The Three-Step Strategy to Study Hard

Without Burning Out

Most of the time I talk about learning better, I try to focus on long-term habits. Build good
habits over months and years, and theyll serve you for the rest of your life. Even if you fall off the
wagon, its easier to rebuild old habits than construct fresh ones.
Sometimes, however, you wont have that luxury. Youll have a big test or deadline which you need
to learn a lot, fast.
In this article, Im going to share the strategy I used both when tackling the roughly four-fold pace of
the MIT Challenge and currently, learning to speak Chinese over three months. What makes this
strategy powerful is that it is the opposite of how most people approach tough learning deadlines,
and why they eventually succumb to procrastination or burnout.
Burnout and Procrastination, Symptoms of a Poor Strategy
The typical students approach to a looming deadline is something like this: force yourself to spend
all your time in the library, eliminate all social activities and fun, beat yourself up for wasting time or
getting distracted.
Its a common pattern because its a reinforcing cycle. You start getting distracted, so you force
yourself to buckle down and spend more time studying. This drains you more, making it easier to get
distracted, which guilts you into spending even more time in isolation. This generally continues until
youre either operating at very low levels of your peak efficiency, or youre burned out and have
given up.
Whats hard for these students to realize is that they can learn more, by spending less time studying.
(Or, more accurately, less time guilting themselves into studying since in the unfocused haze of semi-
work, very little studying is actually occurring.)
How to Study Hard Without Burning Out
The key of the method is simple: constrain your studying hours, but make them higher quality.
Here are the three steps, which Ill explain in detail:
1. Set concrete studying hours that leave room for rest time.
2. Switch passive learning tasks to active ones.
3. Build a comfortable, but distraction-free working environment.
Step One: Concrete Studying Hours with Ample Rest Time
The first mistake is believing you can study non-stop. This is a dangerous temptation, and the bigger
the exam or deadline looms, the easier it is to fall into this trap.
Im not going to tell you that the optimal amount of hours of studying should be leisurely. If you
want to study hard, youre going to have to work hard. But think of it like running a race, theres a
hard pace you can stick to and a pace that goes too fast and you run out of air. Separating the two is
a fine line.
The easiest way to separate that line is to set concrete hours that allow you enough time to rest. I
personally find working 5 days per week 8am-6pm plus an additional half day (with breaks, of
course), to be about the best I can do for more than several weeks at a time. I used this schedule
throughout the MIT Challenge, and Im using it now while learning Chinese.
Notice that this schedule means every evening is free as is one whole weekend day (and half of
another). This means that going out to meet friends, exercising or anything else you do for fun
doesnt need to be sacrificed.
If youre currently studying hard, feeling burned out, and are trying to switch strategies, your
transition workload needs to be even less than this. I might do only half as much for a few days or a
week until I build back up to this schedule. If youre winded when running, you need to go back to a
slower pace for awhile before you return to your sustainable pace.
Step Two: Switch Passive Learning Tasks to Active Ones
Ive used the running metaphor to explain why setting concrete hours is essential. However, the
running analogy fails because mental and physical tasks are fundamentally different. If youre in a
race and start feeling youre running too fast, you have to slow down. If youre in a mental race and
start feeling youre pushing too much, your body can compensate by wrecking your focus.
When your focus is damaged, your learning speed is curtailed significantly, but youre still putting in
a lot of effort. This means you may be putting in the same effort as someone who stuck with a
concrete schedule, but youre learning far less.
The next step to combating this problem is to switch your tasks from passive to active ones. These
will strain you more, so if youre transitioning from a burnout schedule to a fixed one, youll need to
set even more minimal hours for the first few days. However, the benefit of active tasks is that they
force you in a higher efficiency direction with your studying.
Activeness is a spectrum so there arent two categories of studying tasks that are labelled either
passive or active. Rather, some tasks are higher-focus, higher-efficiency than others.
Self-testing is an active task. Re-reading notes is a passive one. The Feynman Technique is an active
task. Skimming is a passive one. A good rule of thumb is that if theres no point in your studying
routine where you have the possibility of finding out your incorrect, it isnt a passive task. I would
make some limited exceptions to that list (some mnemonic techniques have no feedback, but are
mentally demanding and fairly efficient) but its a small one.
Step Three: Build a Comfortable, Yet Distraction-Free, Work Environment
This step is obvious: if you work where you have distractions, youll get distracted. I do my non-
conversational studying of Chinese at a cafe where I dont have internet access. If you need to use
the internet for part of your work, use an app like SelfControl to selectively block all websites that
arent work-related. If you can go without internet altogether, even better.
Put your phone on silent, or dont even bring it while youre studying. Go somewhere your friends
arent (although I picked my studying location in Chinese so that it can occasionally facilitate random
Chinese conversations, its the exception which proves the rule).
Even though you dont want to be distracted, dont worry about taking breaks. The ideal should be
to create an environment where breaks are boring (but still relaxing) so you dont get tempted into
giving up studying. Choosing break activities that fit that criteria in advance can help you sustain
your focus over an entire day.
During the MIT Challenge, Id often go for short walks or just sit quietly for fifteen or twenty
minutes. These are good breaks because they allow you to give your mind a short breather, but they
are boring enough that returning to your original task doesnt require willpower. Surfing the
internet, chatting with friends or playing phone games arent good break activities.
My frequency of breaks depends a lot on the type of activity Im doing. I took frequent breaks during
the MIT Challenge because the hard math problems and long reading assignments were difficult to
sustain focus for more than an hour or so. During this language challenge I rarely take long breaks
because the mental task of grammar exercises or vocabulary building is less taxing.
How to Transition from a Burnout Schedule to an Effective One
Despite knowing these lessons deeply, I even recently succumbed to the temptation to work too
much. I built my language-learning routine around immersion, which meant nearly constant
engagement with the language. That worked with Spanish, where studying time itself was rather
minimal in comparison to simply interacting, but it broke down when applying it to Chinese.
My problem wasnt the No-English rule, but rather, trying to fill each day with too many activities
that were mentally demanding. Always listening toChinesePod instead of music, only watching
Chinese television and media, studying every day instead of taking a day off each week. By the time I
noticed I was about to hit a wall, I had a Chinese-language presentation looming in the following few
days I couldnt get out of, and it burned me. I probably lost a few days of good studying time and
possibly more in lowered efficiency due to my mistake.
But mistakes happen, and once I realized I had fallen into that trap, I redesigned a new studying
schedule which followed the above rules and eased into it over a few days. Now Im back on track
and Im getting at least as much studying done as I had been before, but Im not exhausting myself
to do it.
Sometimes you can fall into a burnout schedule but not recognize it for what it is. This can happen
when you arent making enough progress towards your goal (or are procrastinating so much) that
you feel you should be working more, not less. In these cases, it can sometimes be hard to recognize
that your inability to stay focused is a symptom of unconstrained work hours, not laziness.

Never Be Too Pleased With Your Past
Work

Out of the thousand articles Ive written, there are few that I genuinely like. Most of those I feel are
mostly correct or useful, upon reflection, are still lacking in a lot of ways. Sometimes theyre too
wordy, the research is too sparse or there are obvious counterarguments I ignored.
I feel the same way about all of my books, and all of my products. Since I wrote Learn More, Study
Less, several years ago, Ive done at least five major renovations (although often as different
packages, rather than a complete replacement to its predecessor). Even after five generations, Im
still not satisfied with my work, and it will probably take me another few thousand hours of work
before I might be.
Looking back at when I did the MIT Challenge, I see the flaws in my design. I can think of dozens of
ways that would have make the project more successful, more generalizable to others or more
interesting. Im not finished yet, but Im sure Ill look back on this current project with a similar eye
for its shortcomings.
Because I live in a Western society, where any lack of self-praise that doesnt border on oblivious
narcissism is somehow an illness that needs to be cured, let me stress: I think this a good attitude to
have about your own work.
Too Much Self-Esteem?
If you look throughout history, or across other cultures, its hard to see why self-esteem in your own
work is currently seen as an indispensable virtue. Eastern cultures historically valued modesty and a
focus on process rather than your accolades. Even Western cultures roots recognize the danger in
self-praise: pride did, after all, make the short-list of deadly sins.
Today, self-esteem seems to be the quality one can never have enough of. Almost any problem,
from depression to narcissism, somehow stems from not having enough self-esteem. Every
successful person is painted as someone with unwavering faith in themselves and their talents.
Theres definitely a point at which, below that, having too low an opinion of your work is crippling.
You end up obsessing over details instead of going out into the real world and getting feedback.
Maybe youre below that point, in which case this entire article doesnt apply to you. I dont know.
But, I feel, just as there is definitely a lower-threshold where insufficient self-esteem kills your
motivation, theres definitely an upper threshold where it blinds you to feedback. When you think
too highly of your ideas and your work, then you cant see the flaws which should be improved for
the next iteration.
Balancing Self-Criticism and Praise
Since knowing exactly where those limits lie is difficult, Ive found its better to employ a rule of
thumb: your past work, which needs no motivation since it is already complete, is optimally viewed
in a more self-critical light. Your current work, which needs commitment to a plan and less wavering,
needs more of your inner motivational speaker.
When I worked on the MIT Challenge, I tried to avoid criticism of the project as much as possible.
Not because I knew the criticism wasnt valid, but because I knew it probably was. My critics had a
point: self-grading isnt perfectly accurate, the value of college has a lot to do with accreditation
rather than knowledge, college is about more than just book knowledge, computer science isnt
terribly important to the career of a writer. However, mid-project theres little you can do with these
criticisms other than have them suck away your zeal.
Now that the project is complete, Im more than happy to entertain those criticisms, and often agree
with them to some extent. I dont need faith because the work is already doneI can instead view
my own work with a critical eye, looking for information that can improve the next iteration.
As a blogger, I think the form of this introspection is equally important as its skew. I generally dont
rely on reader feedback (good or bad). Of course, I use it on clear-cut cases of bugs that need to be
fixed or features that need to be reworked in a product. Hard data for quantifiable metrics or
benchmarking against writers who you feel better you along a specific dimension work well. But the
general waves of love-or-hate comments you get as a writer are a terrible proxy for the actual
quality of your work.
This last step though, of going through your past work and dismantling all the conviction you built up
along the way, isnt a fun step. It aches to look through the thousands of hours that could be
dismissed with a simple objection. Or that a possibly wrong idea has been etched into the thesis of a
book.
If your only desire is to feel good about yourself, then, by all means, skip this step. Its not nearly as
fun as being your own biggest supporter. But if your work matters to you on a deeper level than just
its emotional or material rewards, I dont think its one you can afford to ignore.

Twenty Ways to Stay Productive When
Working at Home

Work At Home
How do you stay productive when you are working at home by yourself? Although many people
working from home enjoy the freedom and convenience, it is much easier to be lazy outside of a
work environment. The flexibility of working at home gives you the potential to be far more
productive, but it can be a huge waste of time if you arent smart about it.
With running this blog and various other projects I usually end up working at least 20-30 hours per
week at home. That means answering hundreds of weekly e-mails, writing at least 3000 words per
day, in addition to networking, research and various support tasks. Less than some, but enough to
keep me busy in addition to work and school.
Here are some strategies Ive found effective for ensuring productivity when working at home. These
apply whether you are working a paid job, freelancing, running a home business or you simply want
to make headway on a personal project.
Build a Work Ethic Workplaces enforce discipline. Without a system of rules and supervisors
breathing down your neck, you might find it hard to stick to your schedule. Make a mental note of
your productivity and work ethic and set goals to improve it. If you only got 4 hours worth of work
done yesterday, aim for 4.5 today.
Dont Overestimate Your Productivity This is one of the lies people commit when they start
working at home. You have eight hours to work, so you assume you will get eight hours of work
done. Becoming really productive is possible, but it requires building a work-ethic. Start small and
build up.
Dont Count the Low-Value Tasks Determine what is most important and count that first. Ive
heard from home entrepreneurs that they work 10-12 hour days. But then I manage to see them
making forum posts and lengthy e-mails. It makes you wonder what they consider work. Only count
time from your extremely important and difficult tasks. Spending one hour writing a blog article or
finishing several pages of my book is worth a dozen hours of answering e-mails.
Cut Out Distractions Put yourself in a vacuum. Shut down every distraction possible. I always keep
my door shut and locked if possible and I dont use the internet unless I need to research a quote or
image. Twitter, chat, e-mail and RSS are also definite nos. I can understand the appeal, but you can
get work done twice as fast without multitasking which will save you a few minutes to use those
programs later.
Start Early Waking up early and start working right in the morning is a good idea. This doesnt give
you a chance to procrastinate. Plus it feels great to know youve finished eight hours of work at 2:00
or 3:00.
Know Thy Energy Know when you are feeling drained and tired. My rule is simple. When I notice
that my energy is slumped and Im barely keeping my lids open I go for another ten minutes
(sometimes lethargy is just a creativity block). If that doesnt fix it, I take a short 5-10 minute break.
Finally if that doesnt work a longer breather might be necessary.
Learn to Say No When you are working at home and have flexibility, this is the perfect opportunity
for friends, family and associates to rip time away from you. Sometimes they will guilt you into doing
things because, they [unlike you] HAVE to work. Be firm and dont give them an inch. Dont let
people disrespect your time and learn to say, No, without an explanation.
Set Daily Goals I dont schedule tasks that dont need to be. But I do write down exactly what I
want to have accomplished by the end of the day tomorrow. Setting daily goals keeps you from
feeling you need to do everything by splitting your workload into a manageable chunk.
Use Parkinsons Law Parkinsons Law basically states that a task will expand to the time you give it.
Crunch your workload by giving yourself only a few minutes to finish tasks where completion is more
important than perfection.
Learn to Churn What happens when you get writers/programmers/designers block? Learn to churn
out content. This means that once you run out of ideas, you tell yourself that your goal is volume not
quality. Tell yourself that you will redo it later if it is too horrible. The truth is, usually the quality is
decent and you get back to normal after a few minutes of churning.
Create a Professional Space Your environment should make you feel like working. If it doesnt, its
time to redecorate. It doesnt need to be fancy, but if working at home only makes you feel like
playing computer games, you need a change of scenery.
Set Work Hours Dont confuse work with life. Set your working hours to maximize your
productivity when working and to keep work where it belongs. I have frequently set vague limits on
my work time which only served to make me an unproductive workaholic.
Whats Your MIT? Always know what your Most Important Task is. Leo at ZenHabits recommends
putting your MIT first so you wont procrastinate. Even if the rest of the day is unproductive, your
day was still valuable if you get that task done.
Have a Social Life Working from home often eliminates a lot of your social life. Join groups and
activities like Toastmasters to meet people more easily and reclaim a social network that may have
been entirely located in the office. Without people, your energy is shot. Ive managed to work
through some bouts of isolation, but I dont consider it the ideal.
Vary Your Tasks If you went to the gym, could you just do pushups for an hour straight? Probably
not. So if you are a writer or programmer, is your ideal method to write or code for ten hours
straight? I like to split up different tasks throughout the day so I can use different mental muscles.
This keeps me fresh and productive without the need for long breaks.
Boredom before Quitting When I dont like any of the ideas Ive saved up in my notepad to write
about I frequently go through a period of doing nothing for five or ten minutes until I get a new idea.
If this happens to you, resist the temptation to go online or do something else. Even if you could
postpone your work hours, stick it through another ten or fifteen minutes.
Get Outside Perspectives When you are isolated, you can often get stuck in one perspective that
makes it hard to solve problems. Build up a network (particularly online) of people you can contact
when you hit a road-block. I know several people that I can bounce ideas off when my own solutions
come short.
Give Yourself Overtime If you are really involved in a project, working an extra hour to finish a
section before wrapping up for the day is fine. Compensate yourself the next day with a reduced
workload so you dont start letting your workday expand to fill all your waking moments.
The Extra 15 When you get stuck or feel a strong urge to quit, just commit to do an extra fifteen
minutes of work. Usually this is enough to carry you out of the slump and move forward. If it isnt
then you probably need a break.
Utilize Your Flexibility Take advantage of your extra flexibility. This can mean making adjustments
in your work schedule to take on new opportunities or fitting work around your life. When good
opportunities come up, take them and commit to compensate later. This requires a bit more
discipline, but it is one of the best advantages of working from home.

Ruthless Focus and the Art of Saying No

Goal-setting isnt about adding more work. Its about ruthlessly saying no to everything else.
Productivity isnt defined by how much work you do, but the amount of work you ignore.
Im a big fan of the 30-Day Trial system for changing habits. Ive used it to rewire my health, work
and lifestyle. One of the most important factors for success with the system, Ive found, is only
conducting one trial at a time.
The system works by picking one habit, youll focus on exclusively for thirty days. After that, it
becomes part of your life and is easier to continue. But, Id argue the real power of the system
comes from deciding which change to focus on, and ruthlessly ignoring the rest.
Your Most Productive Day
I accomplished more work in the last month towards this website, than I did in the eight months
prior to it. Despite this, I felt considerably less stressed than I did during the first eight months. The
reason was simple: I was able to focus. Instead of managing large academic projects, courses and
extra-curricular activities, I only had to focus on this business.
The lesson is obvious: if you want to get something done, ignore everything else. But, I think its
worth restating because many of us (including myself) fall into the trap of saying yes to everything
and focusing on nothing at all.
The Have-To List is Pretty Short
Few people have the luxury of being able to focus on their goals full-time. If you have a job, family or
other set responsibilities, you may not be able to focus ruthlessly on one pursuit. But mixed in with
the list of genuine necessities are a lot of things that could be safely ignored.
What would happen if you said no to any of these things?
Twitter
Television
Volunteering
Clubs, Memberships or Associations
Parties
Magazines
Email
Blogs
Other Projects
Im not saying you should eliminate these entirely. Or even reduce your usage. Just realize that there
are probably a number of things you automatically say yes to out of guilt or habit. Things that could
be ignored once, twice or indefinitely without major consequences.
Paying Yourself First
One of my favorite personal finance tips is to pay yourself first. The idea is that you should take any
savings money immediately from your earnings and put it into a separate bank account. Because, if
you wait until the end of the month to save whats left, youve probably spent it all.
I think this idea applies equally to your goals. Pay yourself first because, if you pay other people first,
then you wont have enough time left for whats truly important to you.
There are going to be a few things that must come first. If your goal is to start a microbusiness, but
you still work a full-time job, not getting fired is your first priority (at least until your microbusiness
can support you). Same with important family concerns.
However, between the list of absolute necessities and your goals are a lot of shoulds. I dont suggest
that you stop taking out the garbage, eliminate television and stop seeing your friends. But just that
you should do these shoulds only after youve paid yourself.
Avoid Being Overcommitted
The easiest way to maintain a ruthless focus is to say no to major commitments other people ask of
you that arent in line with your goals. I had to do this recently when I was asked to be in the
leadership committee for my Toastmasters club. I had been in a leadership role previously, and
without my help, the club would not be able to continue. Saying no was difficult, but necessary.
But, many times this isnt the case. Youve overcommitted yourself and only realize afterwards that
you dont have enough time to pay yourself. Ive done this in the past, and I dont believe in backing
out of a commitment.
If the commitment is unimportant to the other people involved, resign from it. Let them know that
youre sorry, but you didnt envision it would be this much work. If your commitment is more than 9-
12 months, Id make a similar apology and resignation. It may not be great for your reputation, but
donating that much time to a goal that isnt your own only hinders their efforts to find someone who
can really perform.
For shorter commitments, I try to see them through. I was involved in a large group project that
made it difficult to pay myself first. But, because my role was crucial to the other members, and the
commitment was only a few more months, I saw it to the end.
However, even if you are overcommitted, you can still take steps forward. I made sure I didnt
commit to anything new being asked of me. This way, when my old commitments expired, I would
be able to focus ruthlessly on my goals once more.
Saying No is an Unselfish Act
If you dont put your goals first, nobody else will. This may sound selfish, but it isnt. If your goals are
aligned with helping yourself and helping other people, the most altruistic thing you can do is to put
your goals first. If youre rich, healthy or organized, youll be in a much better position to help
people.

The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More
By Doing Less

Between the years 1912 to 1915, Albert Einstein was a focused man. His previous work on the
special theory of relativity and the quantization of light, among other topics, was starting to gain
notice. Einstein left the Swiss patent office, and, after hopping from professorships in Germany and
Prauge, ended up, in 1912, at Switzerlands ETH Institute.

Once there, he met mathematician Marcel Grossman and became convinced that if he applied the
new non-euclidean math studied by Grossman to his own work on relativity, he could generalize the
theory to account for gravity. This advance would be huge. Nothing short of overturning the single
most famous law in the history of science.

Einstein set to work.

Between 1912 to 1915, he became increasingly obsessed in his push to formalize general relativity.
As revealed by several sources, including his recently released letters, he worked so hard that his
marriage became strained and his hair turned white from the stress

But he got it done. In 1915 he published his full theory. It stands as one of the greatest scientific
accomplishments if not the single greatest of the 20th century.

The Einstein Principle

Einsteins push for general relativity highlights an important reality about accomplishment. We are
most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects on which we can devote a large
amount of attention. Achievements worth achieving require hard work. There is no shortcut here. Be
it starting up a new college club or starting a new business, eventually, effort, sustained over a long
amount of time, is required.

In a perfect world, we would all be Einsteins. We would each have only one, or at most two, projects
in the three major spheres of our lives: professional, extracurricular, and personal. And we would be
allowed to focus on this specialized set, in exclusion, as we push the projects to impressive
conclusions.

But this doesnt happen

In Search of Your Own Theory of Relativity

Our problem is that we dont know in advance which project might turn out to be our theory of
relativity and which are duds. Because of this, most ambitious people I know, myself included, follow
a different strategy. We sow lots of project seeds. We e-mail a lot of people, join a lot of clubs,
commit to a lot of minor projects, set up lots of meetings, constantly send out feelers to friends and
connections regarding our latest brainstorm. We dont know which seed will ultimately take root
and grow, so, by planting many, we expose ourselves to enough randomness, over time, to maximize
our chance of a big deal, interesting, life-changing success eventually happening.

These numerous seeds, however, have a tendency to transform into weeds. While some of them
clearly grow into pursuits worth continuing, and others die off quickly, many, instead, exist in a
shadowy in-between state where they demand our time but offer little promise of reward in the
end.

These weed projects violate the Einstein principle.

We can no longer focus on a small number of important project, but find ourselves, instead, rushing
between an increasingly overwhelming slate full of a variety of obligations. This time fracture can
prevent real accomplishment. Imagine if Einstein maintained a blog, wrote a book, joined a bunch of
clubs at ETH, and tried to master rowing at the same time he was working on General Relativity?
Wed still be living in the age of Newton.

The Productivity Purge

Most of us will never fully satisfy the Einstein Principle. Its too risky. If you invest fully in one thing,
and then it fails, youre left empty. More importantly, it can be boring. Life requires zigs and zags.

There is, however, a simple strategy for coming as close as possible to satisfying the principle
without giving up a quest for the unexpected next big thing. Its called the productivity purge. And it
works as follows:

When it feels like your schedule is becoming too overwhelmed, take out a sheet of paper and label it
with three columns: professional, extracurricular, and personal. Under professional list all the
major projects you are currently working on in your professional life (if youre a student, then this
means classes and research, if you have a job, then this means your job, etc). Under
extracurricular do the same for your side projects (your band, your blog, your plan to write a
book). And under personal do the same for personal self-improvement projects (from fitness to
reading more books).
Under each list try to select one or two projects which, at this point in your life, are the most
important and seem like they would yield the greatest returns. Put a star by these projects.
Next, identify the projects that you could stop working on right away with no serious consequences.
Cross these out.
Finally, for the projects that are left unmarked, come up with a 1-3 week plan for finalizing and
dispatching them. Many of these will be projects for which you owe someone something before you
can stop working on them. Come up with a crunch plan for the near future for shutting these down
as quickly as possible.
Once you completed your crunch plan youll be left with only a small number of important projects.
In essence, you have purged your schedule of all but a few contenders to be your next Theory of
Relativity. Heres the important part: Try to go at least one month without starting any new projects.
Resist, at all costs, committing to anything during this month. Instead, just focus, with an Einsteinian
intensity, on your select list.
The productivity purge is a necessary piece of project gardening. By doing these regularly, you keep
yourself focused on whats important. You get at least one month after every purge in which serious
work gets done on a small number of projects. Its during these focused months, when the Einstein
Principle comes into play, that youll end up making the progress on those activities that might end
up becoming life changing.

Case Study: My Most Recent Purge

As I write this, Im in the second week of a two week purge. After a busy summer of traveling and
wildly sowing project seeds, Ive been looking forward, for a long time, for a focused month
spanning mid-October to Thanksgiving during which the Einstein Principle can be in full effect.

Heres how the purge is taking shape:

In my professional life Im clearing some lingering research projects off my plate. This includes,
among other things, finishing some revision on papers under submission and finalizing some proofs
for some close to being finished new work. My crunch plan has me pushing to finish this lingerers
with a rabid intensity.

My focus, for this upcoming period, is on two research projects that I think hold great promise. I look
forward to spending 90% of my academic time wracking my brain on these pursuits, which, I think,
will shape the direction of my first year or two after graduation. Bring it on!

In my extracurricular life, Im finishing up the final articles in a long series of those I owe various
editors through various pitches conducted over the summer. With this slate cleared, I can spend my
focus period on exactly two things. The first: producing quality, user-tested content for this blog. The
second: finally completing the preliminary research for my second book idea. I need to either
officially abandon it, or get my agents blessing and start work on the proposal.

In my personal life, Im turning my focus back to some lifestyle improvement issues that have fallen
fallow recently (its time to throw out clothing I bought before college). I am also planning to push
into overdrive the variety of interesting things I do each week. I have a long list of other projects I
would love to tackle, but they can wait.

In Conclusion

If the Einstein Principle holds, come Thanksgiving, I should have: a fully developed new book idea, a
much expanded readership of this blog, interesting new academic research results, and a mind
overstuffed with new experiences and ideas. Im looking forward to it!

How would your life change if you were to plan a productivity purge today?

