Do You Advise Students To Do Problems On-The-Go?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | We have a question now from Dami, who asks, "Doesn't doing problems on the go, as you

00:00:13.200 | recommend in How to Become a Straight-A Student, incur a cognitive burden?"

00:00:21.200 | This listener goes on to say, "I'm entering my junior year in college in Ireland, and

00:00:26.680 | I was wondering if the advice that you give to take your problem sheets with you on the

00:00:30.480 | go just makes you a "grind on wheels"?"

00:00:34.080 | Thanks.

00:00:35.080 | Well, I appreciate the opportunity to go back and talk briefly about How to Become a Straight-A

00:00:40.680 | Student.

00:00:41.680 | My second book I ever wrote came out in 2006.

00:00:44.720 | I wrote it primarily as an undergraduate/first-year grad student.

00:00:49.920 | Interesting aside about that book, it's the best-selling of my student books.

00:00:53.000 | I stopped really paying attention to that, but for whatever reason, when my agent sent

00:00:57.960 | me my royalty statements earlier this week, I was like, "Hey, how is that book doing?"

00:01:03.000 | It turns out How to Become a Straight-A Student has sold now more than 200,000 copies since

00:01:07.240 | it came out in 2006, never with a big marketing push, never on a best-seller list.

00:01:12.680 | It just sits there, and we just sell every week.

00:01:17.460 | People buy it.

00:01:18.460 | It's been there forever.

00:01:19.460 | I'm surprised that someone hasn't come and usurped it because the concept was very simple.

00:01:23.960 | I said, "What if you just wrote a book about how to study in college that took the question

00:01:28.680 | seriously and did nothing but just give advice?"

00:01:31.720 | Say, "Okay, I talked to 50 students who get good grades without burning out.

00:01:34.920 | Here's how they do it," and just be very technical.

00:01:36.760 | That was the whole concept.

00:01:38.280 | Treat students with respect, give them the information.

00:01:41.600 | That book, man, that just rolls along, just rolls along and crushed it.

00:01:45.760 | How to Win a College, I checked that.

00:01:47.200 | It's now crossed healthily past the 100,000 copies sold, and How to Become a High School

00:01:52.360 | Superstar is catching up.

00:01:53.440 | I think it's at 60,000.

00:01:55.680 | There's this secret underground world of those student books I wrote as a young man that

00:02:00.760 | are continuing to do some damage out there.

00:02:03.280 | All right, so let me just really briefly tackle your question.

00:02:07.040 | I talk about, I guess in that book, and, Dami, I am mixing up that book with blog posts I

00:02:13.240 | wrote immediately after that book came out.

00:02:15.600 | To me, these are kind of the same thing.

00:02:18.000 | The original point of my Study Hacks blog when I started it right after Straight A Student

00:02:22.140 | came out was basically to add extra chapters that did not show up in the book.

00:02:26.840 | It was just continuing the conversation that was that book, so I mixed these things up.

00:02:30.880 | I don't know if it was in the book or on my blog back then.

00:02:35.800 | I would talk about bringing with you these, you call them problem sheets.

00:02:40.480 | These were probably the mega problem sets I talk about in the book, but basically sample

00:02:44.000 | problems, which is at the core of how I suggest in that book studying for technical classes

00:02:48.640 | or mathematical classes.

00:02:49.640 | I talk about these are portable.

00:02:51.200 | You can bring them with you to study.

00:02:53.800 | You're asking, "Will that make you a grind on wheels?"

00:02:55.760 | Well, no, because my recommendation is not, "Okay, when you build these study guides,

00:03:02.000 | study with them all the time."

00:03:03.680 | That's not what I'm saying.

00:03:04.680 | I wasn't saying, "Now you want to do 30 hours of studying, and because you have these sheets,

00:03:09.000 | you can study much more than you could before."

00:03:11.840 | That's not what I'm saying.

00:03:12.840 | In fact, the core idea in how to become a straight-A student was the equation.

00:03:18.560 | Studying accomplished equals time spent times intensity of focus.

00:03:21.280 | The whole idea in that book is if you get your intensity of focus higher, you can reduce

00:03:26.680 | the time spent required to get the same amount of work done.

00:03:29.600 | The real advantage of having portable study materials is that you can go to locations

00:03:35.740 | that are going to juice up that intensity of focus.

00:03:40.300 | You can go to the deepest, darkest, most concentration-inducing stacks of a faraway library.

00:03:49.480 | Shout out to Dana Biomedical Library on the Dartmouth College campus where I used to do

00:03:53.440 | this studying.

00:03:54.440 | It means you can go into the woods and hike for 20 minutes and sit without distraction

00:03:59.660 | by a waterfall to think nothing but about your problems.

00:04:03.440 | It means, like one student I wrote about on my blog back then, you can find a way to sneak

00:04:08.140 | onto the roof of the physics building and study by light with the stars above you.

00:04:13.340 | So the advantage of having portable material is that you can seek out the places that will

00:04:17.480 | reduce the total amount of time you have to study, not that you can now do more studying.

00:04:21.280 | I'm all about figuring out what work needs to be done.

00:04:24.240 | Why am I doing the studying this way?

00:04:25.600 | Is this the fastest way, the best technique, or am I just spinning my wheels?

00:04:28.760 | And when do I want to do this work?

00:04:30.200 | You make that plan, you execute.

00:04:31.960 | That's the key to getting good grades without burning out.

00:04:35.900 | And that's what I recommend in that book.

00:04:37.360 | That's what I recommend on those early blog posts.

00:04:39.040 | So that is what I will continue to recommend now.

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00:04:45.920 | (upbeat music)

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Do You Advise Students To Do Problems On-The-Go?

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