Jan 25
Action Paralysis
J.D. Roth of the popular Get Rich Slowly blog recalls a conversation he had with a friend who had just started his own web site. As J.D. recalls, after the friend posted an introductory article he asked: “Can you point people to the site?”
“Not yet,” J. D. replied. “You don’t have any content.”
Instead of writing, the friend tweaked the layout and introduced advertisements. Several weeks passed.
“Nobody’s coming to my site,” the friend complained. “Not a single person has clicked on an ad.”
“That’s because there’s nothing there…you need to focus on content,” J.D. replied.
The friend posted a new article, then let the site lay fallow for another month. Finally, he wrote J.D. again, this time pleading: “Can’t you please point people to my site?”
“Maybe in a couple months,” J.D. replied. “Maybe once you have some content.”
Empty Inspiration
Consider another example. I have a friend who is a successful entrepreneur in the movie industry. He’s a strong believer in the power of consistent action. When giving talks to student crowds he likes to sum up his entire approach to life as a two-step process: “(1) Get started; (2) Keep going.”
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Jan 22
What if… 
I’m a fan of thought experiments. Sometimes they’re annoying, but other times they can help you sift through that heap of assumptions that sloshes around your brain and guides a lot of your behavior. In today’s post, I want to offer five thought experiments that yielded, at least for me, some interesting insights. Give them some thought. They might catch you in just the right way. Or not. But at the very least, they’ll provide you with some excellent cocktail party conversation.
Depending on popular demand, I can later share my own answers to the conundrums below…
5 Thought Experiments That Might Change Your Life
- A mad scientist attaches a probe to your brain. If you become bored or tired while working it delivers a painful shock. If you had to stay with your current job or school, how would your work schedule change? What habits would you lose? What habits would you gain? What’s stopping you from working that way now?
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Jan 16
The Trouble with Freedom
In Tuesday’s post I repeated a familar refrain: underschedule! By now, you probably know my argument by heart:
Having significant amounts of unstructured time in your schedule provides three benefits…
- Time affluence which generates happiness.
- The ability to master the small amount of structured things you leave in your schedule — the only route to becoming famous.
- Freedom to expose yourself to positive randomness, the key to stumbling into cool opportunities.
The argument is clear. Putting it into practice, however, can become problematic. I know this because I’ve received several e-mails from students reporting that they’ve given underscheduling a try, but didn’t know what to do with all that free time.
The result: lots of doing nothing, which made them unhappy, which, ironically, made them procrastinate more than ever before on their work, which made them even more unhappy, and so on.
In this post I want to help rectify this problem. Below I’ve listed 3 simple rules to help you get the most out of your experiments with an underscheduled lifestyle:
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Jan 13
Ben’s Year
In a recent blog post, Ben Casnocha summarized his adventures during 2008. Here are some excerpts:
I traveled to Quito and the Ecuadorean Amazon jungle, Zurich, Prague, all over Costa Rica, Alaska, and rural Tennessee… Gave a dozen paid speeches in various U.S. locales. Read 60 books. … Wrote a hundred thousand words on my blog…Won an essay contest. Made new friends. Tried to become closer still to old friends…Fished for halibut off a boat…Met one-on-one with David Foster Wallace and then mourned his death. Philosophized. Watched too many Seinfeld episodes….Plotted world domination.
This seems like a lot. And it is. But in this post I draw an unexpected conclusion: the long length and indisputable awesomeness of this list should inspire you during this upcoming semester to do much, much less.
We begin with a simple question…
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Jan 12
Think Different
Our friend Ben Casnocha recently launched a new web venture called Think Different TV. Inspired by Bloggingheads.tv, it features split-screen videos of two people having a conversation. Bloggingheads focuses on politics. Think Different TV, by contrast, covers issues more near to the heart of us Study Hackers, including entrepreneurship, education, and big ideas.
I was honored to chat with Ben in the inaugural episode, and I even wore my glasses to make myself look much smarter than I actually am. In this episode we discuss my third book, dissect the difference between unusual and impressive, and argue about the skills needed to be a successful student (and whether these matter in the “real world”).
To access the video, you can go to the Think Different web site or straight to Vimeo where it’s hosted.
In case you want to jump around, the conversation goes like this:
0:54 – Cal tells us what his third book is about
3:33 – Ben says people confuse “mysterious” with “impressive”
7:49 – Difference between being an impressive person vs. an interesting person
15:10 – Cal talks about the “confounding effect” that distorts our sense of interestingness since we don’t understand how something is done
16:37 – Attributing someone else’s success to “magic” relieves yourself of responsibility / guilt?
20:46 – What’s the difference between school and the “real world”? What skill sets are transferable?
27:26 – To succeed as as student requires some degree of entrepreneurship/innovation
Keep an eye on Think Different. I have a feeling it will evolve into a great source of innovative inspiration.
Nov 07
The Obama Method
In response to my recent article on Misery Poker, a reader commented:
I wonder about the really exceptional people. Does Barack Obama “build a realistic schedule”? … maybe extraordinary stress IS required to accomplish extraordinary feats
Another reader added:
I think extraordinary sacrifices are required for great accomplishments.
This is a fascinating argument. Study Hacks, as you know, is driven by the Zen Valedictorian Philosophy, which claims that it’s possible to be both relaxed and impressive. But these commenters are pushing back on this world view. It’s one to thing, they note, to have a successful college career that is also relaxed, but is it possible to have an exceptional career without overwhelming amounts of work?
In this post I claim it is possible. And I’ll explain exactly how…
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Oct 27
A Dash of Spice
Have you finished your mid-semester dash? If not, make a plan to do it! I’m already hearing reports from readers of huge post-dash stress reductions.
Once you’ve completed this purge, return to this post. Below, I will teach you how to keep your newly stripped down student life from becoming too boring.
The Grand Project
Readers of How to Win at College know that I’m a big fan of what I like to call: “Grand Projects.” I introduced the idea on the blog early last winter, but haven’t given it much attention since then.
Let’s change that.
Here’s the basic definition:
A Grand Project is any project that when explained to someone for the first time is likely to elicit a response of “wow!’
The purpose of a grand project is two-fold:
First, it injects excitement and possibility into your student life. As I said in last winter’s post: “[A Grand Project] focuses you through the small ups and downs that litter the standard student grind. It gives you higher purpose.”
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Oct 24
Seeking Wisdom
A reader from Princeton recently asked me an interesting question. He first highlighted a phrase I once used to describe a group of straight-A students:
…they have trained their mind to think hard, produce subtle, nuanced arguments, and find deep connections between ideas.
He then asked: “how do I do that?”
In other words, this reader wants to actually live the promise hastily tagged onto the liberal arts experience by its many defenders: to learn how to think. He wants to know how he can maximize the increased mental sophistication that college can provide (but by no means guarantees).
I want to describe a simple technique that could help this reader — and you, if you’re so inclined — send his brain development into overdrive.
It requires three steps:
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