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
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Not about the pulse method exactly but I was intrigued by your statement that “I can write 20 page papers in about 2 hours once I get all my research, brainstorming and outlining done.”
Having spent the last few weeks slogging out a paper – math major forced to write an essay – I’d be very interested if you could go into more detail about what your pre-writing preparation involves.
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