Our first question comes from Usman, who asks, "Any advice for people who are studying while working in a warehouse for 40 hours a week?" A little bit of an elaboration here. I work in a warehouse job four days a week and 10 hours a day with two 30-minute breaks.

I am currently studying an online course about computer science. When I finish work, I am physically exhausted and my feet ache. I have most of your books, including How to Become a Straight A Student, and it's very helpful. Do you have any more advice for people who are working full-time and want to study?" Well, that's a good question.

You know, a group I hear a very similar question from a lot is actually practicing doctors. They have similar types of shifts where it's not every day, but the shifts are longer. They also often have some sort of concentration bearing non-urgent but important activities, studying for new certification, or they're working on a writing project.

So, doctor or research, they're doing a research project on the side. So, I've heard the same question from them a lot as well. Usually what I would say there, which I think holds here as well, if you're doing a 10-hour shift in a day, regardless of whether this is you're on your feet seeing patients or working in a warehouse, it's going to be hard to do meaningful, high concentration studying on a regular basis after such days.

You should recognize that this is really demanding what you're doing, and not be down on yourself that you then find it hard after that 10 hours to get after it with an online computer science course. So, I'm going to tell you that's the same thing I tell doctors when they do these long shifts.

They often do 10-hour shifts or 12-hour shifts. You're not going to really get good progress done on your research project if you've done a 12-hour shift at the hospital. So, you might have to slow down the pace at which you're working on things so that when you work on it, you can work on it well.

You should also pump up the intensity when you do work on it. Remember, the core formula in how to become a straight-A student is work accomplished is time spent times intensity of focus. So, if you're working four days, you might want to take two out of the three days that remain.

Those are two days on which you're going to have a non-trivial amount of studying, and that studying is going to be laser beam locked in high-intensity focus. You have two medium-length sessions per week with incredible focus, according to that equation, can accomplish as much work as slightly smaller but also much less focused sessions at the end of multiple 10-hour work days.

So, work less, do the work you do with extreme intensity of focus, and therefore, do that work on the days where you actually have those resources to invest. Now, I will note, you noticed that you noted that you had read How to Become a Straight-A Student. An interesting tidbit about that book.

So, I wrote that book, and I mentioned on the show a couple weeks ago that I hadn't looked at sales numbers for that for a really long time. I looked up the royalties last month and was surprised to see that thing has sold 300,000 copies, which is a lot for a non-fiction book.

And it has done that without ever having major publicity, without ever being on a bestseller list, without ever really being mentioned by anyone well-known. It's all just chugging in the background, word of mouth, over 15 years. What I discovered about that book is that its number one audience is not full-time undergraduates at expensive four-year universities.

In fact, those are the students, the students that my entire adult life I have been surrounded at, at MIT, at Dartmouth, at Georgetown. Those type of students often don't want anything to do with that. They have their college experiences wrapped up with their presentation of self. They have this idea of college years being a time of expression, and as you grow into adulthood, and it has, there's an academic component, but a social component, and a loss of inhibition component, and they don't want to have anything to do with Cal Newport, seven steps for managing your time.

The number one audience for that book was non-traditional college students. So a lot of people returning to college later in life. I used to do a lot of work with vets on the GI Bill. So you're coming back to college after military stint, you're coming back on the GI Bill, you should do some work with the Warrior Scholar Project.

First-generation students as well. I've worked with multiple different first-generation student, usually scholarship funds, where they're helping students that are their first in their generation or in their family to go to college. So a lot of community college I've worked with as well, because all of these non-traditional students are much more likely to say, "Here's a challenge, I want to do well here.

What's some advice? Great, here's some advice, let's go." It's like, I'm working in a warehouse trying to get this job, trying to get this course done. I don't have an animal house fantasy where if I'm not wearing a toga at least two days a week, I'm somehow not properly enjoying my 20s.

I need to get this course done, give me advice. And so that's been the number one audience for that book, is actually it's not for your students. So anyways, hearing your question made me think about it. I'm not surprised you're looking at the book. I'm not surprised you're getting value out of it.

But that is my advice. Don't work on your warehouse days, work on your higher energy days, but then turn that intensity focus knob all the way up. And you'll be surprised by how little time you actually need to get this done.