by Cal Newport
By proactively scheduling hard days on a regular basis, you reduce their negative impact. When you are forced into an all-day work marathon against your wishes, you feel drained and abused. If that same day has been planned and hyped for the past week, you’ll come away feeling invigorated by your accomplishment. You expected the challenge, prepared for the challenge, and survived it. This strategy is more psychological than time saving, but the effect is powerful. Take ownership of your schedule and you are more likely to respect it.
Step 3
Choose When, Where, and How Long
The little things count. This is especially true when it comes to studying. Before we get caught up in the details of exactly how to review and synthesize material, there are some basic questions that we must address first: When during the day should you study? Where should you go to study? How long should you study before taking a break? The right answers to these questions will boost your productivity, allowing you to squeeze more work out of even less time. The wrong answers will slow you down and make this process more difficult than it needs to be. Straight-A students, I found out, devote a lot of thought to these questions; they recognize how these seemingly little details can make or break their study efforts and have experimented extensively to discover the most effective strategies. Step #3 will walk you through the results of these experiments and present tested approaches for each of these three crucial study skills.
QUESTION: When is the best time to study?
ANSWER: Early.
“I like doing work in one big chunk upon getting back from class, or doing it in between classes, depending on my schedule,” says Simon from Brown. “I try to never leave it until late at night.” Simon’s plan emphasizes an important reality about studying: You’re most effective between when you wake up and when you eat dinner. You should accomplish as much work as possible during this time.
This advice runs counter to most students’ instincts. To many, the evening seems ideal for work. Why? Because the morning and afternoon are crowded. Classes, meals, meetings, and other activities take over these hours, leaving few continuous periods for really settling in and getting things done. Night, on the other hand, seems like one long, uninterrupted stretch of good work time. Right? Wrong!
First, nighttime is not as long as you think. By the time you finish dinner, gather your materials, and finally begin your work, you really have only a few hours left before it becomes too late and your desire to sleep hijacks your concentration.
Second, nighttime is not as free as you think. It’s prime time. Inevitably some can’t-miss TV show nags for your attention, or the loud music of a party down the hall beckons seductively. Night is when people most want to socialize. You see movies at night. You go to parties at night. Shows, speakers, and other campus performances happen at night. People gather back at their dorm rooms to gossip and distract each other. Few among us have achieved the required level of nerd-dom necessary to resist such temptations—and we shouldn’t have to.
Finally, nighttime is when your body begins to wind down. After a long day of activity, it’s ready to begin a slow descent into sleep. Even before it gets late, the energy available to your mind has already declined. By 7:00 or 8:00 P.M., your focus is weak at best.
For these reasons, you must minimize the amount of work you do after dinner. At the same time, however, it’s true that working during the day can also be complicated. As mentioned, there are few continuous stretches of free time in the morning and afternoon. Don’t fear this fractured schedule. Bring your materials with you throughout the day, and fill in any small patches of free time with productive work. As Wendy, a straight-A student from Amherst, explains: “I try to take a book I need to read along with me all the time, in case some free time pops up while I’m doing something else.” Doris, from Harvard, has a similar philosophy, admitting that she sneaks in work between meetings or classes, using small blocks of thirty or forty-five minutes at a time. If you follow this approach, you’ll be surprised at the amount of work you can squeeze into your hectic daytime schedule.
The trick is to be efficient. If you have an hour in between classes, head straight from the first class to a library, or similar study location, near the second class. Mentally prepare yourself on the way over so that when you hit the study spot you can become productive within seconds. Also, be sure to avoid your dorm room or other public places as much as possible during the day. You need to separate your work mind-set from your relaxation mind-set. By hanging around your room, or the student center, you are much more likely to become distracted and let a potentially productive work period slip away at the expense of a mundane conversation. Become a ghost during the day. Like an academic ninja, slip from hidden study spot to hidden study spot, leaving only an eerie trail of completed work behind you (see the next question, “Where should you study?” for more advice on choosing the right locations).
The idea here is not to become antisocial. When you’re done for the day, feel free to go have fun! Party like a demon. You aren’t missing out on an important social event by avoiding some half-assed gossip between classes. The more meaningful experiences will happen later, at the frats or in your dorm room after everyone is done with classes for the day. Remember: “Work hard, play hard” is always better than “Work kind of hard, play kind of hard.”
In addition to the extra energy and better focus that you gain by studying early, the spread-out nature of this schedule makes it less of a strain. Working for forty-five minutes, running to class, working for an hour, going to another class, then working another forty-five minutes before grabbing lunch is much less odious then sitting down and working for two and a half hours straight. This approach also makes optimal use of your time. Most students simply waste these free chunks during the day. By taking advantage of daytime study pockets, you’re freeing up valuable nighttime hours to go out and have the sort of fun that defines the college experience.
QUESTION: Where should you study?
ANSWER: In isolation.
Identify a number of isolated study spots spread out across campus and rotate through these hidden locations when you study. Any place in your dorm or house is off-limits, as are the big public study spaces in your main library. As Greta from Dartmouth explains: “If you stay in your dorm, it seems like no one is studying…because they aren’t.” This atmosphere is not conducive to concentration. Look for less-visited libraries away from the center of campus, and search out carrels high up in the stacks or buried down in the basement. Always keep your eyes open for the next great hidden study spot—small libraries in the buildings of student organizations, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, or the local public library are all potential concentration gold mines.
You need multiple locations for two reasons. First, as you move through your day, squeezing in study sessions between classes, it’s nice to always know of a nearby study spot. Second, changing locations prevents you from burning out at any one place. This is the strategy followed by Doris from Harvard, who explains: “to keep my mind stimulated, I regularly rotate between different venues.”
The isolation of these spots is important for the obvious reason: It shields you from distraction. That little procrastination devil on your shoulder is an incredible salesman. If you give him even a glimpse of an alternative to your work, then he will close the deal. To neutralize this devil, isolate him. Don’t let him see your couch, the cute girls tossing Frisbees on the quad, or your friends chatting in your dorm room lounge. If you cut yourself off from the outside world during your work hours, then you have a much better chance of completing what needs to get done, and, as an added bonus, the resulting increase in concentration will help you get your work done faster.
Many students will admit that there is something a bit dramatic about working in exaggerated isolation. It may sound corny, but quarantining yourself in a study bunker seems to increase the importance of the work you are about to tack
le. You can almost imagine the voice of a grave military officer saying, “Son, we’re all counting on you…good luck,” as you head off to your silent nook. This kind of gravitas is lacking when you flop down on your couch with a textbook propped up on your chest and your roommate in the chair next to you struggling to learn an obnoxious Dave Matthews song on his out-of-tune guitar. As Christine from Harvard states plainly: “Studying in bed has never worked.”
These mind games are not trite. Don’t underestimate the importance of psychology in becoming an effective student. Almost every straight-A student interviewed for this book followed some variant of this isolation strategy. Some went so far as to wear earplugs or travel great distances from campus to eliminate any chance of distraction. They understood the mental edge their surroundings provided—and you should, too.
QUESTION: How long should you study?
ANSWER: No more than one hour at a time without a break.
Your break needs to be only five to ten minutes, but it’s important that you take an intellectual breather during this period. This means you should find something you can concentrate on, for just a few minutes, which has nothing to do with the work you were completing right before the break. Read a newspaper article or send a few e-mails. That should be enough. This disengagement helps refresh your mind and facilitates the process of finding new angles and insights when you begin your work again. Some students brought a novel or newspaper with them, and then read a chapter or an article at every break. Others chose a project for the day—perhaps writing a long e-mail to a friend they hadn’t seen in ages, or building a list of options for an upcoming vacation—that they could work on bit by bit with each break they took.
Even when you feel like you are on a roll, keep taking regular breaks. Over the long run, it will maximize your energy and retention of the material. As Laura from Dartmouth recounts: “I swear I get more done taking regular breaks than I would if I just worked straight through.”
Why does this timing work the best? I don’t know exactly. Some cognitive science research concludes that about fifty minutes is the optimal learning period to maximize the material synthesized per time unit. For example, the Web site for the IPFW Center for Academic Support and Advancement states: “Studies suggest you should study in 40 or 50 minute increments for maximum retention. After approximately 40 minutes, take a short break (5 minutes) and continue studying. Without a break, retention is about 30% after 2 hours.”1* But we don’t have to get bogged down with these scientific details. The main reason I advocate this timing is because almost every straight-A student interviewed for this book followed a similar plan. When asked how long they studied in a single sitting, all but a few of their answers fell somewhere between half an hour and an hour:
“Not more than an hour,” replied Chris.
“One hour, then I get up and do something else for a bit,” replied Melanie.
“About forty minutes to an hour,” replied Ryan.
“One hour on, fifteen minutes off,” replied Lydia.
“One to one and a half hours. Then I would always take a break,” replied Lacey.
And the list goes on, as response after response revealed a similar strategy. The point here should be clear: Through trial and error, dozens of high-performing students have individually stumbled across this same technique—study for an hour, then take a break—so you should trust it too.
Part One Cheat Sheet
Step #1. Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day
• Jot down to-dos and deadlines on a list whenever they arise.
• Transfer these to-dos and deadlines to your calendar every morning.
• Plan your day each morning by labeling your to-dos with realistic time frames and moving what you don’t have time for to different dates.
