More Motivation Tricks for Sluggish Students

Fun fact: the smell of text books can be used to anesthetize rhinos. I made that up. But, seehrusly, if you’re finding it hard to get motivated to crack the books without the aid of a car battery, jumper cables, and a pair of wet-sponge ear muffs, read on. I’ve got five –count’em, five! — techniques to get that class work done when you’d really rather run. Continue reading

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved.

Get smarter during the summer?

Is it possible to actually get smarter during the summer whilst basking at the beach? Absolutely, yes! How? Take this semester’s notes and give them a light going over every week or two–while at the beach, if you like. Quiz yourself over them. Practice a bit. I’m not saying you’ve got to spend hours; just a little refresher every now and then. You’ll be transferring all that hard won knowledge into the vaunted vaults of your long term while the hottie with the pre-cancerous tan next to you is ever so slowly losing her spring semester learning and getting dumberer.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved.

Fortunately, I Screwed Up. The Path to Lifelong Learning

The Wrong Way to Fail

Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. -Will Rogers

Most of us think of a screw up, a failure, a crash-and-burn, as a bad thing, and it can be. But it can also be a very good thing if we learn from it. The path to lifelong learning– to truly effective, mind-blowing, earth-shaking learning–is paved with failing successfully and often. Fail in the right way to become a better student. Do you want to be a better learner by the end of this week? Experiment. Do you want to be smarter and more confident by the end of this semester? Try something new. Do you want to find the secret to opening the doors of your mind? Do something different.

If you are really trying, if you are pushing yourself as hard as you can, you will sometimes fail. It doesn’t matter though. If you fail in the right way, you’ll be better than you were before. On the other hand, if you try nothing new, you’ll keep plodding along at your current pace. You may not fail, but neither will you succeed wildly. So if you aren’t happy with where you are at, try failing a little more. Here’s how. Continue reading

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved.