I have spoken about college study spaces vs social spaces at length throughout this blog and with my online tutoring program. I think finding a solid study space is probably the best thing any student can do to focus their study methodology and get ahead of the daily workload college demands. With that in mind here is a quick review of the fundamentals of college study spaces.

Location, location, location

The same thing they say about real-estate is true in college study spaces, location is EVERYTHING! I’ve had a few great study spaces throughout my undergrad and graduate degrees which have served me very well, all those places had excellent location in common. Here are the fundamental things I look for:

• Ideally you should be more than 10 minutes away from a social space. This is important because you don’t want to tempt yourself with a visit to a friends place or a beer that’s only 5 minutes away.
• Internet should be restricted or unavailable. I worked in a Teaching Assistant office which had thick cement walls which made wifi impossible. This was a blessing in disguise as it required me to walk out of my office and get files/do research out in the hallway. I would focus my time on the work I needed to do with the wifi in the hall then I would go back to my office work. No facebook or instant messenger bugging me. I currently work in coffee shops which are also great as my shop restricts me to 2 hours of wifi. I get on, do what I need to do and get off.
• Make sure there aren’t any distractions at your particular study space. I like music and the white noise of random chatting which is why I like coffee shops. If you require absolute silence, go check out a library, wherever you go just make sure your location isn’t overly distracting.  Only you can really make the call as to whether a space is overly distracting, but if you can’t concentrate or are interrupted every 10 minutes, I’d choose another spot.

Have a predefined goal in mind when you go to your study space

When I go to my study space I’m there to work, so that means no distractions like facebook, phone calls or instant messages. However, this is easier said than done. Without a predefined goal in mind the demon of procrastination will inevitable raise its ugly head as you won’t have a predefined set of goals. I’m a big time proponent of goals as many of my readers already know. Without a goal in mind you have nothing to work towards. I also suggest small goals, always aim for less than you’re truly capable of. So as an example instead of telling yourself you’re going to write 20 pages for your upcoming history paper instead make a specific smaller goal of writing 3 rough pages this hour and then after that define a new goal. This way you always stay motivated and always feel like you’ve accomplished what you’ve set out to do.

Make a STRICT division between your study spaces and social spaces

I’ve already touched on this above but it’s so important that I’m going to reiterate it here. It’s crucially important that you divide your study spaces and social spaces. This is important because if you infect your study space with socialization you’ll become socialized to that behaviour. As an example, the same concept can be applied to exercise; you wouldn’t eat a chocolate bar on a treadmill would you?

Here are some stereotypical distractions that can infect your social space and specific strategies to avoid them:

• People approaching you in your study space: This happens to me constantly in my social space (it just happened about 5 minutes ago). One way to nip this in the bud is with ear buds. You can pretend not to hear strangers and with friends you can pull out one bud, quickly return a response and replace your ear bud. After a couple interruptions friends get the message that you’re there to study.
• People having loud conversations beside you: This happens a lot in coffee shops but can be found anywhere (I once watched a screaming match between a couple in a library for 15 minutes, entertaining but not productive). Easiest way to stop this from happening is to turn on some music and tune them out. Noise cancelling earphones are another good option which I know a few of my students use.
• An important call/email/instant message that is coming in soon: This is a personal demon of mine, if I have a specific person I want to hear back from I sometimes fall into the habit of constantly checking my phone/email until it finally arrives. One way I’ve cut down on this is by employing a bit of a mental mind shift through the realization that checking will not make it arrive any faster. Trust me, no matter how many times you check your messages you’ll never be able to make that email or phone call arrive faster. So just sit back, relax and focus on the task at hand.

What will creating a study space do for your college career?

Very simply, everything… Creating a space in which you focus on a specific goal without the distractions of everyday life will completely revolutionize your study methodology. I suggest you try out a study space for 2 weeks as an experiment and see what it can do for you. I force each of my vtamethod students to do this and most see amazing results.



So my buddy Stefan (see previous post on paper editing) has put his new book out. For a guy who learned english from friends episodes, I’m amazed that he can keep an English blog running. He’s got a new book out and guess what, he wants you to have a free copy. Here is a small snippet of some of the things you’ll learn.

