meant to provide large rewards; (2) their primary purpose is your day to day happiness. When I say “don’t get started,” I’m not talking about these habits. Jump in and out of these as much as you like.
2. Use experiments to explore potential new high-value goals. Unlike habits, experiments exist for the sole purpose of investigating whether a given pursuit might be worth transforming into a high-value goal. As many of you pointed out, jumping in and trying something, at a low, non-committal level, can be a good way to investigate whether or not to commit to that goal in the longterm.
3. Keep experiments obligation-free. The easiest way to have an experiment slide into that dangerous middle-zone is to have it start generating regular time obligations. The best experiments require time only at your discretion. You can, if you want, stop at the spur of the moment or put it aside for 6 months without any negative consequences. For example: Don’t experiment with becoming a journalist by taking a demanding, 20 hour-a-week copy editor position with your college newspaper. Instead, work on submitting some unsolicited op-eds. Only once you’re ready to really commit should you jump into the time-consuming, obligation-heavy entry-level work.
4. Stop experimenting once your goal slots are filled. This is perhaps the hardest advice for people to hear. Once you’ve settled on the 1-3 high-value goals that you want to commit to (the number depends on your situation, a student, for example, can support more high-value goals than a first-year investment banker), stop experimenting. Your attention needs to be focused on getting good at your long-term pursuits. Even though experimenting with new pursuits is more fun. You should only start experimenting again if you complete one of your high-value goals or start to really question whether you should replace one.
5. Experimenting within the confines of a high-value goal, however, is always allowed. I must add a crucial distinction that I think caused some havoc in the discussion over at Ben’s blog. Within the confines of a given high-value goal, experimenting is good. Expose yourself to randomness. Try lots of different angles to make progress. Anyone who achieved something very impressive will probably credit at least some serendipity along the way. The key, however, is that this random moment happened — usually — after they had committed themselves to the general direction. For example, if you want to start a business, you might want to experiment, at first, with several small ideas and random networking events. This all falls under the rubric of your entrepreneur goal. Don’t, however, spend three months taking a screenwriting course. That would be an unrelated experiment.

I find this topic fascinating. But there are, as we’ve seen already, uncountable variations and issues that arise. This is, roughly, what has worked so far for me. But I’m curious: what are your thoughts on the balance between exploring and making it big?

The (Dangerous) Art of the Start

Attend any talk given by an entrepreneur and you’ll hear some variation of the following:

The most important thing you can do is to get started!

This advice has percolated from its origin in business self-help to the wider productivity blogging community. You’ve heard it before: Do you want to become a writer? Start writing! Do you want to become fit? Join a gym today! Do you want to become a big-time blogger? Start posting ASAP! If you don’t start, you’re weak! You’re afraid of success!

Here’s the problem: I completely disagree with this common advice. I think an instinct for getting started cripples your chance at long-term success. And I suggest that, on the contrary, you should develop rigorous thresholds that any pursuit must overcome before it can induce action.

Allow me to explain why…

The Origin of the Cult of the Start

If you talk to an accomplished speaker, especially one with a focus on entrepreneurship, he’ll tell you his “get started” message is crucial. Indeed, one of the biggest frustrations faced by speakers in this circuit is how often they meet young people who are psyched to start a business, but then allow, over time, for their enthusiasm to fade without ever taking action.

These speakers counter this effect by drilling the importance of starting. “Do anything!”, they yell. “Send one e-mail, check out one book, register one domain name!” The theory is that even the smallest action can overcome some mythical initial resistance, and help build an inescapable momentum toward business nirvana.

But is getting started right away always the best option?

Survivor Bias

In his convention-busting book, Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb preaches the danger of survivor bias — a common fallacy in which we emulate people who succeeded without considering those who used similar techniques but failed. Taleb uses the example of The Millionaire Next Door, a popular finance guide in which the authors interviewed a large group of millionaires. As Taleb points out, the habits of these millionaires — accumulating wealth through spartan living and aggressive investments — should not be emulated unless one can determine how many more people followed a similar strategy but failed to hit it big.

Perhaps a more poignant example would be to find and interview the 10 people in the country who had the biggest and fastest overall increase to their finances in the last year. Guess who would dominate this list? Lottery winners. Ignoring the survivor bias, one could conclude: the people who get richest fastest all invested heavily in lottery tickets, so that’s what I should do too!

The same, of course, can be applied to an entrepreneur, or anyone, really, who had success in a glamorous pursuit. To the winner, their path seems straightforward. It was just a matter of putting in the time and the results followed. To someone in this position, it can be incredibly frustrating to watch people denying themselves similar success simply because they’re afraid to get started.

But the survivor bias lurks…

For every successful entrepreneur, or writer, or blogger, or actor, there are dozens of others who did get started but then flamed out. Some people lack the right talents. For many more, the pursuit, once past that initial stage of generic, heady enthusiasm, simply lost its attraction and their interest waned.

The Saturation Method

I have observed many people who have had long-term success in an impressive pursuit. I have also observed many people who went after such successes yet failed. I hope by combining both outcomes — success and failure — I can identify a predictor of the former that will remain free of the taint of survivor bias.

In short, I’ve noticed that people who succeed in an impressive pursuit are those who:

• Established, over time, a deep emotional conviction that they want to follow that pursuit.
• Have built an exhaustive understanding of the relevant world, why some succeed and others don’t, and exactly what type of action is required.

This takes time. Often it requires a long period of saturation, in which the person returns again and again to the world, meeting people and reading about it and trying little experiments to get a feel for its reality. This period will be at least a month. It might last years.

Steve Martin’s Diligence

Steve Martin noted that the key to becoming really good at something (so good that they can’t ignore you), is diligence, which he defines as effort over time to the exclusion of other pursuits. This is why people who ultimately succeed in a pursuit go through such a long period of vetting before they begin — if you’re not 100% convinced and ready to tackle something, potentially for years, to the exclusions of the hundreds of interesting new ideas that will pop up along the way, you’ll probably fizzle out well before reaping any reward.

The Art of Not Starting

This reality brings me back to my original point: try not to get started. If you translate every burst of enthusiasm into action, you’re going to waste time. More dangerous, you’re going to hobble your chances of succeeding in any pursuit, as the constant influx of new activity prevents you from achieving a Steve Martin-style diligence.

My advice: resist starting. Spend lots of time learning about different pursuits, but put off action until an idea begins to haunt your daydreams and refuses to be dislodged from your aspirational psyche. Then, and only then, should you reluctantly take that first step, one of what’s sure to be many, many more before you get to where you want.

Related Posts

• Dangerous Ideas: Action is Overrated
  
• The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian’s Advice for Becoming Famous
• The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More By Doing Less
• Getting to the Point of “I Can Do This!” (via. Ben Casnocha)

The Manifesto Arrives

If you read last Friday’s interview with Chris Guillebeau, you may remember that he planned to release a free eBook titled: A Brief Guide to World Domination. Early yesterday, the manifesto became available. And I highly recommend it.

At a high level, I must admit, the guide hits the standard, commencement-style post-grad high notes:

1. Don’t restrict yourself to conventional paths.
2. Follow your passions.
3. Give back to the world.

These glossy ideals will be familar to anyone who has ever attended a graduation ceremony. You’ll hear the standard quotes…

e.g., “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.”

…coupled with some brief, insight-free anecdotes of the type required by law to be included in any piece of self-help literature. (”Bob hated being a lawyer, but then he quit to become a professional woodcarver and loves it!”)

Where Chris really begins to pick up speed, however, is when he shifts from the general to the specific. Unlike many aspirants to the Tim Ferriss throne, Chris actually lives the life he preaches, and his approach introduces some new and exciting practices into the broader conversation. Ultimately, it is the practical tips that separate the work from standard “be the change you want to see in the world” fluff, and make it an essential read.

For example, early on, Chris introduces an intelligent deconstruction of the prevailing paradigm that you either serve yourself or serve the world. Drawing from personal experience, Chris walks the reader through the possibility of compromise — a position forged, no doubt, from extensive practice in the art of leading a non-conformist lifestyle in a reality of bills and student loans payments.

I was most excited, however, by the the final part of eBook, which describes a “Toolkit for World Domination.” Chris’s advice on the power of a catchy story and the need to build a small army, among other examples, struck me as both shockingly original and intuitively sound. (If anything, the discussions here are too short.) This is exactly the brand of tactics I hoped to glean from A Brief Guide — battle-hardened strategies extracted from years of struggling to keep his unusual lifestyle alive.

In the end, I think Chris is on to something interesting here. His philosophy begins with The Four-Hour Workweek, then injects a social conscious, removes the shady Internet businesses, and gives the whole thing a cleansing bath in new media, social networking-powered goodness.

