Study Prof

Trying to establish a knew habit? My students know that committing to the new behavior of 30 days IN-A-ROW, is the key to making those habits stick. Enter Don’t Break The Chain!, an online calendar that allows you to tick off the days to your thirty day chain of good behavior. Knock’em dead!

Studies show that simply tracking how many times you engage in a good habit (or sideslip a bad habit) will cause most people to up those numbers. How simple is that?! So start tallying up those push ups, timing your study hours, and counting your calories, to become master of your domain!

Amble on over to this nifty site for tracking your trends. Enter absolutely anything you want–number of periwinkle blue caravans you’ve narrowly avoided purchasing, amount of salmon mousse consumed with no lethal effects, quantity of fleshy-headed mutants you’ve found friendly, total number of obscure movie references you’ve noticed in this post, whatever–and the site will keep track of it and allow you to display it in a variety of tres-hip ways.

Here’s a great picture of exactly how we achieve our goals through repeated actions.  We become what we repeatedly do.

This is a time-lapse of a Japanese group that walked the same path over and over. After several days they had worn a path in the grass. Consider how long it will take for the path to grow over once they stop walking. Weeks? Months? Once the path is sufficiently well-trodden, it will remain for a long, long time. As you are cultivating new habits, frequent repetition is the key to changing an action into a habit.

In the same way weaning yourself from a bad habit is not an overnight proposition. It will take time and effort to keep yourself from travelling the well-worn path long enough for it to grow over and disappear.

The lesson also applies to creating memories, although this illustration would represent brute-force repetition. Easier: use mnemonics to create a stronger path initially. That will cut down on the number of repetitions you’ll need to make that memory rock solid.

Here’s a quick game that you can teach your kids to help them learn to apply mnemonics and also build a foundation for later study skills.  Kids may not be too keen on studying, but if it’s fun they’ll do it all day long. My kids and I usually play this while driving.

Three Story

One person is the storyteller. Their job is to tell a (very short) story that uses three words provided by the other participants. Any three words will do; we like to use nouns or verbs, the stranger the better. For example, “gorilla, ball gown, light saber.”

The storyteller tells a short story (usually under two minutes long) using all three words. (more…)

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Small, easy changes in your daily habits can lead to huge payoffs academically.  Small strokes fell great oaks, as the saying goes.

To expand on the metaphor, trying to cut down a great oak tree in a single day will wear you out!  It takes a tremendous amount of energy, and you’ll be sore and blistered for days.

On the other hand, if you pick up that axe every morning and spend thirty minutes or so chopping at the oak, the task is easy, invigorating, and effective.  Moreover, your body will strengthen with the regular exercise, rather than wearing out.  That means the next oak will fall even faster.

Apply the principle to your studies.  Break every task down into simple parts that you can accomplish on a daily basis. Many of the techniques discussed on this site boil down to this basic principle.

This is one of the main reasons I write so much on how to change your habits.  Consider, a simple habit change such as studying every day on campus between classes instead of waiting until the evening, the weekend, or the week before finals.  Studying between classes every day…

• leads to less (no?) study nights and weekends
• which leads to lots of free time to do the things you want and
• a better social life (or maybe carpal tunnel syndrome from playing too much xBox).

• It also leads to better comprehension in class
• which leads to needing fewer notes and less study
• as well as better grades on tests.

• It also leads to no need for cramming before the test
• which means no all-nighters and sleep deprivation
• which leads to better grades on tests and
• roommates and friends jealous of your seemingly effortless A’s.

• It also leads to putting the information into long term memory rather than short term memory (which is what you get with cramming).
• That means less study next semester in the second part of the course and
• that means more free time and better grades.

Those are all the benefits from one simple habit change! The trick, of course, is to actually make the habit change.  So make sure to learn how to get rid of bad habits and replace them with good habits.  It’s where easier A’s begin!

Start here to begin developing the habits of an excellent student.

Mid-terms and finals are the bane of most college students’ existence.  One final exam would be bad enough, but at the end of the semester we often have to take two or three exams in a single day!  It’s enough to make even the most studious among us pine for the life of a beach bum.

If you find yourself in this unenviable position, here are some tips and tricks to help you make the best of a bad situation.

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What could be more normal than drinking a tall glass of ice tea on a hot day?  Ice tea was sold for the first time on a hot day in 1904, at the World’s Fair.  Tea concessionaire Richard Blechynden was trying to boost sagging sales, and his new-fangled iced tea was a hit with thirsty fair-goers.

Up until that time, hot was the only way most people drank their tea.  Now, in the U.S. at least, cold tea is the norm for much of the year.

Similarly, learning new habits can seem awkward at first.  They seem unnatural.  After awhile, though, they become so normal you can’t imagine doing without them.

Keep that in mind as you work on forming new academic habits, like reviewing your notes as you walk across campus.  Persist and the ungainly new habit will become as natural as drinking a tall glass of ice tea on a hot day.

Joe’s Goals is a free site that helps you track your daily goals.  Easy to use format and powerful tools make it perfect for those setting single goals or doing a total reformation!

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!