Any Advice For Studying With a Full-Time Warehouse Job?

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00:00:04.240 | Our first question comes from Usman, who asks, "Any advice for people who are studying while

00:00:11.760 | working in a warehouse for 40 hours a week?" A little bit of an elaboration here. I work in a

00:00:19.040 | warehouse job four days a week and 10 hours a day with two 30-minute breaks. I am currently studying

00:00:25.680 | an online course about computer science. When I finish work, I am physically exhausted and my feet

00:00:30.960 | ache. I have most of your books, including How to Become a Straight A Student, and it's very helpful.

00:00:34.640 | Do you have any more advice for people who are working full-time and want to study?" Well, that's

00:00:39.600 | a good question. You know, a group I hear a very similar question from a lot is actually

00:00:45.040 | practicing doctors. They have similar types of shifts where it's not every day, but the shifts

00:00:51.120 | are longer. They also often have some sort of concentration bearing non-urgent but important

00:00:56.960 | activities, studying for new certification, or they're working on a writing project. So,

00:01:01.200 | doctor or research, they're doing a research project on the side. So, I've heard the same

00:01:05.200 | question from them a lot as well. Usually what I would say there, which I think holds here as well,

00:01:10.960 | if you're doing a 10-hour shift in a day, regardless of whether this is you're on your

00:01:15.040 | feet seeing patients or working in a warehouse, it's going to be hard to do meaningful, high

00:01:21.440 | concentration studying on a regular basis after such days. You should recognize that this is

00:01:29.520 | really demanding what you're doing, and not be down on yourself that you then find it hard

00:01:33.280 | after that 10 hours to get after it with an online computer science course. So, I'm going to

00:01:41.760 | tell you that's the same thing I tell doctors when they do these long shifts. They often do 10-hour

00:01:45.680 | shifts or 12-hour shifts. You're not going to really get good progress done on your research

00:01:50.000 | project if you've done a 12-hour shift at the hospital. So, you might have to slow down the

00:01:55.600 | pace at which you're working on things so that when you work on it, you can work on it well.

00:02:00.000 | You should also pump up the intensity when you do work on it. Remember, the core formula in how to

00:02:05.840 | become a straight-A student is work accomplished is time spent times intensity of focus.

00:02:11.760 | So, if you're working four days, you might want to take two out of the three days that remain.

00:02:15.360 | Those are two days on which you're going to have a non-trivial amount of studying,

00:02:20.080 | and that studying is going to be laser beam locked in high-intensity focus.

00:02:24.880 | You have two medium-length sessions per week with incredible focus, according to that equation,

00:02:32.400 | can accomplish as much work as slightly smaller but also much less focused

00:02:38.240 | sessions at the end of multiple 10-hour work days. So, work less, do the work you do with

00:02:45.040 | extreme intensity of focus, and therefore, do that work on the days where you actually have

00:02:49.120 | those resources to invest. Now, I will note, you noticed that you noted that you had read

00:02:54.240 | How to Become a Straight-A Student. An interesting tidbit about that book. So, I wrote that book,

00:02:59.680 | and I mentioned on the show a couple weeks ago that I hadn't looked at sales numbers for that

00:03:03.920 | for a really long time. I looked up the royalties last month and was surprised to see that thing has

00:03:08.800 | sold 300,000 copies, which is a lot for a non-fiction book. And it has done that without

00:03:13.040 | ever having major publicity, without ever being on a bestseller list, without ever really being

00:03:17.440 | mentioned by anyone well-known. It's all just chugging in the background, word of mouth,

00:03:20.960 | over 15 years. What I discovered about that book is that its number one audience is not

00:03:28.960 | full-time undergraduates at expensive four-year universities. In fact, those are the students,

00:03:34.560 | the students that my entire adult life I have been surrounded at, at MIT, at Dartmouth, at

00:03:40.160 | Georgetown. Those type of students often don't want anything to do with that. They have their

00:03:46.240 | college experiences wrapped up with their presentation of self. They have this idea of

00:03:51.680 | college years being a time of expression, and as you grow into adulthood, and it has,

00:03:59.600 | there's an academic component, but a social component, and a loss of inhibition component,

00:04:04.880 | and they don't want to have anything to do with Cal Newport, seven steps for managing your time.

00:04:10.960 | The number one audience for that book was non-traditional college students.

00:04:13.840 | So a lot of people returning to college later in life. I used to do a lot of work with vets

00:04:21.360 | on the GI Bill. So you're coming back to college after military stint, you're coming back on the

00:04:28.160 | GI Bill, you should do some work with the Warrior Scholar Project. First-generation students as

00:04:32.640 | well. I've worked with multiple different first-generation student, usually scholarship

00:04:39.040 | funds, where they're helping students that are their first in their generation or in their

00:04:43.440 | family to go to college. So a lot of community college I've worked with as well, because all

00:04:48.560 | of these non-traditional students are much more likely to say, "Here's a challenge, I want to do

00:04:54.000 | well here. What's some advice? Great, here's some advice, let's go." It's like, I'm working in a

00:05:00.320 | warehouse trying to get this job, trying to get this course done. I don't have an animal house

00:05:06.080 | fantasy where if I'm not wearing a toga at least two days a week, I'm somehow not properly enjoying

00:05:11.840 | my 20s. I need to get this course done, give me advice. And so that's been the number one audience

00:05:15.920 | for that book, is actually it's not for your students. So anyways, hearing your question made

00:05:20.400 | me think about it. I'm not surprised you're looking at the book. I'm not surprised you're

00:05:23.360 | getting value out of it. But that is my advice. Don't work on your warehouse days, work on your

00:05:27.920 | higher energy days, but then turn that intensity focus knob all the way up. And you'll be surprised

00:05:32.800 | by how little time you actually need to get this done.

Any Advice For Studying With a Full-Time Warehouse Job?

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