The Goal

The goal is to adopt efficient and low-stress scheduling strategies that ensure we get stuff done well and on time.The Problem

Most students I know just keep a mental to-do list and then sit down around 8:00pm and ponder “What do I have to do today?” or turn to their syllabi to see if they have anything due the next day.  They start working on whatever comes to mind first, and hope to get through everything by 1am so they can get some sleep. Now, some students are a bit more organized and have all their assignments written out somewhere, and if you’ve been following us on the Study Hacks on Campus journey, then you should have everything you need to do recorded in your MTL… but that’s not enough.The Problem

To-Do List Planning. What is it? The bane of productivity – that’s what it is. All of the students described above are “to-do list planning” (i.e. queuing their work from a to-do list of assignments). As Cal Newport points out, “[T]o-do lists are a terrible daily planning tool” because they are “missing two key pieces of information:”

• Duration (of the tasks)
• Availability (of the person)

A big looming list of all the things you have to do fosters procrastination. Students tend to put everything off until “later” and then don’t know what to do first when they finally do get started. Usually, to-do list planners start their work sometime after dinner, and often times something unexpected will pop-up (like an irresistible, impromptu beruit tournament), and they’ll end up with little work done and hours less to complete their assignments. Thus, the problem with to-do list planning is that it is an inefficient and unpredictable method of scheduling that often leaves you feeling exhausted and unaccomplished.

The Solution

Essentially, we need to turn all of our tasks into engagements with ourself. (If these terms aren’t familiar, read our first meeting’s discussion on Capture.) Three key strategies will get us closer to optimum productivity.

Time Blocking

Time blocking is the act of “[a]ssign[ing] specific times on your schedule … [to] specific tasks.” When you review your calendar and MTL each day, select the tasks that you plan to complete that day and assign each task to a specific block of time (e.g. “Calculus Homework”: 2:00-3:30). Time Blocking has three distinct advantages over to-do list planning:

• Increased efficiency. As Cal puts it, “you are more likely to take advantage of smaller chunks of time open earlier in the day,” and are “more likely to fit in urgent small tasks between the bigger time-consuming tasks.”
• Decreased procrastination. Time blocking “reduces [the] urge to procrastinate,” as the decision regarding whether or not to work at any particular moment is already made.
• Increased awareness. It “increase[s] your ability to predict how much time work really requires” which in turn reduces your tendency to either pull all nighters or fail to complete assignments.

Autopilot Scheduling

Autopilot scheduling is ”a devastatingly effective” study hack which is simply a way to manage regularly occurring tasks. Recurring tasks typically take up the majority of our time as students and, as Cal puts it, “are so numerous that I don’t trust myself to schedule them week by week in a reasonably efficient and spread out manner.” They often get cause you to ”make very little progress on … important non-regular work” and are easily forgotten or put-off. (Freshman Humanities reading, anyone?).

With autopilot scheduling, you “assign every regularly occurring task to a specific day in the week.” If you can assign it to a specific time block in advance, that’s even better. ”Identify what work you do every single week and then start fixing it to specific days.” Make sure to tinker with this autopilot schedule until you get it right and don’t overload any single day.

Autopilot scheduling ensures that you ”no longer have to expend any scheduling energy to make sure [you] accomplish all of these regular tasks,” thus, your “scheduling energy can be focused 100% on the large non-regular tasks in [your] life.” Furthermore, “[y]our regular work gets done consistently and with minimum stress and ”[t]he clarity gained by having this regular work ‘taken care of’ allows you to focus on the important big projects in your student life.” Autopilot scheduling lets you focus on that upcoming midterm or campaign for class presidency by alleviating your concern for your regular class readings and assignments.

Below is an example of an autopilot schedule. It’s actually my schedule for the week of March 22nd, which contains just those items I’ve put on autopilot!

Connor's Autopilot Schedule

Time Arbitrage

Time arbitrage is essentially maximizing your productivity by trading “low-value time” for “high-value time.” Cal explains this in detail.

Extra Credit

Up to the challenge? Try adding a Sunday Ritual to your schedule!

Closing

Don’t be a to-do list planner. Save yourself the stress and inefficiency and try out TAT (Time Blocking, Autopilot Scheduling, and Time Arbitrage)!

How do you use these strategies to your advantage? Have questions or comments? Leave a comment below and the SHOC@CMC Team will get back to you within the week!

Congratulations to the team on a very successful first meeting! We had 18 of our 20 members in attendance and discussed our first SHOC topic of the year: Capture.

Before we get into discussing the Capture methods we’ve produced and will be evaluating over the next two weeks, I think a little background information on our team is appropriate.

