Cal Newport’s Five Mistakes to Avoid During Finals was written for college students, but the tips seem just as applicable for high school exam prep, too.
Five habits of highly-effective students
If your New Year’s resolutions involved getting better grades, here is a collection of links to past posts to help you. Many of these cite (or redirect you to) advice from study skills author Cal Newport, one of the best in the business.
1. Make class time study time.
Most high school students are sitting in class roughly six hours a day. If you made the absolute most of that time, if you zeroed in and really paid attention, you’d probably get better grades on less study time. A key skill you’ll need is good note-taking, and Cal has a method I describe in this post.
2. Start before you need to.
You might think you work best under the pressure of deadlines, but please read these posts here, here and here—I think you’ll see how much better your work and life are when you start before you need to.
3. No study interruptions.
It’s not about how many hours you study. It’s about how focused you are, as Newport explains here. And part of being focused means eliminating interruptions, as I describe in posts here, here and here.
4. Teach it back.
The surest way to understand material is to use the “Feynman Technique” named after Richard Feynman, a former professor of physics at Caltech who won the Nobel Prize.
5. Ask for help.
It’s not enough just to ask for help when you need it. You have to work to deserve the help, and you have to ask in a way that doesn’t annoy your teacher.
How to make better phone calls
You can’t always rely on the information superhighway to get answers to your questions. If you can't find an answer online or an email address to use, you might have to go old school and use the phone to call someone you don’t know to get the information you need. Email and texting have killed this skill for many of the high school students I meet. So here's a quick course for teens on how to make better phone calls:
1. Before you dial, get prepared.
Some people dial a phone number before they’ve even considered why they’re doing so. So take a minute and consider why you’re calling. What are you hoping to learn? What question do you want to ask? What’s the best way to ask it? There’s no need to rehearse this like a script. But a little pre-call preparation goes a long way.
Also, get a pad of paper and a pen so you can write down whatever information this person shares with you. Writing it down is more polite than clacking away at a keyboard (which the person will be able to hear you doing in the background).
2. Say hello and introduce yourself.
No need to list your entire biography. A simple, “Hi, my name is Kevin and I’m a junior at Central High School” is just fine.
For extra credit, write down the person’s name if he or she reveals it when answering the phone. That way, you can use it to say thank you at the end of the call.
3. Clearly and succinctly explain why you’re calling.
“I was wondering if you were hiring for any part-time positions?”
“I was hoping to take your video editing class this summer, but I don't see it listed on the schedule. Do you know when the course will be offered?”
4. Consider your potential next steps.
Think through the possible answers you could get to your inquiry, and consider what you’d like to do next in each of those scenarios. What action will you want to take if this person shares the information you were hoping to find? If this person can’t help you, would you like to ask advice about who might be able to?
Let’s say you find out the class you’re calling about will be offered this summer. Will you want to ask how to register? If the course won’t be offered, do you want to ask when it will be, or where else you might be able to take it?
Considering these questions ahead of time will help you make the most of the call.
5. Thank the person and sign off politely.
You don’t want to just say, “OK, bye” to end the call. Instead, thank the person for the help. If he or she was particularly helpful, acknowledge it.
“Wow—you made this really easy. Thank you so much for helping me.”
People who take time to help you deserve your thanks. But there’s a strategy at work here, too. Use the phone call to make a great impression, not just to get the information you need. You never know. You might leave a lasting impression that comes back to help you in some way.
Bonus tip: If you get a voicemail, do steps 1, 2 and 3 briefly (15-20 seconds if you can), leave your name and number while speaking slowly and clearly, then sign off with #5.
How to handle negative people
We all know that person who tears other people down. The kid at school who makes fun of everyone, the co-worker who hates every new idea, the commenter who calls you a moron every time you post something. Seth Godin calls these folks vampires, and while at first I thought the comparison was a little hokey, it actually makes sense. They feed on negativity. The garlic is to ignore them. If you’ve got a vampire in your life, get the garlic out—ignore, delete, shun. Here’s Seth’s post on the topic.
Write things down so you can forget them
If you keep track of all your assignments, appointments and responsibilities in your head, even if you never forget anything, you’re still using a lot of brain space that could otherwise be allocated elsewhere.
From this article by Ari Weinzweig, co-owner and founding partner of the Zingermann’s deli empire, an Ann Arbor based food services company with 500+ employees and 40 million dollars per year in sales:
“As Jim Munroe wrote in the comic book ‘Time Management for Anarchists' (and for a great little film clip of the same name): ‘When you develop a habit of writing down stuff, and [referring] to it often enough, you’ll find out an amazing thing: you can let it all go. You can forget about missing appointments, not getting stuff done, and have your brain back to think about creative, interesting stuff.’ I agree. I’ll take every little bit of brainpower I can free for fun and creative activities.”
When you mess up, own up
If you accidentally spilled coffee on your friend, or forgot your brother’s birthday, or broke your best friend’s phone, you’d probably feel bad. But if you offered up a sincere, heartfelt, “I’m so sorry,” chances are, you’d be forgiven. It’s hard to stay mad at someone who makes an honest mistake and who obviously feels really bad and apologizes. When you mess up and own up, people tend to forgive you.
This works in business, too. In 2006, Threadless, the online t-shirt company, accidentally deleted all of the blogs that its users had maintained on the site. They felt terrible, apologized to all their customers, and even invited people to submit questions and comments. But if you look at the thread here, there isn’t a lot of Threadless hate being expressed. In fact, most of the commenters were pretty understanding.
And for seniors filling out college applications, if you’re asked to explain any disciplinary infractions, admit how badly you feel about what you did. If you paid a price or otherwise made amends, say so. That woks much, much better than making excuses.
Reduce stress, increase sanity
Meredith sent us this NPR piece today on reducing stress and promoting sanity among high school students. She pointed out that the written summary focused on a balanced and sane academic schedule as a viable stress solution, while the audio portion emphasized better time management skills. But both are worth a read/listen.
I've always stressed that students should challenge themselves sanely. Part of being successful means being able to take on challenges and push yourself to work hard. But if you're consistently getting 4-5 hours of sleep every night, or even worse, if you're so stressed that you're physically ill, it's time to pull back a little.
Use a “procrastination pad”
From a Lifehacker entry:
"Writing things down helps you remember them later, but it's also a great way to keep yourself from getting distracted. If you often find your mind wandering when it should be focused on the task at hand, keep a ‘procrastination pad’ to jot down those fleeting thoughts and look them up later."I've tried it, and it works really well for me.
I've tried it, and it works really well for me.
How many daily hours of “deep work” do you do?
Mason Curry’s book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work studies the habits of 161 brilliantly creative people, from Beethoven to Maya Angelou to Benjamin Franklin. Study skills author and Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport reviewd 25 of those profiled and estimated that they spent an average of 5.25 hours a day in deep work—time of concentration and mental stretching, free of distractions.
Not surprising that none of those profiled became great by constantly emailing, texting, and checking Facebook all day. You can learn more about the book and Newport's findings here and here.
Why the snooze button makes you sleepy
Tom Rath knows how to do research. He’s the author of the Gallup Organization’s landmark StrengthsFinder 2.0, which became the world’s bestselling non-fiction book in 2012. He’s just released his new work, Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes, and his findings on sleep might be particularly interesting to sleep-deprived high school students.
Rath’s research found that sacrificing an hour of sleep doesn’t equal an extra hour of work or fun. In fact, it does the opposite. When you lose an hour of sleep, it decreases your happiness, productivity and your ability to think.
If you don’t think you have time for that extra hour, here’s Rath’s tip about ditching the snooze button:
When you break your final hour of sleep into small half-awake chunks, studies show it does not count toward the total amount of deep restorative sleep. For the next few weeks, set your alarm at the latest possible time so hitting the snooze button is not an option. Force yourself to get up right away. Those extra minutes can give you enough sleep so you feel refreshed.
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