Study Hacks

Quick hits is an occasional feature where I take a breather between my epic big idea posts to share ideas, ask questions, and in general provide a catch-all place for me to catch up with you.

E-mail Renegades

As part of an exciting writing project, I’m looking for people who have taken drastic steps to reduce the distraction generated by electronic communication tools — e-mail, social networks, twitter, etc. I’m more interested in big changes — e.g., getting rid of public e-mail addresses — than I am in moderation — e.g., checking e-mail only twice a day.

I’m interested in stories from knowledge workers, entrepreneurs, and folks in academia — be it professors, grad students, or undergraduates.

If this describes you or if you know someone like this, please e-mail me: author [at] calnewport.com. 

Interesting Links

• “When it comes to student loans, financial aid, and higher education, everyone’s got an opinion. They just usually happen to be wrong.” Thus opens Ramit Sethi’s barnburner of an article on the costs of higher education.
• “Comfortably situated in Chicago outside of the ‘start-up’ echo chamber, 37Signals is focused on getting sh*t done instead of chasing the Silicon Valley venture capital death spiral” This is Tim Ferriss’ description of the tech firm 37Signals. I’ve been fascinated by this Chicago-based company since I first read about their four day work week policy. Ferriss’ article is a great introduction to their unconventional thinking on integrating work into a full life.
• “This would suggest that sometimes you’re not going to be interested in something right out of the gate.” This is one of several interesting conclusions from Ben Casnocha’s recent article on the science behind interest development. (A topic, incidentally, that I cover in-depth in my new book on college admissions. Did I mention that I had a new book coming out?)

Coming Up

I have two provocative posts in the works. One describes recent research on people who describe their work as “a calling,” while the other explores the controversial idea that competitive college admissions can actually be good for students.

Stay tuned…

Note: Though my new format focuses on publishing in-depth articles twice a month, I still reserve the right to occasionally publish one my classic-style student advice articles. 

The Pre-Med’s Lament

I recently received the following e-mail:

“I’ve failed both of my tests in Organic Chemistry 2…I don’t know what I’m doing wrong…no matter how much I review or study my class notes, nothing seems to work.”

This is a familiar lament. I recently reviewed the student e-mails I’ve received so far in 2010, and discovered that I average around one “I failed my Orgo exam!” e-mail per week.

That’s a lot of unhappy pre-meds.

I decided it was time to write a definitive answer to this common issue.  This post details my famous three-step plan for turning around a chemistry disaster.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick hits is an occasional feature where I take a breather between my epic big idea posts to share ideas, ask questions, and in general provide a catch-all place for me to catch up with you.

Rethinking Remarkable

A collection of recent articles dissecting the idea of remarkableness…

• Ben Casnocha has a pair of fascinating posts on building a remarkable life. His first points out the contradictions in Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement speech, while the second takes issue with “attitudinal” self-help.
• Scott Young weighs in with an interesting take on whether the good life is chosen or earned.
• Chris Guillebeau has an insightful profile of a Tsilli Pines, who quit a corporate job to run her own hand-crafted ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) business. What strikes me about about Tsilli is that she avoided the conventional entrepreneurial wisdom to “start as soon as possible,” instead spending three years tuning and testing her idea until she could make the leap with confidence.
• I just finished reading an advance copy of David Shenk’s The Genius In All of Us. I’m excited for this book’s release. It covers much of the same ground as Outliers, but Shenk is more optimistic than Gladwell, aligning more with my own philosophy that once you understand what generates remarkable achievement you can harness it better in your own life. In the meantime, if you’re not reading Shenk’s blog, you should start. (See, for example, his recent post on the myth of the meritocracy.)

My Next Post

I’m in the process of writing a real humdinger of a post. It’s the next entry in my series on applying deliberate practice in everyday life. The focus is how star graduate students become stars (it’s built around an interview I conducted with James McLurkin, the famous MIT roboticist who just got hired at Rice.) The strategy I highlight, however, is wildly applicable to a lot of different fields.

