If you scroll to the bottom of the Scholar Preferences page, you’ll also find the ability to input citations into your choice of bibliography managers, such as Refman, BibTex and Refworks. PS, if you’re using Refworks for UofT, the Group Code is RWToronto. Very awesome!

If you’re still doing references by hand, please realize that man has discovered fire and the combustion engine. While searching on google scholar, I’ll open up a paper, realize I want to use it for my paper and hit Import into Refworks. I’ll enter my Group Code and Save Reference in the folder for the paper. Then, when I’m done collecting, I’ll hit Bibliography, and output a complete references list. It takes under two minutes to output the references list and less than 15 seconds for each paper I want to include in the paper. This tip alone could save you HOURS in writing your paper.

Your school or institution may have a different bibliography/reference manager than RefWorks. It’ll save you hours if you spend five minutes talking to a librarian or surfing the library site to find out which reference manager is used. There are also free programs available in case you can’t/don’t want to use your school’s program, or they don’t have one. Just google it. It’ll save you hours.

One thing to be careful of: Google does not filter articles by reputation of journal as much as your library will. Nor does it search journal databases like JStor or PsychInfo, so you have to keep an eye out for reputable, peer reviewed/scholarly journals. If in doubt, use your school library’s searching ability to find more info, or check Ulrich‘s for the journals academic status and standing. You can also check the “cited by” link for your article, so you can find people who’ve said something about your articles.

Happy researching!

This book has been the greatest investment in my education to date. I’ve spent thousands of dollars a year in tuition so this book’s sub-$20 cost is certainly worth it. In fact, I expect to win scholarships because of my improved grades, so I’ll certainly make that money back. You can buy or read the reviews at Amazon here.

Edit (Jan 10, 2011): I have won scholarships. Your school likely has an in-course scholarship that you don’t have to apply for but is awarded based on grades.

The Heart of the System – Question-Evidence-Conclusion & Quiz-and-Recall

The main idea in the system is recognizing that academics think in terms of questions and answers that include evidence (facts, studies, arguments, etc) that lead to a conclusion, whether this is explicit or not. If you recognize this and listen to your lectures in this way, as well as take notes and do your readings this way, you’ll understand the information presented much better. Cal’s got similar ideas about technical courses like maths and sciences, which you’ll have to read the book to find out about.

Another important insight is that recall is the best way of memorizing it, especially when it’s tied to a question prompt. That is, ask yourself the question and then try to answer it, unaided, out loud.

Hate the Grind

I’ve read a number of books on improving study habits and all of them suggest what Cal calls The Grind. They don’t care about efficiency of energy or time at all and just tell you to do every single reading and write every single thing down. No mention is made of triage or how to determine what is important and what is not. The methods suggested for studying and understanding are brute force rote reviewing. So, to become a straight-A student just seems to require a lot of time and a lot of energy with questionable rewards (“woohoo! An A! That’s the first letter of the alphabet!”).

However, Cal’s book is different. It focuses entirely on efficient and effective techniques. I’ve improve my grades and invest the same or less amount of time and energy to do so. It may take more energy and time to learn and integrate these skills in the short term, but the pay off is clearly superior in the long run, especially since this calibration will do me well for the next couple of years of school.

One thing that was conspiciously absent, however, was memory techniques. Even the mention of memory techniques was missing and flash cards were suggested in place. There are indeed situations where the only way to learn something is brute force and memorization, however, these are very, very few compared to all the things you can learn using some simple memory techniques. Check out The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne.

Understanding is the Goal

We almost always have implicit goals, otherwise it’d be hard to tell why we should do one thing over another. When students go to class, you can almost tell what their implicit goals are based on how they sit. Some are there just to get through the class, others are there to take down the lecture in notes, but the goal that works best for getting good grades (and enjoying yourself a lot more!) is to make understanding the material the goal. If you understand what the professor is talking about (the Question-Evidence-Conclusion format makes it a lot leasier to), then you’ll be fine. Then, review your notes right after class, fix any mistakes, fill in Questions and Conclusions, and you may be able to improve recall by as much as 80%. If you don’t spend the five minutes after class doing this, you’re liable to forget everything, even if you just review the next day. Make it a habit and before long it’ll just be something you do. It’ll be painful at the beginning but you’ll soon find it gets easier and easier as you get better and better.

