Features: Becoming a Superstar Archives - Page 4 of 8

The Myth of the Big Break

January 26, 2023January 25, 2009

Action Paralysis Working

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.”

5 Thought Experiments That Might Change Your Life

January 26, 2023January 22, 2009

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?
Read more

3 Simple Rules for Making your Free Time Count

January 26, 2023January 16, 2009

Relaxed 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:

Start Your Semester Off Right By Quitting Something

January 26, 2023January 13, 2009

Ben’s Year Trash

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…

The Difference Between “Unusual” and “Impressive”

January 26, 2023January 12, 2009

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 … Read more

Does Being Exceptional Require an Exceptional Amount of Work?

January 26, 2023November 7, 2008

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…

Monday Master Class: How to Keep Life Interesting with a Saturday Morning Project

January 26, 2023October 27, 2008

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.”

How to Become a Deep Thinker at College

January 26, 2023October 24, 2008

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: