How to Become a Straight A Student

By Cal Newport

04 January 2024 - 5 mins read time
Tags: Books L2L Self-Improvement

Study Basics

Work Intensity

• Work intensely and spread out the sessions do you can recharge in between.
• To attain the highest levels of intensity, you need to choose the right time and location to study.

Simple Organization

• Travel around with a piece of paper, divided into your schedule for the day and reminders
  • Use the schedule to guide your activities throughout the day.
  • Jot down any important information that comes up during the day in reminder.
  • At the start of each day, move any scheduled activities that didn’t get done today and add all reminders to calendar.
  • Add activities for the day to you daily schedule with reasonable time estimates.

Procrastination Battle Plan

• Keep a progress journal
  • At the end of each day, record what tasks you didn’t get done and why
  • If all were completed, simply write complete
  • A progress journal will keep you accountable and help you stay motivated.
• When you have to do something you particularly don’t enjoy, make an event out of it.
• Build a routine
  • Identify protected hours in your schedule and do the same work in these slots each week.
  • Once it becomes a habit, you will no longer have to convince yourself to work during these times.
• Plan your hard days in advance
  • Preemptively designate days as hard and plan to grind it out.

Time Management

• Have your materials with you at all times and fill in any small patches of time with productive work.

Study Tips

• Study in isolation.
• Study for no more than 1 hour without a break.
• Record your solutions for problem sets properly the first time if they are handed in.

Quizzes and Exams

Take Smart Notes (Technical Courses)

• Always go to class.
  • If you skip class it will take twice as long studying to make up for what you missed.
• Record as many sample problems as you can.
  1. Prioritize getting the question and the answer down.
  2. Write down any parts that are confusing.
  3. Jot down as much of the solution steps as you can.
• Don’t do the readings.

Getting Stuck

• If you get stuck during you studying, collaborate with classmates.
• Working in a group is a good way to solve problems but has the most value if you’ve already explored potential solutions.
• Use diffuse mode:
  • Review the problems.
  • Familiarize yourself with relevant notes.
  • Try to solve the problem in the most obvious way.
    • Now you’ve identified what makes this problem hard.
  • Put your notes away and move on to something else.
  • Try it again later.

Studying

• Construct a Mega-Problem Set:
  1. Create a pile for each relevant problem set.
  2. Supplement each problem set with problems from lecture notes.
  3. For each relevant lecture:
     1. Match the lecture to the problem set that covers the same material.
     2. Copy sample problems onto a blank sheet of paper.
     3. Label the sheet of paper with the lecture date/title so you can find the solutions later.
• Use flashcards for rote memorization.
  • Spread these sessions out over as much time as possible
• Don’t organize materials and study in the same day.
• If you can produce the solution to a problem without making a mistake, then you’ve learned it.
• Save practice exams as the final study aid, these should be confidence boosters.
• Re-do the hardest problems before the exam as a confidence booster.

Quiz and Recall Method

1. Start with technical explanation questions.
2. Move on to sample problems.
   • Mark the questions that give you trouble for review.
   • Jot down the important steps for each question as you complete them.
3. Re-do any of the problems that gave you trouble
4. Repeat until none give you trouble.

Testing Strategies

• Read through the entire exam first.
• Build a time budget for the exam.
• Answer the easiest questions first.
• Use any and all remaining time to check over your work.

Essays and Papers (Less relevant)

1. Target a Titillating Topic
2. Conduct a Thesis Hunting Expedition
   • Start with general source and then follow references to find the more targeted sources where good thesis ideas often hide.
3. Seek a Second Opinion
   • A thesis is not a thesis until a professor has approved it.
4. Research Like a Machine
   • Find sources.
   • Make personal copies of all sources.
   • Annotate the material.
   • Decide if you are done. (If no, loop back to step 1)
5. Craft a Powerful Story
   • Develop a well-balanced and easy-to-follow argument
   • Spend some time getting it right.
   • Describe your argument at a top level.
   • Type supporting quotes from sources directly into your outline.
6. Consule Your Expert Panel
   • Before starting to write, get some opinions on the organizations of you argument.
   • The more important the paper the more people should review it.
7. Write Without the Agony
   • Follow your outline and articulate your points clearly.
   • Write no more than three to five pages per weekday and five to eight pages per weekend day.
8. Fix, Don’ Fixate
   • Editing only requires 3 passes:
     1. Argument Adjustment Pass: make sure the argument is clear and the flow is good.
     2. Out Loud Pass: Read out loud and fix any awkward passages or unclear explanations.
     3. Sanity Pass: A final pass over a printed version to check the over flow and root out any remaining errors.