Stay tuned. I hope to have it up soon…

My New Book is Available!

As you know, I have a new book coming out this summer. It’s called How to Be a High School Superstar, and it introduces the zen valedictorian concept to the students who arguably need it most: those suffering through the college admissions process. (See this article for more details.)

Though its primary audience is high school students, it also provides a general look inside the fascinating science of what makes interesting people interesting; so it will hopefully find a home with an even wider readership.

If you like my writing and are interested in this book, you should consider pre-ordering a copy on Amazon. (Fans of my red and yellow books know that I’m perennially understocked at bookstores — a large number of pre-orders will inspire the big chains to take my titles more seriously.)

A brief interruption…

Study Hacks is switching to an advertising firm that specializes in my type of audience. They want you to consider filling out this short survey to develop a better idea of who you are. Here are two reasons why you should fill out the survey:

1. I’ll give away a free signed book to a randomly selected respondent (the survey asks for your e-mail address expressly and only for the purpose of this drawing).
2.  I give 50% of my ad revenue to charity, and this survey will increase the quality of my ads. Ergo, you’ll be helping charity.

That’s it. Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

The Big Give

Over 50 of you responded to my call to donate money to earthquake relief in Haiti. We ended up raising over $4700.  As I mentioned in my replies to the contributors, I’m lucky to have such an exceptional group of readers.

Here are the results of the signed book giveaway contest:

• Allen won a signed copy of the rare yellow-covered version of the red book for donating $500 — the most out of all of the contributors.
• Shruti won a signed copy for having her name drawn at random.

(Both winners have been notified by e-mail.)

We’ll return later this week back to our regularly-scheduled programming (I’m working on the next post in my series on the mechanics of constructing a remarkable life), but I want to thank you one last time for your support.

Update: As of 8:30 EST we’ve raised over $2500! You guys are amazing.

“What I’ve seen here in Haiti, I’ve never seen before.”

This is from the Twitter feed of Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medial correspondent, who is reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He’s seen a lot of tough situations in his career, so this statement means something.

This morning I donated $137, the amount of my most recent advertising check for Study Hacks,  to Partners in Health, a Boston-based aid organization that has a strong presence in Haiti.

Here’s a screenshot of the confirmation e-mail:

I’m asking you to also donate to this organization.

They have great infrastructure in place in Haiti, including over 120 doctors and 500 nurses, longterm relationships with the Haitian people, and an obsession with results. A donation to Partners in Health will have an immediate impact on real people who are really suffering right now.

Click on this link to give.

If you do donate, consider forwarding me a copy of your confirmation e-mail. There are two reasons for this request. First, keeping a running total will help me convince more Study Hacks readers to follow your example. Second, I’m giving away two signed copies of the rare yellow-covered version of my red book. One copy will go to the reader who donates the most money, and the other will go to a reader chosen at random.

And I’ll leave it at that.

(Photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times)

Please excuse a brief interruption from our normally scheduled programming. I have two quick notes that I think might interest many of you…

Looking for a Few Good Volunteers

One of my eventual goals for Study Hacks is to support student groups on college campuses around the world. These groups would meet regularly and use the Study Hacks canon to help figure out their college life. They would also blog about their experience, providing a wealth of examples for other students to follow.

I want to launch a few small pilot groups during this upcoming semester. If you’re interested in starting one of these groups on your campus, send me an e-mail.

Among other benefits, you and your group members will get a lot of one and one interaction with me regarding your personal overhaul efforts.

Learning on Steroids

One of my favorite bloggers, Scott Young, recently announced a program called Learning on Steroids.  The goal is to help you implement what he calls rapid learning strategies in your student life. The program “fills the gap between [information] consumption and action,” and provides “detailed implementation strategies, personal help and a kick in the ass to get started.”

In other words, it’s meant to help you go from reading about being a better student to actually becoming one.

You can read more about it here. I’m mentioning it now because he’s launching a limited beta test of the program in January. If you think you might be interested, click here to sign up for his pre-launch mailing list while space still remains.

Fixed-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…