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 spoken at length about procrastination in previous posts however I had a recent conversation with a student who got me thinking about a new aspect of procrastination and how to conquer it. My student started out with a B- average and went to an A- average in a single semester based on what I’m going to share with you today.

But first a little history…

Historically I had always attacked procrastination the way most people do. I’d keep telling myself to ‘get shit done’ and when I didn’t get said shit done I would wonder why I wasn’t capable of getting said shit done. This followed me for years and years. I’ve also spoken to hundreds of students about this particular issue. I’ve also found a solution that works for me and most of my students but it’s more complex than you think. You see ‘and this will be difficult for quite a few of you’ I’m going to share with you a cold hard truth that very few students realize but nonetheless is central to your overall productivity and long term success.

As the head tutor for the virtual teaching assistant method I do an initial phone conversation with each of my students so I know which tutor to match them to and to answer any questions they have before beginning the program. I had a young student who had been battling procrastination. He asked me why he was constantly procrastinating on papers and studying and losing focus in lectures and readings. He had also told me that he had already tried all the stereotypical anti procrastination techniques like creating to do lists (which he didn’t follow), a semester plan (which he never followed) and keeping a daily planner (he had one but he used it four times during the entire semester). He said that he could never stay committed to any of these reminders and asked me what he was missing.

The Basis Of Procrastination

I sat there, going over what he had just told me and realized that he didn’t miss a thing. He was doing EVERYTHING RIGHT and none of what he was doing was resulting in winning marks. If you’re reading this then you’ve probably achieved at least a 6^th grade reading level and you’re probably a high school or college student who is trying to figure out how to banish distraction just like my student. You’re probably thinking that I have some kind of secret kernel of knowledge that I’m about to share with you that will automatically make you a focused and therefore successful student. Fortunately I do have a solution to overcoming procrastination; unfortunately it’s not what you think. You see the reality is that my student could become a ‘focused’ student and banish distraction by completely changing his mindset, personality and upbringing by reprogramming his mind to get his work done on time and I do offer those tools through my book but to be honest with you the insights I provide in 30 mins a day to a 4.0 gpa aren’t much different than any other study book when it comes to procrastination. The reality is that (and this will be hard for you) IF YOU ARE LAZY YOU WILL MOST LIKELY ALWAYS BE LAZY

Sorry, it’s true.

If you’re lazy now chances are you’ll be lazy for the rest of your life without a lot of due diligence or self reflexive work to change your mindset. But don’t worry I’m lazy as well and my student and we’ve both become amazingly successful based on this amazing and kind of weird insight.

Overcoming Procrastination Is a Team Sport

Lazy people need other people to keep them accountable, whether its friends, family, study buddies, roommates or trained professionals like those at the virtual teaching assistant method. The fastest and easiest way to success is getting somebody else to keep you accountable. To prove this to you I’m going to tell you exactly what I did with my student and the results.

My student started out with a B- average which to be honest with you isn’t that bad considering he was at a very competitive college and an even more competitive field. He saw some massive improvement after we implemented the following changes.

• My student bought 2 hours a tutoring per month
• He gave me his syllabi and I created auto responders for him 4 days before each test/exam/paper and gave him further auto responders 3, 2 and 1 day before each exam or paper.
• I got him to recreate the same auto responder sequence on a 4 semester white board which I got him to hang up in his study space. I also programmed google calendar with those same due dates which he could download to his ipod.
• I got him to submit his papers and exam study notes 3 days before it was due to his virtual teaching assistant. If it wasn’t submitted in time, his VTA gave him a call and started yelling at him.

The Result?

He went from a B- to an A- average in a single semester. He had all his assignments, papers, exams and tests finished or prepared for 2 days before the due dates and he ended up with a whole lot less stress at the end of the day. Even if you don’t hire one of us remember that changing yourself is difficult, making sure others keep you accountable to those changes are a lot easier. Overcoming procrastination isn’t easy, make sure you have someone with you to keep yourself accountable.

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.

Hello all, today I’m going to explain why studying too much is actually turning you into a dumbass and an all round boring person.  I use to study quite a bit (about three hours a day) and this produced a solid B- average and a stressed out university student.  What’s more, I was amazed when some of my fellow students didn’t study much at all and were getting much higher marks then me.  I initially just thought they were smarter than me.  When I later realized that success in University had nothing to do with intelligence, I then started studying how they were doing so well and I was doing so badly.

I later turned what I learned into an online tutoring program.  One of the biggest things I learned was how to study efficiently.  So much so that I wrote a book on the subject “How To Study 30 Minutes a Day and Get A 4.0 GPA”.  Anyway, I just spoke to a guy that works for me and he had a great way of explaining one of the central study techniques within my book and online tutoring program.  “The Study Pulse”

The Study Pulse

Some study guru’s suggest that to get a 4.0 GPA you should study for extended periods of time, 3 hours per day for a full set of university courses is a number that is always thrown around.  Many of my students have been able to achieve the same 4.0 GPA in 30 minutes a day by using a concentrated pulse of concentrated study time.  Very simply, the study pulse is where you attempt to rid your mind of all outside thoughts for a very VERY short period of time.

Components of the Study Pulse

Time restriction: I actually try to restrict my study time to 10 minutes but each student has to experiment for themselves to find the optimal amount of time they need to accomplish their task.  What you need to do is get an egg timer (yes I’m serious) and concentrate on doing nothing but a single task.  Start with one minute, then 2, then 5.  Before you know it you’ll be able to concentrate for many minutes on a single task without falling off task.  This closely compares to sports visualization by elite Olympic athletes.  They concentrate on a single activity, whether that be making the perfect dive or running the perfect race.  They mentally concentrate only on the goal and remove all secondary stimuli.  Athletes become Olympians using this technique so I suggest you give it a try, you don’t really have anything to lose and I can personally avow to the amazing results.

Environment:  As I’ve discussed in previous posts.  You need to find a good environment to study in.  This environment has to be free from time wasting stimuli.  I like my local coffee shop, my office and a particular spot in my apartment.  I ONLY do work at these places.  I don’t chat, I don’t play around and I don’t do anything but implement the study pulse.  This will program your mind to automatically work in these environments.  This will also help subdue procrastination as all you usually have to do is get there in order to lock yourself into a study pulse.  It’s kind of pavlovian but once you program your study spaces; implementing your study pulse should be relatively simple.  Special note: NEVER EVER, do anything but study at your study spaces, if you feel yourself wanting to procrastinate, its better to leave your study space and procrastinate there.  For instance I have a greasy spoon across from my coffee shop, I have a graduate bar up the street from my office and I have the other side of my couch in my apartment.

Implementing the Pulse:  So you’ve practiced concentrating for a few minutes on a single goal. You’ve also found good study environments, next thing you need to do is implement the study pulse.  Figure out one single thing to do, that you have all the tools available for you to do.  So if you want to write a paper but haven’t finished researching, that’s not going to cut it.  Go through your mind and pick out a goal that you know you can accomplish from beginning to end.  This can be something very simple like reading a chapter in a book and writing notes on it.  Sometimes I even write each task out on a piece of paper so that I know what’s coming next.  As an example here is something I would stereotypically write out when I was ready to start writing a paper.

Write out title page in ASA format

Program page numbers under insert-> page numbers

Use outline to write introductory page

Begin with Jihad vs McWorld argument in outline

I know this seems like I have a bit of a case of OCD but the time you invest at the beginning saves you so much time at the end.  I can write 20 page papers in about 2 hours once I get all my research, brainstorming and outlining done.

The core of the study pulse is concentration; if you’d like to practice I highly suggest meditation.  Many meditation centers which aren’t necessarily religious will teach you how to meditate for free and the life long advantages of learning meditation are priceless.

Have any other questions about the study pulse?  Please comment below.

Also if you want to learn more about study methods and get access to some PhD Online Tutors check out the following program:

Online Tutoring Program

So you know that paper is due tomorrow, but you’ve been watching Susan Boyle on youtube all afternoon and can’t seem to tear yourself away to actually get your work done.  Or you do pull yourself away for a few minutes then back to Boyle once you lose focus.  Well I have a special little program that will help end your Boyle addiction.

Leechblock is the ultimate Boyle killer; very simply, it enables you to restrain your web surfing through restricting certain websites.  By either restricting the amount of time you access the site each day or by restricting you from accessing the site completely.  I’ve tested many web surfing time management tools but have not come against anything as easy to use as leechblok.

How to Install Leechblock

Instillation is easy; here is what you are going to need.

- A copy of Mozilla Firefox

- A copy of the Leechblock add on

- 5 minutes

Go to www.firefox.com is you still don’t have a copy of Mozilla firefox.  Then go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476 to pick up a copy of the leechblock add on and download it, follow the instillation instructions (don’t worry you can check out the video below for a full tutorial).

Once installed go to tools, add-ons, leechblock, and then open up the options for the leechblock add-on.  From that point you want to put in the websites that are the greatest source of procrastination for you.  Youtube, facebook, myspace, twitter are all great examples.  From this point you can customize every aspect of your surfing habits for each websites.  You can block the websites during certain hours or restrict yourself to a set amount of time per hour or day.  You can also allow access to a site only on certain days or certain hours of the day.  For instance, you can restrict your twitter use to 10 minutes a day during the week and give yourself an hour on Friday and Saturday.

