Posts tagged as:

studyhacks

Past Present and Future: Cementing Your Academic Mind Shift

June 5, 2009

Hello Fellow Students.

In researching for my online tutoring system, The VTA Method, I interviewed dozens of students and asked them how they became successful so successful in school.  The one thing they all had in common was their mind shift from thinking they knew they were going to succeed to knowing they were going to succeed.

Difference between Believing and Knowing you will succeed in University

Let me describe the distinction between believing and knowing.  Believing you’re going to succeed at something is when you don’t exactly know how you’re going to accomplish a goal but you have the faith that you will be able to achieve it.  This, in itself is a rare and highly successful way to think.  Many successful students and people have this mindset and have accomplished great things by implementing this kind of mind shift.

Knowing is a little different.  Knowing your going to succeed is having the same mindset that you will be able to achieve your goal BUT having a fully laid out plan to accomplish said goal.  So believing you’re going to succeed is having faith that you will be getting an A on a paper, knowing you’re going to succeed is having all the research, brainstorming and essay outlines completed and refined ready to be used to write an amazing paper.  You first need to believe before you know, and knowing requires quite a bit of testing and refinement, but once you know it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Read the full article →

Neuro Linguistic Programming: How to get free Chai Tea at Starbucks

June 3, 2009

Hello fellow students.

starbucksI’m sitting in Starbucks right now in my favorite comfy leather chair sipping a hot, tasty and most importantly FREE organic chai tea.  Many of you that have read the my book have read the section on Neuro-Linguistic-Programming and how to get your prof to hand you over higher marks through using NLP techniques.  Well I’ve been experimenting as of late with NLP on regular people and have recently been performing a little study on my Starbucks barista’s.

Oh and if my barista is reading this… umm sorry?

I go to my coffee shop usually a few days a week as it’s a great study space.  I can write and do work without the distractions of media and roommates constantly interrupting my flow.  Due in part to boredom and the desire to get free stuff, I’ve been experimenting with getting a free morning tea when I come in through the door using a low level form of hypnotization.  I’ve refined the process down to a success rate of approximately 90% based on a count of 11 interactions after the initial programming took place which took about two weeks.  If you love free tea like me, I highly suggest you give this a try. This may require some time and practice as this is in master Jedi territory.  But once you get it, you should be getting free tea almost all the time!

Read the full article →

Parkinson’s Law: Why extra study time is your worst enemy

June 2, 2009

parkinsonslawHello students.  I have a post today about something that really pushed me into productivity through the end of my undergraduate degree and graduate school.  Let me premise this post with a small case study.

Two people are given an assignment to complete.  The first is given 2 days to complete the assignment and the second is given 2 weeks.

Student 1 freaks out over only having two days to complete the assignment and starts researching immediately.  He gets the assignment in but literally with only a few hours to spare.  He spends the whole two days working on the assignment.

Student 2 doesn’t freak out as he has two weeks.  He thinks about doing some work on the project right away but puts it off until 3-4 days before the due date.  He then proceeds to hold off the assignment till the last minute and ends up spending less time working on the paper cumulatively than student 1.

What can we learn from this?

Very simply, ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,’ the quality of an assignment doesn’t really differ if you have two days or two weeks to accomplish it.  This is the core premise of Parkinson’s Law.

Read the full article →
</