The Art of the Finish: How to Go From
Busy to Accomplished

Focus
Today I have a treat for you. Cal Newport from Study Hacks is going to share some of his insights on
productivity. Cal is also the author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win at
College. He is currently studying for a PhD at MIT.
Last August, I published an essay on my blog, Study Hacks, that was titled: Productivity is Overrated.
The basic idea: productivity systems, like Getting Things Done, reduce stress and help you keep track
of your obligations, they do not, however, make you accomplished. In fact, I would go so far as to say
that the act of becoming accomplished is almost entirely unrelated to being productive.
Productivity is Overrated
That is, the two dont need to go together. Indeed, as an author, Ive spent the past five years
researching and interviewing unusually accomplished young people, and I would estimate that the
majority of them are terribly disorganized. The minority that did have good productivity habits were
certainly less stressed. But it played little role in predicting their ultimate success.
What Accomplished People Do Differently
From my experience, the most common trait you will consistently observe in accomplished people is
an obsession with completion. Once a project falls into their horizon, they crave, almost
compulsively, to finish it. If theyre organized, this might happen in scheduled chunks. If theyre not
like many this might happen in all-nighters. But they get it done. Fast and consistently.
Its this constant stream of finishing that begins, over time, to unlock more and more interesting
opportunities and eventually leads to their big scores.
If you are productive without harboring this intense desire for completion, you will end up just being
busy. We all know the feeling. You work all day off of your to-do list. Everything is organized.
Everything is scheduled. Yet, still, months pass with no important projects getting accomplished.
In this post, I want to present a simple system, based on my observation of the highly accomplished,
that will help you cultivate your own completion obsession.
Introducing Completion-Centric Planning
With traditional GTD-style methodology, during each day, you look at your current context and at
your next action lists and choose what to do next. Its easy, in this case, to fall into a infinite task
loop where you are consistently accomplishing little actions from your next action lists but making
little progress toward completing the big projects. This is what I call the ZenosParadox of
Productivity. Give me any project, and I can fill days with easy, fun little tasks on the project without
ever finishing it.
Heres the reality: Real accomplishments require really hard pushes. GTD style, one independent
task at a time productivity systems make it easy to avoid these pushes by instead doing a lot of little
easy things.
Completion-centric planning rectifies this problem. It refocuses you on completion of projects not
tasks as the central organizing principle for each day. It works as follows:
Setup: Construct a Project Page
Using a single-paged document in your favorite word processor, do the following:
Make an Active Projects List
List 6 12 of the most important projects in your life. Pull from all three relevant spheres:
professional (e.g., school or work related); personal (e.g., home, family, fitness); and extra (e.g., big
projects like blogging, writing a book, starting a club).
Label Each Project With A Completion Criteria
To quote David Allen, to finish a project you must know what done looks like. Next to each project
type a concise description of what action must be completed for the project to be completed. (When
you do this, youll notice how easy it was for you before to think about projects in a much more
ambiguous, impossible to complete style).
Label the Bottom Half of the Page as a Holding Pen
This is where you can jot down new projects that enter your life while youre working on the active
projects. They can be stored here until you complete the current batch.
Example: My Current Project Page
Below is my current project page, just started, on October 12th. Excuse the wrinkles, I keep it in my
pocket all day:
Sample Project Page
Using the System: The Daily Check-In
Each morning, look at your project page and ask: Whats the most progress I can make toward
completing this list today? Your biggest goal should be to complete projects. If you see a way to do
it (even if it requires a big push, perhaps working late) go for it. If you cant finish one, think of the
single thing you could do that would get you closest to this goal over the next few days. Harbor an
obsession for killing this list!
At the same time, of course, you should still reference your existing productivity system. Outside of
your projects you probably have other, more mundane tasks that need to get done. Your goal here is
to make as much progress on your projects as possible despite the other responsibilities you have
each day.
Finishing: Rest and Reload
Dont start new projects until youve finished the projects on your current project page. If you
dynamically repopulate this list your are liable to let the least fun projects lie fallow indefinitely. If
you come up with new project ideas before you complete the current active projects, simply jot
them down in your holding pen.
Work as hard as possible to finish your projects as fast as possible. Once done, take a break. For at
least a week. Try to do a minimum of work during this time. Recharge. Then, once youre ready,
build a new project page and start over again.
Why This Works
The work flow rhythm required by completion-centric planning is as close as I can get to describing
how really accomplished people tend to tackle their work. This approach doesnt have the same
effortless, autopilot appeal of a pure, GTD style work flow. But, unfortunately, accomplishment is
not pretty. If you want to make your mark, you have to learn how to charge after things with a
furious zeal. This system will help you develop that trait. The rest will follow.

How to Finish Your Work, One Bite at a
Time

Elephant.png
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
If youve ever ran more than a few miles, you probably understand why you need to pace yourself.
Runners that sprint at the start of a race will be exhausted far before they cross the finish line. The
same principle applies when trying to get work done. One solution for pacing my work that Ive
found incredibly effective is maintaining weekly/daily to-do lists.
Weekly/Daily To-Do Lists
The principle behind the WD To-Do List method is simple:
At the end of the week, write a list containing everything you want to get accomplished.
At the end of the day, write a list containing what parts of that weekly list you want to be finished
tomorrow.
After you finish your daily list, you stop. Dont work on more projects or tasks. You have the rest of
the day to relax. And after you finish the weekly list, youre done for the week. This means if you
finish by Friday afternoon, you dont start work again until Monday morning.
Although this technique might sound obvious (and it is), there are some key advantages using a WD
system has over the typical, Getting Things Done approach of keeping Next Action or project lists.
Why the Weekly/Daily To-Do List System Rocks:
After using this method for several months, Ive found it beats the other systems in a few key places:
1) A WD system manages your energy.
The problem isnt running out of time, its running out of energy. You may have 24 hours in the day,
but many of those are taken away eating, sleeping and relaxing after a few hours of exhausting
work. Any productivity system that doesnt take this into account is broken.
A Weekly/Daily system, instead, blocks out your work into manageable chunks. Instead of trying to
complete everything each day, I just complete my daily list. The same is true for the entire week.
With a WD system you get a maximum amount of work done, while leaving yourself time to relax
and enjoy selective unproductivity.
2) A WD system stops procrastination
Procrastination can happen when you see the mountain of work in front of you, and cant visualize
an easy finish. By splitting up your to-do list into daily lists, your elephant-sized projects can become
bite-sized tasks.
3) A WD system makes you proactive
My system for a few years prior to implementing this method was to use a daily to-do list.
Unfortunately, I found that this method made me lose sight of bigger tasks that werent urgent.
When you already have ten items on your to-do list, adding an eleventh for the day doesnt seem
appealing.
But when youre writing the weekly list, youre in a different frame of mind. With six days to finish
everything (assuming you take a day off), it is easier to put in those important, but non-urgent tasks.
4) A WD system keeps you from burning out
Earlier I wrote about how I accidentally overloaded my schedule last week. Using the Weekly/Daily
system kept me from burning out or feeling stressed, even though I was dealing with 2-3x the
workload. By automatically dividing up my work into a weekly total and daily increments, I could
focus on the next bite, instead of the entire elephant.
How to Use a Weekly/Daily To-Do List
The heading for this section might seem pretty self-explanatory. Write out your weekly list and your
daily lists, finish them, repeat. But after using this approach for a few months, there are a few
nuances you might want to consider.
Focus on the Daily List
The point of the weekly list is to serve as the starting point for writing daily lists. After youve broken
off the chunk you want to handle tomorrow, the other tasks in the week shouldnt be on your mind.
You can pretend they dont exist, as if the only tasks in the world were the ones tomorrow.
This approach is an incredible stress-reliever. Its easy to worry about how youre going to finish
everything. But when everything becomes seven or eight tasks tomorrow, it becomes easier to
manage.
Dont Expand the Lists
If you finish your daily or weekly list earlier than you expected, you might be tempted to expand.
Why not add a few extra activities, you have the time, right?
This is a bad idea because it stops you from focusing on the daily list. As soon as you create the
possibility for expansion, your everything goes from being the tasks to finish tomorrow, back to
your infinite to-do list. Stress and procrastination soon follow.
Obviously, there will be times when you have to make adjustments. Last-minute tasks that need to
be appended to your lists. But try to avoid expanding your lists just because you have free time.
Take on a Monthly Review
One area the WD system ignores is a monthly list. There are some projects and activities that may be
too large/non-urgent that they might be skipped under the weekly list. Unfortunately, maintaining a
monthly list is more effort than it is worth. Its hard to predict all the small tasks youll need to
accomplish a month ahead of time, so it stops becoming relevant to your weekly lists.
Instead I like to do a regular monthly review. In that review, Ill pick out a few larger projects I want
to finish that month. I can keep these in mind when I write my weekly lists.
A Weekly/Daily To-Do List isnt complicated. Life doesnt have to be complicated to work. Try using a
WD system for a month. You can setup your lists with pencil and paper or go with my favorite tool,
Ta-Da List. What do you have to lose?


If You Want to Be Fit, Dont Buy New
Running Shoes

If you want to get in shape, dont buy running shoes. Instead, go out and run. There is genuine work
and all the activities that feel, smell and taste like work but accomplish nothing. Worse than
accomplishing nothing, these feel-good tasks reduce your motivation to do something useful.
Contrary to a lot of self-help wisdom, a study proclaims that telling people about your goals makes
you less likely to accomplish them. The reason? Telling people about your goals feels productive.
That feeling of productivity reduces the motivation to do something genuinely productive.
Feel-Good Tasks and the Real Thing
Ramit has a similar idea with personal finance he calls the difference between being sexy and being
rich. Being sexy is watching your portfolio every day, looking for the best stocks and flopping
between six bank accounts to earn an extra three dollars. Being rich is putting your money in an
index fund and then waiting 30 or 50 years.
The difference here is the same as before. Eyeballing your portfolio feels like a mental checkmark in
the personal finance column. If you give yourself enough checkmarks, then you feel satisfied with
your efforteven if nothing was done.
If you want to be fit/productive/rich/in a happy relationship, the best way to start is by avoiding all
feel-good tasks. If a task:
isnt necessary to get started, OR
doesnt directly contribute to your success
dont waste your time on it. You can worry about getting the fancier running shoes after youve
been running every day for a month.
Instead of Counting Omega-3s, Start By Not Eating So Much
Always do the big things first. Because if you start with the little things, you might never get around
to what actually matters.
I hate listening to someone with horrible eating habits making purchasing decisions on whether a
food item is low-carb, Omega-3 rich or contains pomegranate juice. The problem isnt whether the
cream cheese you ate with your bagel had Omega-3s, but that you ate four of them.
When you get caught up in minutia, the really important stuff gets left undone. Often simply
because in buying the low-carb salad dressing, you give yourself a mental checkmark in the healthy
eating column and proceed to violate the truly important issues.
Identify Your Feel-Good Tasks
The problem with feel-good tasks is that they often appear productive. Its only when you really
examine them that you realize they arent either necessary or directly helpful to your goal.
When I first moved to Winnipeg, I had to completely build a new social circle. After reading a few
interesting and helpful articles for improving my social life, I subscribed to a couple blogs and read
many articles on the topic. At the time, I felt all the knowledge intake would help me build the kinds
of friendships and relationships I wanted.
After a few months I realized that all of the reading was simply a feel-good task. Not only was some
of the advice bad, but it held me back from going outside my room and meeting real people. So, at
the time, I canceled almost all my subscriptions and stopped reading articles on the topic.
I wont say universally that articles are always a feel-good task (otherwise why would I bother
updating this site?). It really just depends on your personality, and whether youre using reading as
an excuse instead of an enabler.
If youre serious about any goal, I would create a list of all the activities you do that you associate
with that goal. Then go through each item on that list and ask if it is either necessary or directly
helpful. If it isnt, either leave it altogether, or make sure that you only do it after accomplishing the
truly necessary and useful work.
Shut Up or Put Up
If you follow the advice of the study I mentioned previously, then telling other people your goals is a
bad idea. Instead of telling your friends about your plans to travel the world, start saving quietly for
a plane ticket. Instead of telling your friends about how you want to lose weight/get in a
relationship/have a better job, start doing some actual work towards it.
I dont believe talking about your goals is bad, only when its done before actually doing the work.
Feel-good tasks arent harmful if you do them after working hard on all the real work. When I started
writing this blog, I read tons of resources on how to make a successful online business. But it didnt
matter because I was actually writing nearly every day.
Leave the running shoes in the store, at least until youve put some miles in on your own.

How to Set Goals Without Craving
Anything

Note to new readers, this article is a continuation of last weeks How to Not Want Things and Still
Be Happy and How to Be an Effortless Achiever. In those articles I showed how craving things
causes pain and the alternative is to focus on the entire process, not just the goal.
Goal-setting seems alien in a process focus. Every book Ive read about goal-setting makes a point of
eliciting your desires and focusing on that goal to the point of obsession. Since a process focus is, by
definition, giving up your craving for results and viewing the process, doesnt this mean you should
give up setting goals?
Absolutely not. Goal-setting is still important in a process focus, although the reasons for using it
change. Instead of setting goals so that you can have something better in the future, you set goals to
give the process structure.

Structure is Critical for Process
The best metaphor I can use to describe the difference between a craving and process focus is to
think of a game. The person who craves an end result desires to win at all costs, even if they hate
playing. The person who focuses on process sees winning as an aspect that contributes to having
fun.
Virtually all games have clear goals and structures. The few examples people could cite of games
without goals or structure I wouldnt call games. The Sims and other games without structure tend
to just be environments where people create there own rules and goals. Life could be seen as an
environment where you need to make your own structure.
Having objectives and constraints in a game provides an opportunity for challenge, creativity or
learning. Having goals in life provides a structure for an interesting process.

How to Set Goals for Process
Setting goals for process is a little trickier than setting goals from craving. The reason is because they
work backwards. Craving assumes a goal and designs whatever process necessary to achieve it.
Process assumes an interesting path and designs a goal to give it structure.
At first setting goals shouldnt be difficult. I dont expect anyone has the power to immediately turn
off their cravings after reading just a few posts. So youll probably end up picking goals that you
desire as you try to transition to focusing on the process.
If you continue with the philosophy of process, however, you reach a point where this simply wont
work. Believing that craving creates pain will make picking a goal based on desires difficult.
Alternatively, I believe there are two criteria you can use to set goals:
Goals that have an interesting process. (i.e. your passionate about working on them)
Processes that will lead to more interesting processes. (e.g. you may find setting up a business
boring, but running it could be interesting)
With the second method there is a limit to how far you can predict into the future, but it can be used
as a basis for narrowing down which goals to pursue. Those that create the potential for more
interesting processes.

Adding Constraints to Goals
In a craving mindset, you pick the easiest possible route to your goal. From a process viewpoint, that
is boring. Instead you want to pick one that meets your level of challenge.
When I tell people my interests are in entrepreneurship, I often get a warning about how difficult it
is. My cousin/friend/brother-in-law owns a business, and it is a lot of work. From a craving
standpoint, this seems like a reasonable comment. If entrepreneurship is really that risky and
difficult, why not just pursue a shorter path to satisfy your cravings?
But from a process standpoint that statement doesnt make any sense to me. The only thing I crave
is the challenge. If entrepreneurship were easy, why would I want to do it? The difficulty makes it an
interesting pursuit.
The best constraints are external ones, since they are easier to enforce. Start by selecting goals that
naturally create a challenging terrain. Dont start climbing mountains before youve learned to walk,
but once you have, dont waste your time running over hills.

Finding Goals that Match You
Select goals that match your personality and challenge level. When I see infomercials for strategies
to get rich quick, I laugh. Aside from the lack of integrity, the idea of getting rich quick seems like
such a shallow goal to me. If it is both easy and made for everyone, why on earth would you bother
doing it?
Instead pick goals that are both challenging and tailored to who you are. Dont borrow societys to-
do list.