MM#263--Winning In The Battle of The Little Things

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. In our last Mojo Minute, we talked all about procrastination. In fact, we said as our number one nugget of wisdom this quote the idea to build a routine in which you use the same reserve time slot each week to do the same thing, with the goal of transforming these slices of work into a habit, something you no longer have to convince yourself to do, is quite powerful. Now that is fascinating stuff, and that is how you begin to defeat procrastination. Well, you don't defeat it for good, but at least you know how to handle it. You have become somewhat confident in how to handle it. See, procrastination is like a big bangle tiger. You have to learn how to handle it or else it's going to cause you all kinds of problems. You might even take off your arm or your head, but once you learn to lead it around the cage, how to control it, you can have it. Help yourself, make you look good. Now that nugget of wisdom actually comes to us from our book of the day. In fact, our book this whole week is Cal Newport's how to Become a Straight A Student. It was written back in 2006. And we thought, with our kids going back to school and some of the young ones going off to college. We thought we would give you some of these nuggets of wisdom to help you, to help them to begin building a flourishing life and, most especially, it can also help yourselves, especially in your workplaces. So we're going to keep going with this mining of our nuggets, today on the same book, and the catch of these nuggets of golden wisdom is large in this book. This book is actually quite fascinating. Cal Newport has written another great book, so let's discuss these other strategies to help you win the war against yourself and against delaying doing the things you should be doing. We don't want to delay them, we want to get them done. We want to be men and women of action, not just theory. We want to put theory into action, like the namesake of our podcast and I gave you a little teaser in our last Mojo Minute that we would talk about little things, because the little things in college and in life Cal and I said that Cal has a great question and answer on the little things. So, without further ado, let's jump into our book and grab our first pull quote to find all about these little things. Book 3, choose when, where and how Long the little things count. This is especially true when it comes to studying. Before we get caught up in the details of exactly how to review and synthesize material, there are some basic questions that we must address first. When during the day should you study? Where should you go to study? How long should you study before taking a break? The right answers to these questions will boost your productivity, allowing you to squeeze more work out of even less time. The wrong answers will slow you down and make this process more difficult than it needs to be. Straight A students, I found out, devote a lot of thought to those questions. They recognize how these seemingly little details can make or break their study efforts and have experimented extensively to discover the most effective strategies. Now step three will walk you through the results of those experiments and present tested approaches for each of these three critical study skills. Now I just love this part of the book because Cal Newport as Cal likes to do, he gets super practical, and he did this in his wonderful book Deep Work, which we're just super fans here at the Mojo Academy. We put it on our most recommended books list. We have done a full Academy review for that book. So if you're not, if you're not yet a Mojo Academy member, I'm not sure what you're waiting on there is. The book review alone is worth its weight in the membership for the month it is. It is that good of a book, deep Work. It'll make you super effective and efficient in how you schedule your day at work and, most especially, how you schedule your day even if you're at school. So be sure to click on the show notes in the link and you where you can sign up to become a member. We would love to have you especially so we can teach you the nuggets of wisdom that came to us from Deep Work by Cal Newport. But here are the nuts and bolts that Cal digs into in his great book on how to become a straight Aston. Going back to the book Question when is the best time to study? Answer early. I like doing work in one big chunk upon getting back from class or doing it in between classes, depending on my schedule, says Simon from Brown. I tried to never leave it until late at night. Simon's plan emphasizes an important reality about studying You're most effective between when you wake up and when you eat dinner. You should accomplish as much work as possible during this time. This advice runs counter to most students' instincts, including my own, for most of my college experience. To many the evening seems ideal for work. Why? Because the morning and afternoon are crowded. Classes, meals, meetings and other activities take over these hours, leaving few continuous periods for really settling in and getting things done. Night, on the other hand, seems like one long, uninterrupted stretch of good work time, right Wrong. First, night time is not as long as you think. By the time you finish dinner, gather your materials and finally begin your work, you only really have a few hours left before it becomes too late and your desire to sleep hijacks your concentration. Second, night