

The Art of Stealth Studying: How To Earn a 4.0 With Only 1.0 Hours of Work - ahalan
http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/10/03/the-art-of-stealth-studying-how-to-earn-a-40-with-only-10-hours-of-work/

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steve-howard
The problem I've always had with Cal Newport's advice is that it generally
boils down to "if you're having problems in school, first get extremely
organized and then it's a piece of cake!" Organization is something that is
built up with a ton of practice and patience, and requires substantial
motivation to set in place. For someone who's having trouble finding the
motivation to keep going, that kind of advice is like saying "if you're so
fat, just eat less and exercise more!"

If I had the capacity to actively pay attention at all times in every class
and put in 1 hour of studying every day without fail, I'd have a 4.0 too. This
is not a remarkable fact to me.

~~~
pohl
I figured any piece of advice comes with an unspoken disclaimer: "those not
willing to make changes in their life need not apply".

~~~
rprospero
True. However, the problem is that that disclaimer is often a used as a
loophole for not giving useful advice.

For instance, here's a foolproof plan to ensure that every piece of software
that you write is 100% bug free. If you follow these two, simple steps, every
piece of software you ever write will be perfect on the day it's delivered.

All you need to do is:

1\. Write a program that looks through your source code and finds all the bugs
in it.

2\. Fix all those bugs.

I keep telling this to people, but they're so stubborn that they won't make
these two changes in their build process. So, if you ever find a bug in
someone's software, know that it's not because coding bug free programs is
hard. It's because they don't have the self-discipline to follow through on my
simple prescription.

~~~
pohl
On the one hand, I see what you mean and have some empathy for this position.
On the other hand, it's very telling that you used a Herculean feat in your
analogy: it suggests to me that you perceive the act of adopting some new
habits as also being a Herculean feat.

I don't see it this way. Of course, I spent over a decade in my youth studying
a musical instrument, and I think that experience taught me how easy it is to
program new habits into the human mind. It all boils down to a little
repetition, but also entails making sure that you're not repeating bad habits.
("Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice
makes perfect.")

Sometimes it takes a little faith, but things do become automatic if you
repeat them for surprisingly little amount of time, and this ends up reducing
your cognitive load so that you can move on to focusing on new aspects.

~~~
infinitesimal
I've lost a significant amount of weight twice (> 80lbs) and, externally, I
seem to have also changed my behavior in a substantial way. I am a much better
student than I was before in part because of my own motivation and
determination. As determined as I am though, I still run into academic
problems. Is it because of my own work ethic? I don't think so.

I don't perceive losing weight to be a herculean feat, but that's because I
have shown myself that it's something I can overcome. Changing how my mind
works? Is that a herculean feat? I don't know, but I seem to have difficulties
with it which I cannot immediately work around with a "little repetition."

Please give me a time in your life when you've been able to make a significant
intellectual change from just "a little repetition" and "making sure that
you're not repeating bad habits."

~~~
pohl
I would entertain your challenge without preamble if it were not based on a
premise that I do not accept: specifically, that any of this has to do with
changing how your mind works. I understand that many perceive it that way, but
I do not.

Rather, I see it as leveraging how my mind works. Note how this is almost
exactly the opposite world view. I accept that my mind includes within it a
mechanism for habit automation. Of course that is only one of many tools in
the metacognitive toolbox. Another powerful tool is the ability to be brutally
honest with yourself about what your priorities are in practice, what you
think they should be, and recognizing when your actions are working against
the priorities you would like to have. There are more. Metacognition is a
bottomless pit of bootstrapping power.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition>

A year ago, after coming to grips with the fact that having a toddler and a
relationship meant that I was no longer getting time for myself, I made myself
a morning person. I went from a life-long habit of dragging myself out of bed
just in time to rush to work to someone who routinely gets out of bed at 5am
and does something productive for myself before my son wakes up. Brutal
honesty about my priorities and about a month of consistent practice.

------
jmduke
I'm not familiar with the author, but this reads like a 'how to lose twenty
pounds with only an hour of exercise a week!' blurb.

I don't care if the advice itself is sound; without data and actual proof, its
not worth much to me.

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zipdog
Advice like this (which itself is good) makes me wonder how much higher
education is missing. If a 4.0 is possible with 1.0 hours of work, then surely
the expectations of the students are far too low. Its great that its possible
for a focused student to achieve a 4.0 with so little work, but doesn't that
just mean that all the students should be achieving so much more?

Perhaps there should be a compulsory 101 course that just teaches studying
skills (some places may do this already). It seems like that would boost the
overall gain from the education experience.

~~~
aplusbi
The title is a bit misleading and I'm not entirely sure what the "1 hour"
actually refers to. The author suggests studying 10 minutes at a time,
preferable twice a day most days of the week (so that's 1-2 hour a week). He
also suggests going to every office hour (so that's at least another hour per
week). That's in addition to treating class like you are studying (2-4 hours
per week).

