How to Become a Straight-A Student

How to Become a Straight-A Student gives you the techniques A+ students have used to pass college with flying colors and summa cum laude degrees, without compromising their entire lives and spending every minute in the library, ranging from time management and note-taking tactics all the way to how you can write a great thesis.

I’m 99% sure you already know this and you’ve heard it tons of times, but I’m also 99% sure that you’re still not doing it, so here it goes again: Study for less time, but be really focused when you study.

Last minute cramming, pulling all nighters and 14-hour workday may feel productive, but really just amount to a lot of what Cal calls pseudo-working, because your concentration takes massive hits from all the interruptions and constant energy drain.

The studies Cal looked at agreed on roughly 50 minutes being the ideal study session length. As long as you spend those 50 minutes on nothing but one task (e.g. studying flash cards or writing a paper), three of these level 10 focus sessions per day will get you just as far as ten hours spent with an average focus level of 3 (just making these up to compare).

The first part of the equation to make this happen is to ruthlessly prioritize and manage your time with a calendar that’s always available for you to update and that you strictly follow.

Part two comes down to eliminating distractions. No phones, Facebook feeds, web surfing or snacking!

Note: One of my longest blog posts ever shows you exactly how to eliminate 32 of the worst distractions you face every day.

This is really cool, I think Cal came up with it himself. It’s called a work progress journal and it’ll help you find and destroy the excuses you make in order to avoid your work. Here’s how it works: Each morning, you write down your most important tasks, including classes you have to go to, exams you have to study for, homework you have to hand in and even chores like fixing the TV or doing laundry. At night, you check off everything you’ve accomplished. Pretty standard, right? But now, you have to give an explanation for everything that didn’t get done. You can bet that having to write down “I watched TV until 2 AM so I woke up groggy and couldn’t focus” for the third time really, really sucks and you’ll eventually show yourself that it’s always the same excuses that keep you from doing what’s important. Since it’s hard to believe yourself when you say that “you really can’t change your late-night TV watching habits”, you’ll likely get tired of the excuse yourself…