time is not as free as you think. It's prime time. Inevitably, some can't miss TV show nags for your attention, or the loud music of the party down the hall beckons seductively. Night is when most people want to socialize. You see movies at night, you go to parties at night. Shows, speakers and other campus performances happen at night. People gather at their dorm rooms to gossip and distract each other. Both of us have achieved the required level of nerd-dom necessary to resist such temptations. We shouldn't have to. Finally, night time is when your body begins to wind down After a long day of activity. It's ready to begin a slow descent into sleep. Even before it gets late. The energy available to your mind has already declined by 7 or 8 pm. Your focus is weak at best. For these reasons, you must minimize the amount of work you do after dinner, crucial point. So, moms and dads out there with college bound students, will you please go out and get this book for your kids. It is that good. Next question Question where should you study? Answer in isolation. Identify a number of isolated study spots spread out across campus and rotate through these hidden locations. When you study, any place in your dorm or house is off limits, as are the big public study spaces in your main library. As Greta from Dartmouth explains, if you stay in your dorm, it seems like no one is studying, because they aren't. This atmosphere is not conducive to concentration. Look for less visited libraries away from the center of campus and search out carols high up in the stacks or buried in the basement. Always keep your eye open for the next hidden study spot small libraries in the buildings of student organizations, a hole in the wall, coffee shop or a local public library, or all potential concentration gold mines. Let me repeat that again Always keep your eyes out for the next hidden study spot small libraries in the buildings of student organizations, a hole in the wall, coffee shop or a local public library, or all potential concentration gold mines. You need multiple locations for two reasons. First, as you move throughout your day, squeezing in study sessions between classes, it's always nice to know of a nearby study spot. Second, changing locations prevents you from burning out at any one place. This happened to me. This is a strategy followed by Doris from Harvard, who explains to keep my mind stimulated, I regularly rotate between different venues. The isolation of these spots is important for the obvious reason it shields you from distraction. That little procrastination devil on your shoulder is an incredible salesman. If you give him even a glimpse of an alternative to your work, he will close the deal. To neutralize this devil, isolate him. Don't let him sit on your couch. Don't let him see the cute girls tossing frisbees on the quad or your friends chatting in your dorm room lounge. If you cut yourself off from the outside world during work hours, you will have a much better chance of completing what needs to be done, as, in an added bonus, the resulting increase in your concentration will help you get your work done faster. Now, I barely studied in high school. So when I went to college I came in on academic probation so I knew I had to pick up my effort and my effectiveness in how I studied. But I didn't have a plan, so I would study in my dorm room my first quarter and a half of my freshman year, because where else would you study? I mean, it was a no brainer. Right, you just study in your room. That's what everybody suspects and as this quote describes. But nobody is studying in their dorm rooms. So that is when you have to become the adult and you have to find a way and get creative. This was a revelation to me one time walking through the library and when I saw one of my friends all the way back in a corner, a secluded corner, at one of those one person cubicles, and I stopped to talk to him and asked hey, what are you doing here? Because I was so surprised. Because I was so surprised, he said I'm studying, dude, what the hell does it look like? Sorry folks, I should have gave you a disclaimer about that one. I was like, hey, no big deal, man, I'll leave you alone. But as I walked out of the library I thought dang, that is a great idea. Find a place where you can hide, but also where you can get your studying done, just like we heard about in this book. And here's a bonus tip your buddies and friends will find out your favorite studying places and they will come looking for you Because they're doing something bad. And, as human nature dictates to us, we all love to do something bad. Occasionally. They love to break up your study time. You'll be able to get after it later. Come on, we've got to throw that frisbee on the quad. So you have to become more creative than they do, and the more creative you are, the better you'll become. Now, by the time, I was a junior and living in the fraternity house. This was especially problematic. So here were my places that I eventually studied. I went from the main library. Then people found out about that and it was way too distracting, just as this quote suggested. So then I went and found the law library. The law library was where it was at. I was there for roughly, I think, about two years, over the course of the rest of my sophomore year and a little bit of my junior year. Now once I found, was found at the law library. Then I found the art building. I was not an art major, I'd already taken my art class. I never set