We are a group of 20 freshman with interests all across the board and majors ranging from Undeclared to Mathematics, Economics to Literature, and Government to International Relations. We attend Claremont McKenna College, a young liberal arts school in sunny California. CMC maintains an admission rate that makes high school seniors cringe, sits on over a dozen Princeton Review Top-20 Lists, and produces graduates who have the highest starting salaries of any liberal arts college in the United States. By nature of getting here, we are all competitive, but I think if you met any of us on the street you would find us likeable and down-to-earth people. Our mission is to forge an innovative approach to higher education and help our peers at CMC and other institutions to do the same. Now on to the good stuff!

The Goal

In the words of Cal Newport, the goal for this meeting was to create “a trusted system in which all of your stuff is captured and regularly reviewed.” Such a system will be the cornerstone for the efficient and effective student life that we plan to construct.The Terms

To capture and control “stuff,” we first need to define it. The Oxford American Dictionary says “stuff” is “matter, material, articles, or activities of a specified or indeterminate kind that are being referred to, indicated, or implied.” That’s lovely, but for our purposes we are going to define “stuff” as everything that we need to do or remember in our day-to-day lives. For example, “do calc homework,” “talk to Prof. Whatshername,” “set-up doctors appointment for Monday,” “get birthday card for mom,” and “go to the insane Mudd party this weekend” are all instances of “stuff.” I believe “Stuff” can be broken down into three distinct categories: tasks, engagements, and events. A task is “a piece of work to be done” (OAD). Thus, tasks include homework assignments, “to-do” items, and other things that require action on your part. An engagement is “an arrangement to do something or go somewhere at a fixed time” (OAD). Thus, engagements include your classes, club meetings, and other appointments which require your presence. In essence, engagements are just tasks which require you to attend something at a specific time. For example, if an engagement was a task its subject line would read “attend economics class at 1:00pm” or “attend doctors appointment at 3:00pm.”  You DO tasks. You ATTEND engagements. An event is “a thing that happens” (OAD). Events include friends’ birthdays, parties you haven’t decided whether or not to attend, and other things happening on campus which occur at definitive times but require no action. Events are purely informational. If you decide to send your friend a birthday card, that becomes a task. If you decide to attend that party you were unsure of, that becomes an engagement.

For all us visual learners, I’ve made a simple table illustrating the differences between different types of stuff.

*”Stuff” that falls into this box, because it has an indefinite time and requires no action, should be morphed into a task by creating a required action (e.g. “I think I have a club meeting sometime this week” becomes “Email club president to check if there is a meeting”).

An easy way to remember the terminology discussed here is SITEE (pronounced “city”). Stuff Is Tasks, Engagements, and Events.

The System

At our first meeting, we created a two-stage system for capturing our “stuff.” Based largely on our personal propensity to employ technology (versus good ol’ fashioned paper), we developed different methods of using this system.

Stage 1 (24 hours)

• Immediately record any “stuff” that comes to mind in a notebook of some kind. Ensure that you always have this notebook and a writing utensil so that you can put your “stuff” on paper when you think of it and then purge it from your mind.

Stage 2 (5 minutes)

• Once a day, at a specified point in time (e.g. 9:00am, right after waking up) relocate all the tasks collected in the notebook (during the past 24 hours) to a master task list (MTL) and all the engagements and events collected to a calendar, then remove everything from your notebook (cross the “stuff” out or tear out the page). Not only does this instill a fresh feeling, it serves the important purpose of reducing redundancy and errors between the notebook and MTL/calendar. Then, review your updated calendar and MTL.

This three step system lends itself to an easy name: “The Triple-R System.”

Every member of SHOC@CMC will be using the Triple-R system over the next two weeks. However, each member of the group was given personal freedom in choosing the mediums that they would use as their notebook, MTL, and calendar. The two most common sets of chosen mediums were the following.

Method 1

• Notebook: pocket notebook
• MTL/Calendar: Desk Calendar/To-Do List

Method 2

• Notebook: iPhone/iPod Touch Notes App or Blackberry Notes App
• MTL/Calendar: iCal, Blackberry Tasks & Calendar Apps, or Google Tasks & Calendar

Remember

The SITEE maxim:

• Stuff Is Tasks, Engagements, and Events

The Triple-R Capture System:

• Record
• Relocate
• Review

Choose one of the these methods and try the system out yourself! If you have any comments or questions on the system, methods, or terms please comment on this post and the SHOC@CMC Team will respond within the week!

