Last year, I wanted to write a guideline for teachers and counselors about how to help students write better college essays. The idea was to share our Collegewise system that’s worked so well for us. But I was struggling with how to put that system into a sellable format that could work for anyone from a high school counselor with 1,000 students to a private counselor with 10. I’d spent a couple weeks writing a few different versions and had gotten pretty much nowhere.
So one afternoon, I tried two of Cal Newport’s techniques, the adventure study and the ice bath method (neither of which are as weird as they sound). Adventure studying means leaving your usual place where you work and going someplace interesting—the beach, the woods, a café, any place where you can work without unnecessary distractions that’s still a change of scenery. And the ice bath method is a great technique to get started on an otherwise intimidating project where you commit to a limited time of brainstorming with a pen and paper (not a laptop–he explains why), then a later session of what he calls hard focus.
In two sessions (and six pages of handwritten notes) at my local coffee shop, I solved my dilemma. I’d share the entire Collegewise essay system, then write a section called “You Take it From Here” where I’d make specific recommendations for how to use it based on the number of students and the amount of time a counselor or teacher had to give.
Last April, I published Story Finders: How Counselors and Teachers Can Help Students Write Better College Essays (Without Helping Too Much). Cal’s methods helped me get started. The next time you’re having trouble getting going on an important project, give them a try yourself and see how they work for you.