Study Prof

Here’s a simple guessing game. It takes a minute or two to play, but has some very good lessons to give. Give it a try.

The fighters below–listed by their initials–are going to fight Our Hero there in the top line. They’ll go head to head in hand to hand combat. No weapons, no holds barred. Your job is to decide if our hero will win or lose against each opponent. I’ve given you the fighters’ heights and weights to help you make your decisions, and I’ll tell you that our hero will indeed win some and lose some.

Finished?

In 1993 a group of martial arts enthusiasts began the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The purpose of the UFC was to test different martial arts styles against one another to see which was most effective, and, unlike boxing, wrestling, and the like, the UFC had no size classes. That meant that sometimes small guys fought real giants. The chart you just saw lists actual fighters from the first four UFC competitions.

Our hero is a Brazilian by the name of Royce Gracie, who, starting at the age of eight, learned Jiu Jitsu from his father. Take a look at his actual record…

You can see that in match after match often against much larger opponents, Gracie won! Again and again he won, forcing the giants to surrender. His jiu jitsu training allowed him to maneuver them into chokes and joint locks from which they couldn’t escape. And notice that the few opponents who did manage to beat him or fight him to a draw were actually the smaller guys—men who had to rely on technique rather than strength. The lesson the martial arts world took away from this is that size and strength—physical advantages—can be less important than technique and skill.

In the same way master students are not necessarily the ones with the most mental muscle. Cal Newport explains this in his excellent book, How to Become a Straight-A Student; a book I highly recommend.

Newport interviewed Phi Beta Kappa honors students from a broad range of disciplines in top schools across the country. He asked them detailed questions about their study habits, questions such as, “How do you take notes in class?” and “What methods do you use to write a research paper?” As he interviewed, he threw out any students who got their excellent grades simply by grinding away hour after hour and instead looked for those students who got superior scores by using better technique and skill. The book reveals what he learned, and I’ve integrated much of his findings into this course.

The principle to take away from all this is SKILL BEATS STRENGTH, so don’t feel like a high IQ is necessary to do well in school or on a test. Learn to be a good student or test taker and you can often outperform those for whom school comes easy!

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