In reality, this is "how to get a 4.0 without cramming".

------
jhspaybar
The reality is work is quite easy at college if you have the maturity to
handle your independence. I'm at a UC school double majoring in CS and Econ
and I probably do less than an hour of studying to prepare for midterms and
finals. I don't have a 4.0(although I am close), but I instead manage to put 6
or 7 courses into a quarter schedule. I think it really just comes down to
doing the learning NOW. Don't understand it? Interrupt the teacher in a 100
person lecture hall. You're here for yourself, and the closer you can put your
understanding of the material to when it is being taught, the better off you
are.

~~~
epicureanideal
I went to Berkeley with EECS major and from what I could see 1 hour per week
would be impossible unless you manage to somehow avoid taking any of the
difficult classes, which would need to be done very strategically. Maybe you
spent time in office hours instead, or having friends explain stuff to you,
but I would include those in "studying time". If I'm wrong, I'd love to know
how you completed major programming assignments in say compilers or operating
systems, or prepared for your algorithms exams with just 1 hour per week.
Sometimes it took me a couple hours just to fully understand what the
professor had assigned due to language barrier (theirs), grammar (theirs), and
other issues.

I also took an upper division economics class at Berkeley and that took far
more than an hour of studying. Even at community college I studied my econ
classes for more than an hour per week. Unless you have a photographic memory
I'm not sure how you can avoid it and still get good grades. Please explain
your technique.

~~~
jhspaybar
I am considering my "study time" only that which is done outside of assigned
projects. My algorithms class assigns homework and lab projects which I take
seriously and approach with the idea that I don't want to have to look at this
material again before an exam. So, in this sense, I'm always studying, it's
just that almost none of it is actual traditional study time. I don't do
office hours(with as many courses as I take, they always conflict). I think
maybe it's just that our definition of studying is different, I consider
studying to be the period of time above and beyond lectures, homework, and
projects. It is this piece of time that I can take almost to zero as long as I
approach the lectures, homework, and projects properly.

~~~
rprasad
By that extremely liberal definition of studying, I "studied" no more than an
hour or two in 7 years of undergrad + law school...

Studying is studying. It doesn't matter if it's assigned studying or not.

------
kiba
He should add a spaced repetition system to his study plan. That way, you'll
only need to study the material as needed as time goes by.

Wired have a good article on how spaced repetition work, the history of it,
and so on:
[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)

~~~
_color
I recently wrote a py script that turns markdown notes into Anki flashcard
decks. If there is any interest, I could make it publicly available.

I still never feel like studying.

~~~
drieddust
I will be very much interested.

------
tibbon
I guess it works some places and not others.

Good luck at MIT getting through your PSETs in an hour a week- I don't care
how smart you are.

Yet, I didn't go to MIT and I was definitely able to get by in some classes
with good grades putting in significantly less effort that is generally said
is needed in college.

~~~
SatvikBeri
Cal (the author) got his PhD at MIT.

~~~
cynest
Which is not undergrad and has a significantly smaller emphasis on grades.

------
Scramblejams
I think this sort of approach depends heavily on how good your attention span
is -- that is, can you focus deeply at will for a certain period of time, even
if it's only ten minutes -- and how good your memory is.

I've spent two hours getting twenty minutes of work done because my mind
wouldn't stop wandering, and my memory isn't so hot so I often need to review
things. If I could focus like a laser and I had near-photographic memory, my
life would be very different and this would sound possible to me. As it is, it
doesn't.

------
lumberjack
I was sceptical as I read the title but it turns out I'm already practically
doing the same thing. Only instead of using printed out study guides, I load
them up on my smartphone. This way I never waste any time waiting for anyone
or anything. I'm always learning something.

However, this doesn't work for every kind of material. It works fine for
classes like History and Law but it doesn't work quite as well for Pure
Mathematics. That all from self experience, though.

------
Unknown5123
Cal Newport: I implore you to earn a 4.0 in CMU's 15-251 ... I dare you ...

~~~
pitt1980
you aware that he's a PhD grad from MIT?

<http://calnewport.com/info/>

no need to take it personal

~~~
DugFin
Citation of a CS PhD from MIT does not constitute proof that he could earn a
4.0 in Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science at CMU studying only an
hour a week.

no need to take it personally

~~~
pitt1980
seems like he's done ok grade wise in life, whether he could or couldn't get
an A in some supertough class at CMU,

don't like his methods, don't use them

give him a little credit for accumlating and sharing alot of different
strategies to do well in some pretty tough academic settings

------
Ineffable
I don't agree that this is some sort of foolproof way of getting out of doing
any work studying, but I definitely think this method could be really useful.

------
bking
So all the prep work involved with getting this "study sheet" done doesn't
actually contribute to you learning? I call shenanigans!

~~~
PebblesRox
I think you're supposed to do the study sheet in class so that it doesn't use
up any extra time.

~~~
bking
Isn't that what "taking notes" is?

