Study Prof

Not all profs are created equal. Many of them, through no fault of their own, have foreign accents that make them slightly tougher to understand than Charlie Brown’s teacher. Some have only a passing acquaintance with public speaking skills, and I’m pretty sure some of my profs weren’t actually fully Homo sapiens. What’s a student to do? Enter Einztein.com. Do a quick search for your topic of choice and get instant, free access to a lecture on said topic from superb professors at top-shelf universities around the globe. Click on the logo to see for yourself.

Dust off those synapses and belly up to the brain bar, pardner. You’re going to like this. Website Smart.fm takes some of my favorite learning principals (staggered review, automaticity, the Ebbinghaus learning curve, and more) and puts them all together in one slick and sociable site. Enter in whatever info you want to sear into your cerebellum or take advantage of the memory sets others have already created.

Take a peek at the intro video and then go give it a whirl. Click the pic to watch the video at YouTube.

Procrastination; the Big Bad Wolf in our fairy tale life. The Godzilla in our own personal Tokyo. Put off that slavering, monstrous task and it only gets bigger and badder. As the behemoth bloats so does your anxiety, your shame, and your desire to find a hole to hide in … anything to avoid the red-eyed, demon task. That means yet more procrastination, and soon you find yourself quivering under the bed in the fetal position. Not good times.

What you need, my friend, is an erstwhile hero who can slay the beast, or at least kick it in the shins and give it a wedgie. Enter our hero, the mini-goal. Here’s how it works. Set yourself a laughably small David of a goal that will at least hurl a wee pebble at that Goliath of a task looming over you. Your mini-goal should be an easy first step, something that takes ten minutes or less to accomplish. It should be something you can’t possibly fail at. Example: The evil twenty-page research paper is huffing and puffing (more…)

Caution: you’ll be tempted to shoot this tip down before you even try it. Resist the temptation. What will it cost you to at least try it?

Take a small sticky note–the smallest you can find–and write your immediate goal on it just as you begin a study task. Example: “Complete even problems at end of chapter 4.”

Rules:

1. The goal must be easily doable within one hour. (Forces you to focus on jobs in small, manageable chunks).

2. It must fit fully on the sticky note. (Forces you to be focus your immediate goal).

3. Post the note somewhere annoying, such as the middle of your computer screen or over your cell phone screen or on your watch face. Don’t remove the note until the task is complete. (Annoys you until it’s done).

4. Promise yourself you won’t break any of the rules. Swear by something sacred, such as your mom’s honor or the Power of Grayskull. You don’t want Grayskull gunning for you, so get it done!

Simple and effective as a fly swatter. Try it out.

Trying to study without being able to focus can be like a demonic real-life game of Whack-A-Mole. It’s frustrating, costly, and ultimately useless. Lifehack to the rescue! Take a look at their post on …

Simple Productivity: 10 Ways to Do More by Focusing on the Essentials

Most of us have been making flash cards since an enthusiastic third-grade teacher first used them to pound the multiplication facts into our resisting little cranial cavities. Why did she do it? Why, Mrs. Payne, why?

News flash; Flash Cards, boring and basic though they may be, work. But. They don’t work nearly as well for most of us as they should. Why? Because you’re doing it wrong. At least, I was doing it wrong throughout most of my college career. Here’s how to avoid my early mistakes. (more…)