How multitasking can actually be a good thing

This title is probably against everything you’ve read the last couple of years. Multitasking can’t be good, focus is the way you should work. Focussing on one thing at the time is the mantra on a lot of blogs, myself included, hackcollege included and all the other big blogs also. But I believe you probably could implement multitasking, in a good way.

Why even bother, my system works

It does. I’m convinced your system for focus works. But does it feel right? Do you feel right about shutting everything off, about getting at a place where nobody else is, about leaving your friends, just for the sake of focus? I don’t think so. And during your focus session, are you thinking about twitter, about texting someone about watching youtube? The point I try to make is that this form of productivity doesn’t bring you any comfort, it only exhausts you. You will feel tired, and after a big focus session, you can’t do anything but the things (i.e. twitter, facebook and texting) you tried to avoid during your focus session.

How should multitasking work?

You need to divide your tasks into projects. For me, there is ’studying’, ‘blogging’ and ‘fun’. Now get all your tasks and put them into different projects. Twitter would be in the ‘blogging’ project, instant messenger in ‘fun’ and reading in ’studying’.
Now, do multiple tasks at the same time. For instant: When you are writing an article for your blog, keep your twitter on, ask your followers questions, ask for quotes, things like that. Listen to music, make blogging a fun thing to do. When you are studying, read, but also talk to friends about the stuff you have to study. Don’t exclude yourself, just because you want to do one task at the time, try to be among friends. Study at the bar and have fun while you are studying.

Your tasks will be fun again

Try it out. You will have the idea that the tasks you have to do aren’t that big because of the hard focus you need, but you can do it with more fun. Studying with instant messenger on to answer questions (and ask them) from friends, blogging with music, twitter and RSS feeds. Maybe you won’t like it. Maybe you will. There is only one way you can find out!

Multitasking isn’t always a dirty word, you just need to experiment with it.

Stefan Knapen is a medical student in the Netherlands and blogs at StudySuccessful.com about how to study. He just wrote a free ebook on motivation called Nine ways to get motivated for college, you can download it now for free!

I’ve been keeping a big secret from everyone over the last few months and now I’m finally ready to unveil what I’ve been working on all this time. I’ve been studying how premed students succeed (and fail) by talking to thousands of students, premed students, teachers, admission officers, medical students, doctors and education experts to put together a system that is going to completely change the way you see premed. The product is in my opinion amazing and we will be announcing the price really soon. In the meantime you can check out the product and get a free premed course component here.

I’ve been working on this project for 6 months and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed as we’re going to have a ton of free tips, tricks and content, even if you don’t want a copy of the paid program you can still try out the intro program absolutely free.  As an example, here is a free snippet of what you’ll get for free when you check out the free program.

The top three ways premeds sabotage themselves

I’ve been a tutor, teaching assistant and lecturer for a combined 5 years and I’ve learned quite a lot about how students succeed and fail. I’ve been throwing together a great program and talking to a ton of premed students. I’ve come to three big realizations when it comes to self sabotage in premed so here they are.

Premed’s working alone.

One thing I’ve found with premeds which is almost completely unique to their degree is the degree of competition between students. I’ve heard stories of students hiding library readings from other students, students refusing to help out a friend if they’re having trouble and even students purposefully being fed bad information so they fail! This has produced an environment of mistrust which I’ve only seen in law school. It’s a real shame as I feel like when I help others, I also help myself.

I came to the conclusion that premed students didn’t necessarily want to treat their friends horrible but were compelled because that’s how everyone else was doing it and they couldn’t trust anyone. To solve this problem I decided to produce a great community within the new premed program where you’d be able to get direct help from not just high end graduate student tutors and medical students but actual students who are taking the classes you are taking right now! You never have to feel nervous or unsure about sharing information because you’re not competing against these students and you’ll now no longer be alone.

Premed’s studying too much

Premed’s study WAAAAY too much. This is again a real shame as they should be enjoying university life but spend most of their time enjoying their university dorm room. The secret that most premed students never realize is that most of the studying they do is unneeded because of one simple realization.

STUDYING WON’T GET YOU ANYWHERE!

If you are studying, you need to stop, like right now! My good buddy Scott Young has this famous saying that encapsulates the general philosophy behind what I’m trying to say here. He tells everyone to “Learn More and Study Less”. I actually sat down with him and asked him about his learning philosophy which I’ve integrated into our new premed program and you can see it right now for free when you sign up.

Premeds never simplify anything!

The biggest way premed students seem to sabotage themselves is through lack of simplification. I recently taught a collection of medical students on the finer points of efficient study methods. I got a question from a student in the back that absolutely floored me. He asked me “What do you exactly mean by simplifying my learning philosophy? Why do I have to simplify anything?”

This question blew me away, not because I couldn’t answer it, but because I thought most students would have a basic idea of study methodologies, especially those in graduate school.

If you’d like to check out the program I’d highly suggest you take a look now before it’s taken down. I have 3+ hours of video and audio content specifically for premed students that are being giving away for free; just visit premedtutors.com and sign up for the free course.

Obama's ready... ARE YOU?

Hello Fellow Students!

The new semester is quickly approaching and I have gotten an email from a student who has asked me for some advice on preparation for the new semester.  I wrote him a pretty in depth email and thought I’d just repost it here.  Enjoy!

There are in my opinion four fundamental things you must prepare yourself for to be not just a successful student but a successful university participant.

Prepare a strong study skills plan

Get a plan on how to achieve college success and analyze it.  The best laid plans are sometimes doomed to failure from the start if you don’t analyze your plan for weak points and shore them up.  As a perfect example if you plan on studying 4 hours a day, is that realistic when you only studied 4 hours a week last year?  How are you going to stay accountable to your new plan? (hint hire a tutor, which this student already did)  What are the consequences when you don’t meet your study plan?

Stay in shape, eat healthy and don’t drink in excess this semester

Get some exercise at least three times a week.  What I define as exercise is actual sweating for 30+ minutes.  Eat a plate of live vegetables and drink a liter of water before consuming any junk food.  Have 2-4 drinks during an evening and try not to drink more than 3 nights a week, preferably only one if you can do it.  Also, don’t spend all your free time running after women, this can become a huge distraction for some guys and girls!  Keep yourself focused on your goal, which should be learning and getting a 4.0 GPA.

Have set college goals in place

In continuing on the goal theme, it is important to have a focused set of goals with specific dates.  Make these goals simple and achievable and plaster them everywhere.  On your computer screensaver, daily email reminders, on your ceiling and anywhere else you usually lose focus.  Also give your tutor a set of these goals and make sure to tell him/her that you want to be reminded of these goals regularly and should be asked for updates on how your goals are going.

Plan to do something extraordinary this semester

Plan to do something that you’ve always wanted to do.  This needn’t be expensive, just something ‘epic’.  Jump out of a plan; get in a cage fight etc.  Here are some examples of extraordinary things I’ve done:  When I spent a semester in Italy, I had to goal of getting in a fight with an Italian, which I accomplished within my first week.  I wrote an article that was published in a journal in third year.  I’m planning to go on a retreat within the next six months and become a Buddhist monk for a month.  I feel like many students get caught up with school and you should always try to pepper in a little extraordinary in the mix, something you can tell your friends about for years to come.

Hope this helps

Liam McIvor Martin

If anyone is interested in my program producing a complete study skills program for you, please check out our online tutoring program.

A stereotypical freshman before midterms

Hello upcoming college students

Although almost all my students are already in college, for those students who are entering college there are a few important practices I believe you must implement and keep up if you want to have a stress free college life and avoid the dreaded college student stresses.

The first half of my university career was god-awful, filled with stress and worry primarily from disorganization and a lack of adequate study skills.  So I’d like to give up and coming college students about to enter the wonderful world of college some friendly advice on how to avoid college stress and keep it off for the next four years.

Number 1: Get a focused college study methodology and mechanize it so that it becomes automatic.

Mechanizing your college study methodology is incredibly important for long term stress free college careers.  Once the system is automatic it stops becoming a burden.  It becomes a daily ritual like brushing your teeth or taking a shower.  Here are some starting pointers that can get you started.

