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Category: Study Tips
Tags: EducationFocusProcrastinationProductivityStudy
Entities: Cal NewportDartmouthDeep WorkSo Good They Can't Ignore YouUCLA
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hi this is Brian welcome back to philosophers notes TV today we've got another great book How to Become a Straight A Student by Cal Newport How to
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Become a Straight A Student subtitled the unconventional strategies real college students use to score high while studying less I read this book as part of my preparation for learning 101 which I'm excited to film next week and share
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with our members uh next month back to school time uh Cal Newport I saw this title as I was kind of researching different titles Cal newport's is one of my favorite writers and favorite people he wrote two other great books we featured he wrote more than that but the
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two books we featured are deep work phenomenal book one of my favorites of 2015 highly recommended and so good they can't ignore you another extraordinary book um and this book is is a fun look at Cal went to Dartmouth he graduated five beta Campa worked really hard and
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didn't do that well freshman year then he learned some tricks and hacks did way better all A's I think his last 36 classes um but he worked less he figured out how to do it and then he met all these other five Beta Kappa people and realized they were actually some of the most engaged socially um and kind of
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well-rounded students on campus they weren't grinding and he thought that was pretty interesting he asked them some questions he wound up interviewing uh a bunch of f Beta Kappa students from Elite schools around the country who very importantly weren't
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Grinders they weren't the people that were working all the time and complaining about it all the time they're people that had a well balanced life yet performed at the top of their class um this book is a distillation of the Big Ideas he picked up from them uh I wish I had it UCLA I I graduated f b
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Kappa and I wasn't a grinding student um but I would have benefited from the wisdom in this book which was written 10 years after I graduated so five Big Ideas here hope you enjoy excited to share first one is the first chapter is pseudo work he said what he found was
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Cal found when he interviewed these top performing students who didn't grind was that they made a distinction between pseudo work where you're kind of sort of working but you're really hanging out and being distracted with real work and what I loved about this idea in
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particular was the fact that Cal wrote a book deep work basically on this idea that he started unpacking a decade earlier in these interviews with these great students there's pseudo work kind of sort of doing work and then there's real work and he says the thing you need
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to pay attention to is a Formula which is basically work like the amount of work you actually get done or studying in this case is a function of the time you spend doing it times the intensity with which you do it so work
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produced or studying effective studying done equals the time you invest times the intensity with which you invest that time now grinding students or students who don't perform well and spend a lot of time doing it uh they spend a ton of
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time right uh but their intensity is so low that they have to spend a ton of time in order to get an equivalent amount of work whereas somebody who shows up and says look I'm going to be super focused right super intense over the same amount of time they get a ton
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more work done so just to plug in a number here let's say that the grinding student who does pseudo work right work unit of whatever right has to put in 10 hours at a level of three intensity right and then they get
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this amount of work done a certain amount of work done right they're ready for a test that they need to study for they need to prep for right he says well look 10 hours at three intensity all you need to do to get the same amount of work done is to adjust your intensity if
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you dial up the intensity to 10 then you only need to put in three hours of work that's a winning equation and the basic essence of the book or a big part of the book is figuring out how to work this equation and what do you need to do to dial in the intensity such that you can
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work less time to get an equivalent amount done that's how you perform at a high level as a non-g grinding student so remember your number one enemy is pseudo work uh we'll talk about do we talk about that yeah we'll talk about when and where and how long to study to deal with
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some of that stuff but for now check in are you doing real work or you doing pseudo work and this this applies whether we're talking about studying or working of course you need deep work time blocks if you want to create Masterpiece days right you can't have your internet on and your uh smartphone
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blowing up at you notifications that's pseudo work and you're going to have to spend a lot more time to get the equivalent amount of work done than the person who shows up with a ton of intensity one of my favorite ideas uh and and personal practices I'm most excited about second big idea here is
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procrastination this is chapter number two you got to conquer your procrastination and Cal makes the important distinction that none of these straight A students actually conquered procrastination completely right they didn't get rid of the urge to procrastinate we all will always have
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the urge to procrastinate at some point or another some work's going to be boring or as Cal said suck and it's just not going to be inspiring right so you're going to have the urge to procrastinate you can't get rid of that completely but you can develop effective strategies to deal with that urge in the
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note I reflect on acceptance and commitment therapy right where we talk about the happiness trap and the fact that it's a trap to think you're ever going to get rid of all of your procrastination for example it's not about getting rid of the urge to procrastinate it's about stepping back being able to hold that urge and then do
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what needs to get done anyway Cal gives us five strategies to deal with that uh I talk about each of the five in the note a couple of my favorite ones um you got to feed the beast he says you got to be well fueled you can't be tired feed the machine he says you got to be well
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rested and well fed if you want to be able to uh perform and move through any urges to procrastinate and research says the exact same thing we talk about it inhabits 101 and willpower 101 that the fastest way to deplete your willpower and give procrastination is to be tired
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and or hungry if you combine those two you're tired and you're hungry good luck you're going to procrastinate so you need to conquer procrastination check out conquering procrastination 101 for more on that um in the note of course and then Cal has three questions when should we
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study where should we study and how long should we study and the book has three parts by the way it's it's how to study which is what I'm focused on right now and then there's how to write papers right research papers and and critical essays Etc and then three how to perform in
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tests it's awesome right so deep tools and practices in each of those so these three questions when should I study where should I study and how long when Cal says early earlier the better your best he says between the time you wake up and the time you have dinner your
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energy is highest and you can control your schedule better as the day goes on it gets closer to dinner or after dinner other things might come up what you want to do he says is use your best energy wisely find those pockets of time where you can put in the work consistently day in and day out over the period of the
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quarter or semester or whatever and then enjoy your evenings be done uh by using your time wisely where he says and this goes back to our pseudo work he says in isolation is the short answer go find somewhere where no one's going to find you and turn everything off right and go
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do some work that's how you jack up the intensity if you're sitting in your dorm if you're a college student or in some area where you're going to get distracted all the time your intensity level is going to be three you're going have to put in a ton of time to get the same amount of work done not a winning equation and then how long Cal says
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don't work for longer than an hour in one stretch again what we want to focus on is intensity here you can grind at three but we want to be focused and intense and not waste time and you can only be focused and intense for a certain period of time so he says work
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for a Max of one hour at a time then take a break whether it's 5 minutes or 10 minutes and obviously come back to it and hit it but five or 10 minute break Max an hour remember our old tradan rhythms right you got to be on then you got to be off in order to have optimal
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energy then the fourth big idea here is our number one tip so if you want to study effectively what's the best thing to do think about that for a moment What's the best way you can study and prepare yourself to truly Master a subject so you can perform well on a
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test and obviously learn it in in general what's your guess well first I will tell you what it is not what it is the worst thing you can do to think that you're actually studying effectively which is what these people do uh is to
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read and reread your highlights and your notes just reading them again and rereading your notes gives you what the research scientists in this field called the fluency illusion you have the illu illusion of fluency the illusion that
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you've actually m Ed it you're rereading your notes and you're saying to yourself yeah yeah yeah I totally get that yep uhhuh yeah that's exactly that okay yeah cool I'm ready for this test awesome boom you go to the test that fluency the Mastery was an illusion Cal says shut your book get a piece of blank paper out
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whether you're studying philosophy or calculus you need to test yourself quiz and recall is what he calls it and his is based on these interviews with these top performing students but the science says exactly the same thing the best way you can uh study is to quiz yourself self
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testing yourself is awesome so anytime you want to master anything quit rereading your notes review them and then shut your book or shut your notes and then see if you can tell yourself say it out loud from scratch what the basic theory is you're trying to learn or explain it to somebody else like they
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five as Barbara Oakley says right or write it down solving a math problem or other thing that you need to contemplate blank piece of paper boom write the Challenge and solve it right there without any references then you know whether you actually have Mastery or not and if you can do those things you're
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ready to move on to the next thing but your number one tip here is to quiz yourself don't fall into the fluency illusion this is going to be big idea number one in learning 101 as we unpack that some more um and then the fifth big idea you will notice that this is very spaced out
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space out now I don't want you to space out you need to be focused at a 10 but you need to space out your studying time doesn't matter whether you're what you're doing whether you're writing a paper right and preparing that or memorizing facts Cal says look it your
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mind can only work so hard so long and memorizing stuff he says never try to do more than an hour block at a time you can't memorize stuff for eight hours at a time you need a fresh mind do it for Max 1 hour block Max 2 hours a day
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you're much better off to take that time that you're going to spend memorizing something and split it up we talked about this in Benedict carries how we learn right he says it's kind of like Watering your lawn in La it's much better to turn the sprinklers on for 30
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minutes three times a week than it is for an hour and a half once a week brown grass if you do that right your mind works best in in the same exact way it works best with frequent check-ins right researchers call this distributed
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learning where you space it out or the spacing effect so keep keep that in mind and basically show up consistently his whole thing and why I would have loved it as an undergrad was I was a a big crammer now I spaced out my finals right and I made sure I never had had two
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finals on one day which is very helpful for me as a uh a bit of a cramar um but the basic idea is let's be smart let's get ahead let's do intense real work consistently throughout the process so that we're never cramming at the last minute or at least
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not doing so habitually um and able to perform at the top without uh grinding through the process so space out your efforts remember the number one tip is to quiz yourself quiz and recall reading notes is what everybody does everybody rereads their highlights and rereads their notes and calls that effective
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studying it's not uh so remember that fluency illusion in your number one tip the questions when where and how long early in isolation Max 1 hour procrastination you want to conquer it but remember you're never going to get
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the urge and you're never going to get rid of procrastination entirely we all procrastinate at different times we just don't want it to be a chronic Keystone bad habit that drives us down and then we have our pseudo work swap that out with real work with deep work remember
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our equation here it's all about the intensity if you show up with intensity focused you can get a ton done in a lot less time that is a super quick look at how to become a straight A student Cal Newport thank you Cal and I'm looking
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forward to sharing more and learning 101 hope you enjoyed what was your favorite big idea think about it reflect on it explain it to yourself write it down if you're feeling inspired and go share it with somebody else and most importantly make it a part of your life more starting today and make today another awesome day see
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you isn't it a bit odd we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live for some wacky reason optimal living 101 never made the
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schedule of course it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read fulltime to catch up yet if you're like us you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential so imagine this imagine having
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someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life you know those sections you asterisk and underline and Mark all up then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to
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other great books and helping you apply them to your life today well that's what I do is something we call philosophers notes where I break down each great book into a simple six-page PDF 20 minute MP3 and 10-minute
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philosophers notes TV episode then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun inspiring super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101
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confidence 101 business 101 meditation 101 that sort of thing you've got a personal trainer I'm kind of like your personal philosopher ancient wisdom plus modern science plus Common Sense plus virtue plus Mastery
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plus fun that's what our optimized membership program is all about we'd love to have you join us check us out at Brian johnson. me/ jooin
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