I recommend starting with the free guide — skimming the generic and dwelling on the novel — then continuing to Chris’s blog, where there’s much insight to be gained from his growing collection of war stories born of his daily skirmishes against the conventional.

[Update: I recommend that you check out Swaroop’s excellent reflections on Chris’s approach and how it applies to his own unconventional life.]

The Power of Innovation

At the core of the Zen Valedictorian philosophy is the idea that if you really understand the psychology of impressiveness, you can, in effect, hack your image — making yourself outrageously impressive without having to become outrageously hard working.

I introduced two techniques for achieving this goal. The first, focus, stated that becoming very good at one thing was more impressive (and less time consuming) than becoming kind of good at many. The second technique, innovate, was more difficult to parse. It stated that any activity that made someone think “how did he do that!?” would yield rewards that were disproportionately large compared to the effort put in.

In this post, I dive into the details of this idea and describe both why the innovate factor is so strong and how you can achieve it.

Some Innovative Examples

Let’s begin with some examples. Below are three activities that generate the “how did he do that!?” response. Each is based, loosely, off of real students:

1. A high school student who designed a technology-based curriculum recently adopted by several states.
2. A college student who setup the U.N.’s first youth advisory council and led the effort to write a youth rights constitution adopted by the Arab League.
3. A high school student who ran a web design company that involved the managing of a dozen contract employees and servicing 5-figure corporate contracts.

Each of these examples, most will agree, are impressive. These students, no doubt, will have many interesting opportunities afforded to them: they’ll get accepted to good colleges (relative to their grades) and have their pick of cool jobs. Lurking behind this reality, however, is an insistent question: why, exactly, do these activities command so much respect?

Some Non-Innovative Examples

To help answer this question, consider, as a point of comparison, the following list of more standard activities:

1. A high school student who was the president of two student clubs and was a member of the varsity tennis team.
2. A college student who did well in a double-major and also sat on two different student activity councils.
3. A high school student who played trumpet in her state’s regional orchestra.

Compared to the previous list, these three activities probably did not elicit the same level of admiration. Certainly, these students are more impressive than the average schlub, but, on the other hand, we don’t imagine them necessarily breezing into top colleges or having their pick of post graduation jobs. Whereas the students in the first list might be called superstars, these latter students might be stuck with the moniker of “grind,” “hardworking,” or, pronounced, no doubt, with a note of disdain: “ambitious.”

Why do we judge these two student groups so differently?

If pressed, you would likely guess that impressiveness is a function of talent and hard work. The above examples, however, falsify this hypothesis. The activities of the second list require just as much hard work, and, in many cases, such as varsity tennis and regional orchestra, more natural talent than the activities of the first list. Yet, the first list strikes us as much, much more impressive.

Indeed, the real reason the first list is so much more impressive can be attributed to a little understood phenomenon…

The Failed Simulation Effect

When presented with a student biography we tend to oblige our instinct to mentally simulate the path that led to that student’s achievements. For example, when we hear about a student holding down two different club presidencies and a spot on the tennis team, we imagine the hectic, running from meeting to meeting lifestyle that supports that volume of tasks. We have no problem with this simulation. We know students like this. We feel that, with a high enough tolerance for pain, we too could be that busy. It’s hard work. But it’s not mysterious.

What happens, however, when presented with the story of a student who works with the U.N. and drafted a constitution for the Arab League? Our simulation apparatus fails. We don’t know how, exactly, one becomes a player in major international organizations.

The effect of this failed simulation: a sense of novelty and wonder.

And it is exactly this feeling that we end up interpreting as the sensation of being “really damn impressed.” In other words: The first three sample students elicit great admiration not because they are harder working or more talented than the second list, but because we cannot simulate the path they took to their achievements. This failure intrigues us. We don’t feel like we could have done the same. We don’t feel threatened. A sense of novelty and wonder sluices through our synapses.

Leveraging the Failed Simulation Effect

Understanding this subtle mental effect allows you to maximize the impressiveness you reap from the effort you expend in activities. The key, we now understand, is to push activities into a realm where most people cannot easily imagine the steps that got you to your destination. Here’s the good news: such pushes are a function more of planning and creativity than of hard work.