Make sure you have a preset one page step by step guide of how to study for a test, repeat the same one page guides for assignments, readings and papers.  Make sure you have a pre-set study time each day.  Choose 30 minutes during the day that you know will be available and make sure you do nothing but study.  If you don’t have any work that day, you’re not thinking hard enough lol.  You will always find more work to do, make sure you keep that time of the day just for college work and you will see huge returns.

Number 2:  Don’t put to much attention into the first set of marks you get back.

I know quite a few students who get straight A’s throughout high school and expect the same result in college.  Usually if you are at a high end college, that won’t be the case.  Expect to get some B’s and even some C’s.  Although you want to get A’s, don’t freak out if you aren’t doing well from the beginning.  Adapting to college takes time and stressing out over the C isn’t going to help the situation.

Number 3:  Keep a proper diet

Many students entering university are for the first time, leaving home.  Without parents, many students end up making bad nutritional choices, particularly when you live off college cafeteria food.  This usually results in the ‘freshman 15.’  To solve this problem you only have to follow one very simple and easy rule.  You can eat whatever you want after you drink a full glass of water and a full plate of salad (no heavy dressing).  Or if that’s not possible, just remember to eat something that is actually ‘alive’ (i.e. raw veg) with every meal.

So anything I should add?  Want to know more?  Please comment below or check out my college mentorship program.

You’ve probably heard of Attention Deficit Disorder

Well I think many students have another condition that is wider spread and worse than ADD.

Are you ready for this one?

Partial Attention Disorder

In my 5 years as a teaching assistant and university tutor I’ve seen all manner of study problems.  From over studying and writing more notes than the text book has pages to notes written on napkins!

However, in my work the most common mistake I see in students study skills is a lack of adequate concentration on a single task, otherwise known as the dreaded multitasking monster or what I lovingly call ‘partial attention disorder’

Why is PPA so pervasive?

The main reason why PPA is so pervasive is because many students see multitasking as an advantage.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  For some reason, society sees the ability to perform multiple tasks badly an advantage over performing a single task properly.  If you check out Tim Ferriss’ blog he has an excellent post on multitasking and shows that ‘multitaskers’ get less accomplished than pot smokers… I’m not kidding!  I’m not condoning pot smoking as a study tool but this should show you how horrible multitasking can effect your concentration.

How do you spot a PPA student?

I could usually spot a PPA student when one would come into my office and have an innumerable amount of questions and not necessarily want to hear any answers.  At the core of a PPA is the inability to focus, relax and truly engage in content.  A perfect example was a young student that came to see me and who was obviously very intelligent.  She said she wanted to talk about an upcoming paper and began to ask questions.

Her first question was on the length of the paper and the sources.  She then asked about the upcoming test.  She then asked a question about the paper.  Then she asked another question about the test.  This kind of went on for a while and she wasn’t taking any notes or really paying attention to what I was saying.  See a pattern here?

I finally stopped her and asked her why she just didn’t ask all the paper questions first then all the test questions, she looked at me with a puzzled look on her face and I could see she didn’t really realize what she had been doing.

When you do multiple things its hard to focus on a single task, therefore you end up asking questions about papers, tests and readings without really getting complete answers.

How I instantly cured her PPA

I got this girl to stop, relax and focus on a single issue at a time.  I asked her top three problems were with the paper.  Amazingly this took almost 20 minutes as she had never really sat down and asked herself that question.  We came to the conclusion that she was unsure about her main thesis statement and didn’t quite understand the question the professor was posing to her in the initial assignment.  She was unsure about the content she was using for her paper and was looking for a source that was more general which could explain some of the key terms.  She also lacked a clean distinction between her three main points which she wanted to make in her paper.

I reworked her thesis statement, gave her suggestions for secondary sources and asked her to talk to me again after she did the additional research so we could tackle her third question.

The Lesson Here

PPA isn’t a permanent problem, if you feel like you are doing ten things and not getting anything done.  Stop, relax and focus.  Ask yourself the following questions.

1: What is my most important task?

2: What the major problems I’m facing with this task and can I accomplish them with what I have in front of me.

3: How can I break that task down into action steps I can achieve in the next 10 minutes, hour, afternoon etc?

If you have a PPA problem, remember that getting one thing done properly is better than getting 10 things done improperly.

If you have any other questions, please comment and I’ll answer whatever questions you might have.

