We'll start with a question from Johnny. Johnny asks, is there anything you'd add to how to be a straight A student for someone doing a part-time evening class postgraduate degree? Well, Johnny, I'll point out that you are actually probably in the majority of readers of that book of mine, How to Become a Straight A Student, in that, as far as I can tell, the biggest audience for that book are non-traditional college students.

By non-traditional, I mean not doing four-year residential college. There's a lot of part-time college, returning to college later in life, coming to college on the GI Bill, first-generation students. So there's a real interesting and diverse pool of people who come to that book that are all unified by this willingness to say, this is a challenge.

I want to do well in this challenge. I'm looking for advice. Traditional four-year, 19-year-old residential college students aren't usually so interested in advice. As I've talked about before, college for them is also serving all these other roles. It's a social experience. It's a developmental experience as they try to emerge into their adult situations.

And they're not really thinking about, how do I structure my studying? But non-traditional students say, let's get after it. Look, I'm paying money to take these courses. I want to get good grades. I want to return my investment. How do I study? Let's go. So these are my people.

You are my people. All right, so here's what I would recommend to keep in mind from that book. If you're doing a degree part-time, and in your elaboration, you know that your job's pretty hard. So it's part-time. It's at night. You're exhausted. A few things I'd keep in mind.

One, slow down. To the extent possible, make sure you're not overloading the number of courses or the difficulty of courses that you're taking at once. It's real easy as you're laying out your plan for how you're going to get this degree to say, let's just pile it on. Let's pile it on and just power through this thing.

And it's going to be so impressive. Our energy to get this degree will push us through. Your energy to get the degree will not push you through when you're working long shifts and you're trying to do these courses at night. So design a course schedule to the degree that's possible that is reasonable.

The number one thing you can do-- I used to call this on my blog back when I was giving student advice. And I would say, avoid heart attack semesters. Because to me, a heart attack semester is where it is an unforced error. You didn't have to, but you chose to build up a collection of courses that is uniquely difficult.

8 out of 10 of the issues I would hear from students who were drowning in their work were avoidable if they had just had a more reasonable course load. So that's the first thing I want to emphasize. Two, you want to automate to the degree possible. Here is the work that is generated on a regular basis from each of my courses.

This is when I do each of these things of work and where I do it. The reading for this class happens on Tuesday nights, and I do it here. I don't come straight home from work. I go to the library that's down the street from my house. 90 minutes is enough time to get that reading done.

I work on my lab reports first thing early Saturday morning before my kids' sports practices happen, figure out to the extent possible when and where all of the regularly occurring work happens so that you do not have to go through this thought process every day when you're tired and coming home from work, what should I do?

Should I work on something? So I would suggest that if you're taking your classes at night, which it sounds like you are, consider to the extent possible connecting these workblocks to those classes. As long as you're already in the cognitive mindset of scholarship, ride that wave. I do the class, go right from the class to the library on campus.

Let's go. I get the work done right there while the information's still fresh in my brain. That's often quite efficient. Three, really have to keep in mind the core formula from that book, which says when it comes to academic work, the total quantity of work produced is the product of the time spent and the intensity of your focus during that time.

If your time is limited, the biggest knob you have to turn to get the same amount of work done in less time is that intensity of focus. So when you're going to work, you go to a place to work, and you've got to laser beam it. You cannot, in your situation where you have limited time and mental energy, you cannot, cannot, cannot do your school work with a phone with you.

You cannot, cannot, cannot do your school work while you're also jumping over to check MLB trade rumors. You cannot be doing this back and forth context shift, and you cannot be texting with people. Everyone in your life needs to know that during your school work blocks, it is a black hole.

You can't get through to Johnny unless you call the emergency number. He has his do not disturb cranked up to 11. He's very hard to get in touch with. If you can really push that intensity of focus high, you are going to greatly reduce the time required. And the final piece of advice I'm going to give is care about how you actually do the work.

Banish the word study. Banish the word read from your vocabulary. Those are way too generic. Those are way too ambiguous. You're preparing for a test. How are you preparing for the test? And why are you doing it that way? Be incredibly specific. I'm putting this on index cards. I'm going to review the index cards in this way.

And here's what the criteria I have to get to before I consider myself done. Be incredibly specific about how you're going to do your work. I'm not just going to quote unquote read. I'm going to take this chapter, and here's how I'm going to take the information and what format I'm going to put it to, how I'm going to capture the relevant facts into a notebook.

And I'm going to capture them in a format that makes it as easy as possible to shift from there to studying. Get specific. And then when you're done with a test or a major assignment, do a postmortem. What worked with my systems? What was a waste of time? What hurt?

An upgrade. Always be upgrading and evolving those systems. Real specificity. If you do those four things, if you keep your semesters reasonable, if you try to automate when and where the work gets done, if you pump up that intensity, your phone is in another zip code when you're working on your schoolwork, and if you're incredibly focused on how you do the work and trying to improve those methods.

I tell people sometimes, by the way, your goal should be to write a book on how to study when you're done with college so that you're constantly thinking from the standpoint of what works and what doesn't. If you do those four things, you're going to ace it. You're going to ace these courses.

It's not going to be that bad. I am not just making this up. Again, I hear from reader after reader who are in similar situations, and they often come back with the same response, which was, this was a lot easier than I thought it was. I'm getting better grades than these younger kids in these classes, and I'm working a lot less.

Put these things into action, Johnny. I think you're going to do great. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)