From my experience in deconstructing the paths taken by these types of students, I can identify three steps that will help you get to this impressiveness sweet spot:

1. Enter a Closed World and Exceed Expectations. The first step is to get involved as an insider in a world that interests you. This might mean landing an internship, or shadowing someone, or joining a relevant club. Once there — and this is key — tackle the opportunities given to you with vigor. Complete them fast. Go slightly above and beyond. In such entry-level, non-full time situations, the people above you will be pleasantly surprised that you are getting things done. You will soon be rewarded for this.
2. Package Insider Connections. After you’ve proved yourself in this world, you’ll begin to notice interesting opportunities that only an insider, like yourself, would know about. Look for an opportunity to lead a project that would be available only to someone on the inside. Leverage your insider knowledge to its fullest extent.
3. Escalate. The solo project from (2) will defeat most people’s simulation apparatus as it was built upon connections available only to insiders. In this final step, leverage this effect, and the good job you did your past project, to shake loose an even more un-simulatable project. Repeat this process a few times, with each iteration ramping up to an even more insider-supported, harder to simulate project.

Case Studies: How The Three Example Students Applied These Steps

Let’s examine how these three steps were applied by the sample impressive students at the beginning of the article.

Case Study #1: The high school student who wrote the curriculum.
She satisfied step (1) by taking a student internship at a well-known technology company. She then satisfied (2) by getting involved — and following through — on an internal project involving the application of the company’s technology to educational settings. Finally, (3) was satisfied when she volunteered, as her main intern project, to package up these findings into a full curriculum. By doing a good job and following through, she got the company to pitch the curriculum to their school partners; several picked it up.

None of this required any more effort than the standard high school summer job. But because it leveraged opportunities only available to someone working inside the education department of a technology company, it appears, to an outsider, to be un-simulatable — “how do you get states to adopt a curriculum you wrote!?” — and thus really damn impressive.

Case Study #2: The college student who worked with the U.N. and Arab League.
Attending school in the middle east, this student met up, by coincidence, with an old friend who had started an international youth activism network. To satisfy (1), he agreed to start a chapter of the organization in his own neck of the woods. He pushed the chapter to meet regularly and grow. By doing so, he met some important contacts and identified some important youth issues in the middle east. To satisfy (2), he made a lateral move to start his own organization focused solely on middle east youth issues. By attending conferences, and making phone calls, people got to know him. Finally, to get at (3), he leveraged this status and his connections to get invitations to help lead relevant initiatives at the U.N. and the Arab League. No mystery. He ran a youth organization in an under-represented region. These international bodies wanted to work on these issues. It was a natural fit.

This was hard work. But no more so than the running of any large club. Because, however, it dealt with an insider world — a vibrant sub-culture of international youth activism — it yielded rewards — involvement with the U.N. and Arab League — that, to an outsider, seem absolutely inexplicable.

Case Study #3: The high school CEO.
I’ll come clean: this story is based on the company I started in high school with my friend Michael Simmons. Mike and I knew how to design basic web sites because we were, well, nerds. Hoping to make some money, we stumbled across a local guy who ran a business directory web site for the Princeton area where we lived. To satisfy (1), we setup a little deal to help small business he listed build simple web sites. To satisfy (2), we leveraged the portfolio and experience this provided us to strike out on our own. One of our key insights working with the business directory was that it was easy to find sub-contractors that would, for a cut of the fee, tackle most of the time-consuming tasks of designing web sites. We landed a few clients and made some money. Finally, to satisfy (3), we leveraged the fact that our company looked like a big deal to hire a CEO, print some fancy marketing materials, buy suits, build up our team of sub-contractors, and, most importantly, raise our fees.

The company was fun. We never had more than one or two clients at a time. And our responsibility was mainly keeping them posted while our sub-contractors did the work. Looking back, Mike and I estimate the time we spent was roughly equivalent to being the president of a student club. The rewards, however, were so much higher. Because we leveraged the insider knowledge gained by working with a local web portal, we were quickly able to get to a point that foiled most people’s simulation apparatus.

In Conclusion

I apologize for the length of this article, but the subject of activity innovation is tricky. It is also, I must admit, one of my favorite issues to explore. If you’re looking to make an impact in this world — and you want to do so without suffering a steady stream of stress-induced panic attacks — you need to look beyond the standard exaltations to simply “get started!” and “work hard!” and “follow your passion and it will all work out!” Instead, think carefully about how impressive achievements really come about. When you know what you’re doing, you will be surprised by how soon you can get somewhere that earns serious admiration.