Rewind time 100,000 years ago: several different species of humans co-exist on earth.There was, of course, our own species, Homo sapien, but we were joined by our more athletic siblings from the Tree of Life, Homo erectus, who had left Africa and colonized Asia long before we ventured beyond the mother continent, all the while another sibling, the stocky Neanderthal, was hunkered down in a European ice age.
Advance another 90,000 years, however, and our species is the only game left in town.
Scientists have worked hard to figure out why we survived while other early humans did not. The answer to this question lies at the core of our species’ story, but it also provides insight into a topic of significantly less importance on the grand scale, but nonetheless one that haunts many of us in our everyday lives: procrastination.
Lab notes is a regular feature in which I report on my efforts to make my life more remarkable.
The Zurich Initiative
Around this time last summer, I found myself at an espresso bar in Zurich Airport’s newly redesigned Terminal 2. I took out my idea notebook and titled a blank page: “Core Principles: Computer Science.” I then sketched out a new, three-part system for tackling my academic research.
As I explained in my last blog post, I’m fascinated by people who build remarkable careers. In my field, building a remarkable career requires remarkable research. This is why as I sat sipping espresso in Switzerland, my last pre-professor year looming, I decided it was time to get serious about exactly how I tackled my work.
My original three-part system, sketched at the airport, quickly faltered in practice. It called, for example, for me to separate “exploration days” from “logistics days,” a level of isolation I found unrealistic.
In other places, it was so vague as to be useless. It said, for example, that “when an exciting problem presents itself, [I should] start working on it early and persistently” — a request way too abstract to translate into day to day action.
But I kept at it: I studied the CV’s of professors I admired; I read books on innovation and craftsmanship; I dissected many years worth of award-winning papers from relevant conferences; and above all else, I tried things — lots of things — to see what actually worked.
Now that I’m a month away from starting my new position at Georgetown, I’ve arrived at a relatively stable research strategy. I assume it will evolve as I gain more experience as a professor, and I’m somewhat nervous that the more experienced among you will scoff at my naivety, but it’s a starting point — a way to start my new position with a proactive (not reactive) mindset.
In this post, as part of my effort to be more transparent about my own quest to build work I love, I explain this system.
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I have to give credit to Scott Young: it was talking blogs with him back in 2007 that helped convince me to start Study Hacks. The fact that I link to Scott’s material again and again and again and again should tell you that we think in similar patterns.
The reason I’m bringing up Scott today is that he’s about to graduate from university. One of the things that intrigued when I first met him four years ago is that, like many students I profiled in the red book, he had the ability to score top grades without needing to study much.
It turns out that he kept this up: He will graduate this month with a GPA that hovers between an A and an A+, even though he almost never studied for more than a handful of hours.
In honor of Scott’s graduation, I asked him if he would share his secrets. I don’t want vague philosophies, I told him. Study Hacks readers are more interested in a blow-by-blow case study of exactly how he studied for a specific test, including screenshots of his notes and a careful accounting of his time.
Fortunately for us, Scott agreed. Below you’ll find the details of how he scored an A+ on a corporate finance exam that had a 50% failure rate at his university. His total time studying: 3.5 hours.