Step #2. Declare War on Procrastination
• Keep a work progress journal, and every day record what you wanted to accomplish and whether or not you succeeded.
• When working, eat healthy snacks to maximize your energy.
• Transform horrible tasks into a big event to help you gather the energy to start.
• Build work routines to make steady progress on your obligations without expending too much of your limited motivational resources.
• Choose your hard days in advance to minimize their impact.
Step #3. Choose When, Where, and How Long
• Try to fit as much work as possible into the morning and afternoon, between classes and obligations.
• Study in isolated locations.
• Take a break every hour.
Here’s a simple truth: Most college students are terrible at studying.
It’s not really their fault. When students arrive at college, they’re on their own. No one ever takes them aside to teach them the right way to study, so most students just make it up as they go along. For example, when an exam date looms, the typical student pulls out his books and notes and then cloisters himself in his dorm study lounge or at the desk in his room. At this point, he begins reviewing, almost at random, poring over as many notes and chapters as he can manage, with frequent breaks to converse with friends and check e-mail, until, finally, his will to continue completely flickers out. If he’s particularly industrious, he might manage to pull an all-nighter. Otherwise, he’ll probably call it quits by midnight. The next day, he takes the exam, bleary-eyed, completely unsure of what grade to expect. Occasionally, this approach earns him an A-, but, for the most part, he remains wearily ensconced in the world of Bs and the occasional C.
There are two problems with this approach. First, there’s the timing. In Part One, I introduced the term “pseudo-work” to describe this unfortunate habit of studying in long, low-intensity, fatigue-saturated marathons of pain. To counter this behavior, we discussed some intelligent time-management strategies to help you spread out your work into small, high-intensity bursts.
The second problem with this approach is the technique. As shown in the scenario above, the typical student studies by performing rote review—the reading and rereading of assignments and notes as many times as possible. The idea behind this strategy is that somehow, if the material crosses before your eyes enough times, the key ideas will stick around long enough to be later regurgitated during the exam. Here’s the problem with rote review: It’s a horrible way to study.
First of all, it doesn’t work. Even though you spend a lot of time, you don’t end up actually learning the material well. Methodically trying to reread every source covered in class is an incredibly inefficient way to prepare. And because it’s boring, your mind quickly fatigues, and once your mind shuts down, you can forget about synthesizing complicated arguments. To successfully learn even a modest amount of information using this technique requires an absurd number of hours. The second problem with rote review is that it’s really painful. There is no way around it: Cramming is mind numbing, especially when you have a hopelessly large amount of material to review.
Here’s the good news: It doesn’t have to be this way. Not convinced? What follows are real quotes from some of the straight-A students interviewed for this book:
• “I never do all-nighters.”
• “I have a great deal of free time.”
• “Balance is very important for me.”
• “I have tons of free time nearly every day.”
• “[I worked hard at first,] but by junior and senior year I was having a blast.”
• “I spent relatively little time in college doing homework or reading.”
• “I get my work done quickly in the morning and then have plenty of time for uninterrupted playing.”
Many students find these claims hard to believe because they contradict a cherished piece of conventional wisdom: High-scoring students must be grinds. Where does this belief come from? For one thing, as Matthew, a straight-A student from Brown
, explains: “There are people who devote their lives to The Grind.” And these students tend to be very visible. They complain incessantly about the amount of work they have to do, constantly check in with their friends to compare study hours, and can be seen camped out in the library during most times of the day. If you encounter enough of these public grinds, it can begin to seem like they represent what is necessary to achieve academic success.
However, there is another, more insidious reason why this belief persists. Most students incorrectly believe rote review is the only way to study. Think about this for a moment: If you assume that all studying is equal, then the conclusion that all straight-A students are grinds becomes unavoidable. We noted earlier that making high grades with rote review requires an absurd number of hours; therefore, if rote review is the only way to study, then high-scoring students must be studying a lot more than the average student.
This is why, before we continue, you must first understand and accept this crucial fact: There are many, many different ways to study (and rote review is not one of the better ones). Once you reject the idea that all studying is equal, and instead make the crucial connection that studying is like any other skill—and as with any skill, it can be done well or done poorly—then the premise of this book starts to make sense. Non-grind straight-A students are not unexplainable or incredible. They have simply mastered, either through aggressive trial and error or interactions with older straight-A students, study strategies that are far superior to rote review.
Let me put it another way. If we make an analogy between college and professional basketball, then the rote-reviewing students are all shooting the ball underhand granny style, while the non-grind straight-A students are those who’ve figured out how to shoot a jump shot. It doesn’t matter if the rote reviewers practice those granny shots twice as many hours as the straight-A students; when it’s game time, the jump shooters are going to score a lot more points. Better technique trumps more effort.