This book gives you an excellent system for understanding things quickly. Some people have commented that it seems gimmicky, but it really isn’t. Deeper understanding is the only way to score great grades in university/college and this book helps you get that quickly.

Set limits

A lot of self-employed people (especially home-based ones) encounter this problem: they feel like they should be working all the time. If you do feel like that, you can never really truly relax and you’ll unconsciously feel guilty and stressed out. Not a good way to live life. What I suggest is setting limits.

Limit your “work time”. Every week, I work 9-5 five or six days a week with a minimum one day off. Stick to it. If you don’t, you’re cheating yourself and you’ve to be able to trust yourself. This has a few benefits: you get more done (Parkinson’s Law) and when you’re done work, you’re done work and you can totally relax and enjoy yourself. If you can also get yourself to stick to this schedule, you’ll know that all-nighters are no longer an option (well, they are, at the expense of your own sense of integrity), so you’ll manage your work better.

Another limit is the feeling that you constantly have to be doing more at school. I feel this way. I can’t just be caught up, I have to be ahead. I can’t just have handwritten notes, they should be typed up and beautiful. So I’ve set limits. I can only be ahead a week. I can only look at my notes once after class to review them, fill in the Question-Evidence-Conclusion structure, get clarification on anything I don’t understand, and I will not type them up. I can only make one mind-map per class. I feel like I should do all readings twice and take notes on all of them, so I limit myself to skimming once for argument, evidence and conclusions and read through it once to make notes. I also decide a limit before an assignment (timeboxing) of how long I’m going to spend on it so I don’t get stuck in endless editing sessions, and to do the best job in the shortest time. I stick to these things for the sake of my integrity, something I care deeply about. I have to be able to trust myself.

Kill Your Procrastination

Surprisingly, this was the biggest benefit to applying this system. I utterly destroyed procrastination. I finished an assignment three weeks ahead of time.

Having a system kills procrastination. If you have to figure out what to do anew every time you sit down to study or write an essay, of course you’re going to procrastinate. Say I have to do an essay on Cognitive Science on the topic of the functional/evolutionary value of consciousness. That’s a tough topic! If I have to make a new decision about how to go about the essay every time, coupled with the inherent difficulty of the topic…well, that’s just too damn hard.

So, having clearly delineated steps really bounds things and destroys procrastination. And the book gives you those. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll probably still procrastinate, but it will be greatly lessened. There’s some great tips on how to deal with procrastination in the book, too.

Know why you want to be a Straight-A student

Cal doesn’t address this because I suppose it’s a given that if you’re picking up a book called, “How to Become a Straight-A Student” you want to be one. However, motivation can wax and wane and you need a solid reason to do better. Sometimes you’ll just do really well because it’s personally important to you to do well in whatever you do. If that’s enough motivation, excellent. If you need more, what I recommend is to set goals that align with doing well but also challenge you.

You can apply the above strategy in smaller ways, as well. For example, I have a research paper coming up. If I try to focus on “I want an A” as motivation, it’s completely unmotivating. However, if I focus on, “I want to add something to this field”, my motivation skyrockets. Sure, the actions required to get an A may be less than those required to really make an original contribution, but the second is a lot more fun and challenging and oddly enough, less likely to fall through. I’m putting in ten hours of my time and energy into something, I’d rather do something that will be meaningful and won’t just be read by the grader and then forgotten. I’d rather add something interesting or original, in however small a way, to the field. And odds are really good that if I aim to make a contribution, I’ll get at least an A. Two birds with one stone, and lots more fun.

Edit (Jan 10, 2011): I wrote a paper using these ideas which a prof of mine liked so much, he’s incorporating into his own paper on wisdom and giving me an author credit.

I’ve always been an ok student. I’ve always gotten along with B’s and the occasional A because I really haven’t had more motivation to do better. This year, though, I set myself a new goal, got lots of energy and found a great guide.

Edit (Jan 10,2011): My grades since I wrote this article have been pretty good. I got my first 90% in university (which at the University of Toronto is tough as hell), and now pull out a steady A- or A grade without trying very much. Additionally, since I only take courses with the best profs (you pay the same for a crap prof and no extra for a great one), I’ve now taken courses with all the profs listed as “life changing” by students. I’ve also enjoyed my experience at university a lot more since I stopped taking full-time course load. A 60% courseload keeps me much happier, I actually enjoy school and I get way better grades. Over 50% of the students at UofT take less than full course load, so many do, even if none of your friends do.

More resources:

10 Tips for College Students – Steve Pavlina

Do it Now – Steve Pavlina. Pavlina talks about how he got two degrees in about a year and half.

You can buy or check out reviews for this book here at Amazon.

I took dance classes not too long ago and it was a lot of fun. I highly recommend it. The benefits of taking even one dance course are numerous: you get to meet interesting people, you get to experience the richness of life, prevent boredom, learn a new skill, other kinds of dancing also improves (not just the one you take), you become more comfortable in your body, you learn that no one else knows what they’re doing while dancing so you stop being self-conscious, and you enjoy yourself! If you’re in college or university, check out your gym, they will probably have dance classes. There might also be dancing clubs. If you’re not, check out your local gym, they may have dance classes or be able to refer you to some good places. Or google, “(hometown) dance lessons” and substitute your hometown for the word. One of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had.

I should make this clear: in my class, the guys did the leading and the women did the following. However, the instructor explicitly said that that did not have to be the case. So, any time I say “guys” just substitute in “leader” and when I say “women” you can put in “led”. At least one lesbian couple chose one of the partners to be a leader and the other person to be led. Leader and the led are just roles in dancing, in this case filled by guys and women. I’m not sure dancing where both try to lead or be led would work well. You can find dance lessons that are alternative-lifestyle friendly if you ask around.

At the beginning, everyone is awkward and unsure of what they’re doing. However, an odd thing happens with the instructor starts to dance with someone: they look beautiful together. When the instructor starts to dance with a woman, it’s like she knows the moves, even though she’s a beginner like everyone else. This puzzled me. It took me a while to figure this out but here it is: he was leading her firmly and clearly. The guys weren’t doing that so it all looked like a mess. So, why didn’t they all do it?

There’s a number of reasons why the guys weren’t doing that. The first was that the guys weren’t really sure of the dance moves themselves, so they didn’t really have the attention to spare to lead the woman. The second was that the instructor didn’t explicitly teach leading and just taught the steps. I don’t know whether this was just something he did but didn’t know he did (implicit vs explicit–watch this entertaining video by Tim Ferriss for his dance story). This is important because leading works two ways: you have to be teach how to lead but also to be led. To lead, you have to send clear signals with your arms and body. To be led, you have to keep a taut stance to be sure that you receive the signals through the arms. Finally, I think that a lot of people just aren’t very comfortable leading. There may be self-confidence issues there such as, “who am I to lead?” and others may be in the love-hate relationship with the masculine role that guys seem to have. A guy should be strong and lead, but also allow the woman to lead? A lot of guys get confused by the mixed signals they get about the nature of manhood.

In any case, I started to lead with confidence even if I didn’t feel it and everything went wonderfully. Everyone I danced with had a lot more fun and we looked great. I realize that the role of the leader is a sort of stewardship. You have to fulfill your responsibilities to the other person, as well as listen to them while working towards a common goal. You can try bossing your dance partners around, but it doesn’t work very well. Sometimes your dance partner will tell you clearly what isn’t working through her body. She’ll refuse to do a move or be very resistant to it. How is dancing a metaphor for life?

Life is a bit like dancing. Your life is your dance partner and if you don’t lead, it will be a mess. The vagaries of chance, circumstances and past habits will lead you and you’ll end up with something you didn’t really want. Life will often tell you what’s not working and you won’t get the results you want. You have to listen to your dance partner. But you also don’t want to make assumptions about how life is. Don’t let timidity make you assume that you shouldn’t lead or that something is not possible. Try it and you’ll find out quickly. Let life tell you what’s working and what’s not and learn to listen to it, just like on the dance floor.