When you Visit a Site that is stopping you from studying

When you visit a site two things can happen.  If you’ve set the site to be blocked during the hours you are accessing the site, leechblock jumps in and tells you that you can’t access the site.  If you have set a pre-determined amount of time to access the site, you will notice a small timer at the bottom of the site that counts down your available time on the site.  Once you hit zero, you’re blocked from accessing the site until the next available time you’ve programmed in for yourself.

What if I’m a student who really wants to watch my Boyle video?

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “well I’m not a regular procrastinating student; I’m an uber procrastinator and can just disable the restrictions”.  If you’re in this boat, don’t worry, I have some more help for you.  Leechblock has options to restrict changes to its settings during the affected hours.  You can also password protect the entire system so that you’ll have to punch in a password each time you want to change the settings.  My personal favorite is to simply lock the settings down as this completely ensures you won’t be able to watch Boyle and will get back to your studies.

Has anyone tried this?  Do you have another program you use?  Please comment below!

Also, as always if anybody is interested check out my Online tutoring programs for university students.

Liam McIvor Martin

P.S. Here is a quick video I made outlining leechblock, enjoy

How Facebook is destroying your grades and the one

thing that can save it

Study secrets for stopping facebook addiction

While writing the virtual teaching assistant method I ran across quite a few students who had a real problem with facebook, myspace and twitter. A new study has found that students who use facebook get lower marks then those who don’t.

When I performed a time audits on students for the book, I found that they would check networking sites multiple times a day with some students literally spending HOURS electronically ‘socializing’ with their virtual friends.

A recent study found that facebook users had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5 whereas non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. Also non facebook users devoted 11-15 hours weekly to study whereas facebook users spend one to five.

There is an obvious correlation between facebook and academic success. The safe bet would be to delete your networking sites to preserve your mark. However, there is another important factor that you have to take into consideration. People who don’t use facebook are unpopular and usually dorks.

I have a few non-user friends that don’t fall under this category but overall, people who don’t have facebook are less social. About half of all my invitations to social events now come through facebook. It’s obvious that using facebook is a great way to mechanize socializing which should be any good student’s goal that wants to maximize their fun in the shortest amount of time (see the book for more info on this). So the problem then becomes how can you enjoy your facebook time and also hold a 4.0 GPA?

Facebook addiction is a small part of a larger problem for many students as they lack the self discipline to shut off outside distractions and get to what’s important ‘getting A’s’, instead of screwing around. Now you’re probably thinking that I’m not a proponent of wasting time. Well if you had read my book you’d know I LOVE wasting time, I waste tones of time but I waste it in a good way not a bad way.

In terms of social networking sites I restrict myself to 5 minutes during working hours. This gives me enough time to check out if anybody has emailed me or invited me to something that I might want to go to. I keep myself accountable to the 5 minutes a day using leechblock, a free add on in my browser that I can set to restrict my facebook use. This program will make you human again by forcing you off the computer and into the real world. I highly recommend you give.

After the day is done, I can use facebook as much as I want. By that time all my work is finished and I can enjoy socializing with my digital friends guilt free. I also expand leechblock into other aspects of my surfing life as well. Restricting time on email and even banning myself from websites that aren’t important to my academic success (example: cnn.com youtube.com gizmodo.com etc). I’ve banned all these websites either completely or just during the weekdays. I was a hard adjustment but now I have hours more to do interesting things each day. Remember 5 minutes here and there add up. So don’t keep yourself accountable, make programs like leechblock accountable for you.

Do you think the study (which you can find here) is valid or bullshit? Can you control your facebooking or are you out of control? Have you come up with a different strategy to manage your internet addictions? Leave comments.

Let me explain with an average day in the life of moi.

10:00 am: Get up, eat a breakfast of half a dozen egg whites and some spinach.

10:15 am: Get washed and brushed.

10:45 am: Work out for about an hour.

11:45 am: Turn on computer and go fix myself a post workout meal.

12:00 pm: Check my email and facebook using leechblock which restricts my email to 20 minutes and my facebook to 5 minutes.

12:30 pm: Do some writing and putz around.

3:30 pm: Finish all my writing for the day. Leechblock does not allow me to open up my email, facebook or twitter till 4:00 pm so I apply myself to other things such as cleaning up my apartment or sometimes I go out for a drink at my favorite coffee shop.

4:30 pm: Finish off my day with checking email and CLOSING MY LAPTOP! When the working day is done, I don’t keep my laptop open. If I need the internet to check movie times for instance I use my ipod touch.

5:30 pm: Another mini meal full of protein and good carbs

5:30 pm: Various versions of having fun, such as movie Tuesday, rock climbing Wednesdays or dinner out with friends.

10:00 pm: Some television or a movie, the rules being I either specifically know what show I want to watch or I can’t have seen the movie before.

12-1:00 pm: Sleep, grab one last mini meal for the day and hit the sack.

If you have any questions, please comment.

Liam McIvor Martin