Update:

Capture in Review

Yesterday (2/5/10) we evaluated the Capture system (above) which we had devised at our last meeting. The overwhelming response to our system was very positive and the group agreed that the system really does help alleviate stress that many didn’t even realizing they were creating in the first place (myself included). However, there is always room for improvement and here are some suggestions on how to make the system even better:

• Make it fit your schedule. Place the “relocate and review” session somewhere in your schedule that is convenient for you. For example, if you are a zombie before you go to bed and you don’t want to wake up before your 8:10 a.m. class to review, feel free to “relocate and review” right after your first class – just make sure you do it religously. – Wade & Elle
• Write down everything. As soon as you think “I’ll remember that” and don’t write something down in your notebook, you cripple the system. You need to have complete trust in the system for it to work, and the only way to achieve that is to feed all of the stuff in your life into the system. If you succeed in doing that, we guarantee you will have less of those “S***! I was supposed to meet with that person this afternoon!” moments.  – Ryan & Kelsey
• Make it a Facebook substitute. We are all college students – we know that when you get back to your room or sit down at the library your first reflex is to check your News Feed in case something absolutely dire happened to one of your friends (not likely, by the way). Make a habit of opening up your Calendar and Master Task List instead of FB and you will be more productive yet still satisfy that urge to procrastinate a little. – Andie & Sky
• Style it your way. If you think your iPhone/Blackberry is the greatest invention in the history of mankind, then embrace your inner techie and use it as your Notebook/MTL/Calendar. On the other hand, if you side with Lupe and “like Mont Blanc pens and Moleskin paper,” then go old-school and carry around that real notebook with your favorite pen.

Finally, we wondered if having a separate notebook and MTL/Calendar was really necessary. It seemed redundant to record “stuff” in our notebook, only to have to relocate it all at a later time. In the spirit of Occam’s razor, wouldn’t it be simpler to immediately add tasks to your MTL and engagements/events to your Calendar, and bypass the notebook altogether? We think the answer is “yes.”* If you can make your Cal/MTL portable, either via electronic or paper products, do it! There is a catch though: It has to be portable enough that you can still cary it with you at ALL times. Girls, if you always cary a purse, you have more flexibility because you can use either an electronic Cal/MTL or a date book. Guys, you will need to stick to using a pocketable notebook unless you go the electronic route. Most importantly, ensure that you review religiously, whether you use the three step or two step version of the system.

*If you found that the notebook stage was crucial to your success or disagree for another reason, leave us a comment and let us know!

So welcome, once again, to the new and improved SHOC@CMC Website!

This site will serve as a repository of information which outlines our team’s goals (namely, getting better grades and spending less time studying), what actions we are taking to achieve those goals, and the progress we are making towards more efficient and effective learning.

The Study Hacks team will consist of a maximum of 20 people (10 guys and 10 girls) who will meet every other week to discuss new strategies and methods for maximizing learning while minimizing the time studying. The initial group of invitations to join the team was sent out earlier this week to 21 students whom I had discussed the program with and/or been in class with during the fall semester. To my absolute surprise, 17 of those 20 students agreed to join the team within 48 hours (via Facebook, of course). The overwhelmingly positive response shouldn’t surprise me, as this program is truly a one-of-a-kind opportunity to completely reshape how we operate as students to produce more performance with less grueling work.

As of the time of writing, the team consists of the following members: Sanskriti Ayyar, Ellie Beckett, Kelsey Brown, Ryan Boone, Jennifer Good, Skyler Grossman, Alex Johnson, Kate Johnson, Abie Katz, Elle Petit, Jeff Pollock, Mackenzie Scanlan, Daniyal Shahid, Daniel Shane, India Wade, Andie Wheatley, Tristan Williams, and myself.Congratulations, all – you’re in for a treat!

Our first meeting will be Friday, January the 22nd. We will set a time on Tuesday, once the team roster is finalized and everyone knows their schedules. Enjoy the last few days of break!

To the 12 people who contacted me via Facebook/email asking to join the group (and to all others who are interested in the program):

Thank you very much for contacting me. The out of the blue Facebook messages and emails were a response I was not expecting! First, if the remaining three invitees don’t get back to me by the start of school I will be in touch with all of you about the open spots. Second, if the spots do fill don’t worry. The beauty of the Study Hacks on Campus initiative is that it doesn’t just help those that are part of the team, it helps everyone who reads the blog – which will have biweekly reports describing what we’ve been doing and suggesting specific changes to make to your study techniques! For the flow of information to be effective, however, it is imperative that the team itself does not grow so large that it prohibits effective discussion and resolution at the meetings. So, however counterintuitive, the only way for the program to be effective in helping everyone is if the team itself stays a reasonable size. Thank you in advance for your understanding and your continued interest.

–Connor Barclay, SHOC@CMC Team Leader