Even if you’re wrong, be confident and keep leading. Even if you make a mistake, you’ve learned something and the other person’s learned something and keep leading. Right after a mistake is when leading is needed most and that’s when most people stop or lose confidence. A lot of the dancers got thrown off by a mistake in the dance, lost their confidence and messed up the rest of the routine. If you keep leading, though, the mistake is barely a hiccup and people will often miss the mistake because you don’t make a bit deal of it and just keep on dancing. If you lose a job but go right into following one of your dreams (like living in Spain), or getting another job or starting another business or volunteering, the job less will barely look like a hiccup and it will just like it’s part of the plan. But if you lose a job and just sit at home, you’ve lost confidence after a mistake and ruined the rest of the routine. But you can start dancing and leading again at any time. Even if you’re wrong, you’re right so keep leading the dance.

Life is your dance partner. If you lead clearly and strongly, people can see a beautiful dance and go, “boy, they’ve sure got a great life”. If you let life lead you, you’ll often end up somewhere you didn’t want to. Live consciously.

The lay-theory that I’m aware of is that dreams help understand the day’s work. Another interesting theory for dreaming is that it is a testing and improvement of our ability to model the world. In any case, this is a fairly robust finding. I’ve personally experienced this many times when I didn’t understand something before I went to bed but did when I woke up. Recently, I’ve been learning Dvorak, a new keyboard layout, and every day there is a marked improvement overnight. For example, yesterday I was typing at 12 words per minute, today I’m upto 21, overnight.

This seems weird if you think about it because our mental model of our minds is that it’s like a computer (a consequence of the cognitive revolution in psychology) but we don’t and we have to learn how to work with our minds to get the best results.

Here’s an XKCD comic for you:

Jordan Peterson suggests that when something happens directly to us, we go through several levels of understanding. The first one is somewhat like a tape recording, and it is entirely embodied. It’s almost completely unprocessed and if asked to describe the event, very few words and more acting out happens. The second stage is a bit more process and distills the emotions caused by the event (if I recall correctly), so if someone was asked to describe it, they would describe it using emotional terms like, “I’m so mad”. Eventually, it gets distilled further into a more cognitive, explanatory story, such as, “That happened because this and this”. We seek explanations, as well, however, they seem to have the quality of reducing our emotions about a subject. There are times where it might be better not to reduce something entirely to words, so sometimes I will deliberately leave things unexplained or at least not explained completely to death, to continue the experience of those emotions, such as things I’m really interested in. Sometimes, even identifying an emotion such as “I’m feeling angry” can reduce that emotion.

Early on, one of the limiting beliefs I had towards discovering my purpose was that it would remove the sense of mystery and possibility I feel about my life by just making it into something completely known. A study found that people who write about a trauma have better health (fewer doctor visits, etc) and had better subjective well-being (happier) for 45 minutes at a time for a few times. The people who had the biggest impact wrote about what the explanation for the trauma may have been.

We explain things all the time. In depressed people, you can find a consistently negative explanation for events (and a bit self-centered, if you ask me, the whole world doesn’t hate you, the world doesn’t really care). There are times when I think about something and realize that it makes very little sense if it wasn’t already so well accepted and familiar. Take the example Peterson used, The Lion King. It is the touching tale of a young prince lion cub running away after his father, the just king dies. The evil uncle inherits the kingdom and turns it into his playground and things to really badly. Years pass and one day, a childhood friend of the prince is hunting for food and finds the lion prince and convinces him to return. Upon returning, the lion prince defeats the evil uncle and order is restored. However, to aliens, it might seem very strange for talking predators who have no ability to talk in real life, portrayed on screen, being best of friends with some of their prey, hating their own kind for reasons not of heiarchicial dominances.

It’s a very strange thing. But, stories do something to us and for us. It’s not just the rich experience of emotions that we may not otherwise feel, there’s something else there. They’re integral to the way we are. We find stories arranged in a specific structure somehow more engrossing than ones which are without that structure. Strange, indeed, and a mystery to me.

Peterson did a recorded lecture series that’s online, the first one is fascinating and it’s about stories called “There’s No Such Thing As A Dragon.” You can find them here. The first episode is below:

But, what they didn’t tell you is that the facts and knowledge about math is not what you’re really learning. What you’re doing is improving certain skills and thus improving your production capacity. Thus, you’re learning how to solve problems better and improving your spatial skills, as well as your general mathematical skills.

This point really struck home back in my first year economics class. The professor said that even though we wouldn’t be using anything beyond grade 10 math (graphs and simple line equations, etc), people who had taken calculus in university would do better. “That’s weird,” I thought, and it has to do with the problem solving abilities that are stimulated in both math and economics.