Liam McIvor Martin

D,oh, sometimes I'm so concerned with advanced methods, I forget the basics

I’ve unfortunately committed one of the cardinal sins of critical thinking….

I can’t believe I haven’t addressed this earlier but unfortunately I sometimes don’t see the forest for the trees.

I got an email from a student today, she asked me for some ‘general tips for academic success’. I was just about to throw her an email saying “well, uhh… why don’t you just check out the ENTIRE BLOG, WEBSITE and BOOK!

But I then took a look around the blog and realized I haven’t actually given any of you the basic tips for academic success! I suppose I’ve always just thought that anyone who wanted that info should just check out the VTA Method and consult an online tutor. But I want this blog to be a resource for any student, not just ones that have bought my program (although it’s awesome).

So with that in mind I’m going to start a recurring series of the general tips for academic success. Here is what I’m planning on talking about:

General college study tips

Exam study tips

How to study for finals

Study tips for different types of learners

How to write an A paper

How to create a study schedule

Health tips that will improve study habits

Advanced study tips

I’d like to ask everyone to tell me what I should add to the list, or what I should not talk about. I want it to be a 10 part series so I may rip out one or two and replace them if you have some good ideas. Comment away!

As always, if anybody is interested in online tutoring go check out our VTA Method University Mentorship Program.

Online Tutoring Program

Hello Fellow Students.

I Kinda Like the "Popeye Breakfast" but Meh

I got called out for my breakfast choices so I decided today to show you exactly what I eat for breakfast.  It’s good tasting and good for you.  For all you naysayers who think that you don’t have time for breakfast before class, this should shut you all up.  It took me 4 minutes to cook my breakfast on the video and I can usually do it in three.  So I suggest you all try this as an experiment at least for a week and see what kind of chances you see in your mind, body and mood.

The Components of the Superman Breakfast

- Approximately half a dozen egg whites with one full egg for flavor

- Fresh Baby Spinach, prewashed.

- Salsa or Tabbouleh.  Both excellent options.  The Tabbouleh has more nutrients but is higher in fat, the Salsa is lower in nutrients but higher in fat so go your own way with this one

- Crap loads of water

Cost of the Superman Breakfast

The egg whites cost me 3.29 per liter which works out to approximately .65 with the whole egg

The Spinach lasts me all week and I usually have it twice a day.  At 3.69 per bag that works out to .30 per meal

The salsa costs me approximately .10 per dose

That works out to a grand total of 1.05 for all that food.  

Advantages of the Superman Breakfast

Very little fat, high in minerals and nutrients and incredibly high in protein (18 – 24 grams) which will make you smarter, stronger, faster and will keep your body fat percentage below 10% if you follow that same nutritional theory for every meal.  (Lean protein and lots of veggies)

Here is the Full Video:

So anybody have anything else they’d like to add?  Comment away!

Hello fellow students

I have a special video for you today. It’s all about creating an academic database. I’ve used this method for years and it got me through graduate school and now allows me to write up and source an article in a fraction of the time.

I’ve been thinking about putting a post like this together even before I had the blog but I recently read a post at the cal newport blog on research wiki’s and thought it might be useful to show students a more simplified version of the same concept.

Endnote and how to use it

The program I use is endnote. If you’ve read the VTA Method you know I’m a real pusher for endnote as it allows any student to database any kind of academic material for easy referencing and implementation.  What endnote does is get all the demographic information about a source and then databases it for you.  It also automatically creates custom bibliographies which can be customized into any format you choose.

Drawbacks of Endnote

The only real drawback with endnote is that it does require an initial time investment to load the articles into the database.  But I highly suggest you take the time to actually set up the database as the time you lose in setting it up drawfs the massive amount of time and stress you save at 3 in the morning the day before a paper is due.

How your Online Tutor can Help You

For VTA Method students your online tutor will submit the majority of their content through endnote when you ask them to research a paper for you.  This is the second advantage of endnote, once you create a database you can email it to others.  This gives your online tutor the ability to create custom paper research material or edit sources you have put together for yourself.

Check out the video that I threw together and send me back some feedback. If you have any questions please leave it in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

As always, check out my online tutoring program while you’re here!