foot in that building again until cutting through it one day. I found a great little niche of a desk, so secluded that I thought for sure nobody was going to discover me when I was studying there. But then, finally, that place got found out and I was always harassed. But then I found a local pizza diner that I could go and eat lunch on the cheap and I would study there for about an hour or an hour and a half, just either after lunch or before lunch, and that was perfect. There was no students or any of my friends barely coming in during that lunchtime. And I got to know the owner and I got to know the waiter or the waitress and it was always the same people during lunchtime and they were just fantastic. They would always sit aside my favorite, they would always reserve my favorite table as I came in each and every week. Now, speaking of study times and durations, this leads us to our next negative wisdom, which is a fascinating one, and I wish I would have known about this one when I went to college. Question how long should you study? Answer no more than one hour at a time, without a break. Your break needs to be only five to ten minutes, but it's important that you take an intellectual breather during this period. This means you should find something you can concentrate on just for a few minutes which has nothing to do with the work you were completing. Right before the break, read a newspaper article or send a few emails. That should be enough. This disengagement helps refresh your mind and facilitates the process of finding new angles and insights when you begin your work again. Some students brought a novel or a newspaper with them and then read a chapter or an article at every break. Others choose a project for the day, perhaps writing a long email to a friend they hadn't seen in ages, or building a list of options for an upcoming vacation that they could work on bit by bit, with a break with each break that they took. Even when you feel like you're on a roll, keep taking regular breaks. Over the long run, it will maximize your energy and retention of the material. As Laura from Dartmouth recounts, I swear I got more done taking regular breaks than I would if I just worked straight through. Why does this timing work best? Cal says I don't know exactly. Some cognitive science research concludes that about 50 minutes is the optimal learning period to maximize the material synthesized per unit of time. For example, the website for the IPFW Center for Academic Support and Advancement states studies suggest you should study in 40 to 50 minute increments for maximum retention. After approximately 40 minutes, take a short break of five minutes and continue studying Without a break. Retention is about 30% after two hours. So it's going down dramatically. But we don't have to get bogged down with the scientific details. The main reason I advocate this timing is because almost every straight-A student interviewed for this book followed a similar plan. When asked how long they studied in a single setting, All but a few of their answers fell somewhere between a half an hour and an hour. Not more than an hour, replied Chris. One hour, then I get up and do something else for a bit, replied Melanie. Ryan said about forty minutes to an hour. Lydia said one hour on, fifteen minutes off. That's what I did through college. One to one and a half hours, then I would take a break, replied Lacey. And the list goes on and on. A response as a response after response revealed the similar strategy. The point here should be clear. Through trial and error, dozens of high performing students have individually stumbled across this same technique Study for an hour, then take a break, so you should trust it too. Spot on hour to an hour and a half at the maximum, and then do something else for a quick fifteen minutes to get your mind off the subject matter. When you combine these three tactics, you will study with much better effectiveness and, more importantly, much better efficiency. In fact, that's the double whammy for today's Mojo Minute. This ain't just for students. Yes, moms and dads with college age kids or even high school students, I want you to share with them these study hacks. But you can take these skills into adulthood. You can create a routine for working hard at your job, at your craft. As I sit down to do my own professional work, I work on projects at an hour to an hour and a half at a clip. My schedule is broken down into large and small projects based on the amount of time that I can give them during the day. You know you interspersed the conference calls and the impromptu phone calls, so you have to figure all that stuff in, but you will have large chunks of time that you can try and get stuff done before dinner. So in today's Mojo Minute, let's battle ourselves from within and not let the devil of procrastination in the devil of distraction win those battles. That is a recipe for failure. And we want to flourish and to do that we have to fit as much work as possible in the morning and in the afternoon we have to study and work in isolation and we have to take a break every hour to hour and a half in our deep work. If you do those, you will be on the road to a flourishing life and a set of straight A's from your teachers and even your work colleagues, because you will have done the hard work to earn their respect. And finally, that is how you defeat procrastination by winning in the battle of the little things.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.