So, learn your maths, it’ll make you smarter and better at solving problems, even if the math itself you may never use.

There are also a number of subjects I’m interested in knowing but the actual process of learning them seems tedious to me. Certain maths, statistics and probabilities fall in this category. I like to know them, but not to actually have to learn them. Books are useless to me here because I have yet to find a book that explains these subjects in a very entertaining or interesting way (perhaps through the use of stories), but audio programs or video programs are great because all I have to do is pay attention and that’s great for this sort of thing.

Another thing I like to do is have some idea of the course material for the courses I’m taking. I find it really cuts down the amount of time I need to study and improves my grade. Watching a ten hour series of lectures may reduce my studying/homework by five times that over the duration of a course, and I’ll get better grades because I have first brush familiarity with the ideas.

That’s how we learn, see, complex ideas are learned best by being introduced to them in passes. The first pass, you get a shallow understanding of the key terms. The next pass is a little deeper and you start to get an understanding of the parts. And so on. I like to reserve some time to step back and make sure all the big parts link together. Its easy to simply think of each class or chapter as a discrete unit when you’re studying in a course, but everything is actually connected together and its important to understand this connection.

That all brings me to The Teaching Company. They seek out nationally-recognized professors (and I can tell you, its really worth it. The difference in learning and enjoyment from a good prof versus a great prof is very noticeable) and have them teach courses and record them on video and audio. They cover a very wide range of topics and have been in operation for many years. Here’s a list of the courses they offer. Truly an excellent business.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

The desired result/production is for the man to be fed. In the first case, he is fed but you have to do it. So you get the production/result that you want. In the second case, the man learns to fish for himself, and you have improved his production capacity/result-creating capacity.

More examples (because examples help you understand things):

• Say you have a child and you want a clean child’s room. You could do it yourself, but then the production capacity would be unaffected. The key is to get the child to clean the room, and you could bug the child until it does it just so you’ll stop bugging it, and you produce the result you want, but the child will not voluntarily clean the room, except out of fear. You have to find some way to get the child to happily clean the room.
• I want to keep track of my finances. I could do it manually by keeping track of my receipts and my cash-in-pocket and just do the whole thing on paper. Or, I could make a slight improvement to my production capacity and upgrade to using a digital financial software, like Quicken, and then it can do a lot of this stuff automatically. I try to pay for as many things by debit as I can and carry as little cash with me as possible so that Quicken can simply download my transactions from my bank and automatically figure out a lot of where my money is coming and going.
• Steve Pavlina spends a lot of time working on the production capacity that produces money for him, which is his blog.
• I’ve been making back-end changes to the way this blog is run so that its easier for me to write posts or what have you. So, I improve my production capacity to produce blogs faster and easier.
• When you are involved in personal development, you are usually engaged in a process of improving production capacity, unless you make growth the goal itself (as Steve Pavlina‘s done).

Main Point:

• Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. When the desired production is for the man to be fed, you can gain the same production by giving him a fish every day, or by improving his ability to feed himself, which improves the production capacity.

1. Unconscious Incompetence: You don’t know that you don’t know. Say you’re a child and you don’t know that you don’t how to ride a bike. The thought of riding a bike hasn’t even entered your mind.

2. Conscious Incompetence: You know that you don’t know. You might have figured out that you want to ride a bike but you don’t quite know how to go about doing it.

3. Conscious Competence: You can do it but you have to have conscious attention on it. You can ride a bike, but it requires all your concentration to make sure you are balanced, pedaling at the right speed, making sure the handle bars are straight, and so forth.

4. Unconscious Competence: You’re so good that it’s entirely automatic. How many of you need to focus on riding a bike now? You just do it. Unfortunately, if someone asked you to help with riding a bike, you couldn’t put it into words. This is one of the reasons if you want to learn something from someone else, not only does the other person have to be good at what you want to learn about–they have to be a good explainer, too. This is one of the reasons there are teachers who just can’t understand how you can’t understand what they’re trying to teach you.

How would you apply this model to learning how to drive? It’ll help you integrate this model into your mind if you do.

Resources:

Wikipedia: Four Stages of Competence

Businessballs: conscious competence learning model