The Art of Stealth Studying: How To Earn a 4.0 With Only 1.0 Hours of Work

The problem I've always had with Cal Newport's advice is that it generally boils down to "if you're having problems in school, first get extremely organized and then it's a piece of cake!" Organization is something that is built up with a ton of practice and patience, and requires substantial motivation to set in place. For someone who's having trouble finding the motivation to keep going, that kind of advice is like saying "if you're so fat, just eat less and exercise more!"<p>If I had the capacity to actively pay attention at all times in every class and put in 1 hour of studying every day without fail, I'd have a 4.0 too. This is not a remarkable fact to me.

I'm not familiar with the author, but this reads like a 'how to lose twenty pounds with only an hour of exercise a week!' blurb.<p>I don't care if the advice itself is sound; without data and actual proof, its not worth much to me.

Advice like this (which itself is good) makes me wonder how much higher education is missing. If a 4.0 is possible with 1.0 hours of work, then surely the expectations of the students are far too low. Its great that its possible for a focused student to achieve a 4.0 with so little work, but doesn't that just mean that all the students should be achieving so much more?<p>Perhaps there should be a compulsory 101 course that just teaches studying skills (some places may do this already). It seems like that would boost the overall gain from the education experience.

The reality is work is quite easy at college if you have the maturity to handle your independence. I'm at a UC school double majoring in CS and Econ and I probably do less than an hour of studying to prepare for midterms and finals. I don't have a 4.0(although I am close), but I instead manage to put 6 or 7 courses into a quarter schedule. I think it really just comes down to doing the learning NOW. Don't understand it? Interrupt the teacher in a 100 person lecture hall. You're here for yourself, and the closer you can put your understanding of the material to when it is being taught, the better off you are.

He should add a spaced repetition system to his study plan. That way, you'll only need to study the material as needed as time goes by.<p>Wired have a good article on how spaced repetition work, the history of it, and so on: <a href="http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...</a>

I guess it works some places and not others.<p>Good luck at MIT getting through your PSETs in an hour a week- I don't care how smart you are.<p>Yet, I didn't go to MIT and I was definitely able to get by in some classes with good grades putting in significantly less effort that is generally said is needed in college.

I think this sort of approach depends heavily on how good your attention span is -- that is, can you focus deeply at will for a certain period of time, even if it's only ten minutes -- and how good your memory is.<p>I've spent two hours getting twenty minutes of work done because my mind wouldn't stop wandering, and my memory isn't so hot so I often need to review things. If I could focus like a laser and I had near-photographic memory, my life would be very different and this would sound possible to me. As it is, it doesn't.

I was sceptical as I read the title but it turns out I'm already practically doing the same thing. Only instead of using printed out study guides, I load them up on my smartphone. This way I never waste any time waiting for anyone or anything. I'm always learning something.<p>However, this doesn't work for every kind of material. It works fine for classes like History and Law but it doesn't work quite as well for Pure Mathematics. That all from self experience, though.

Cal Newport: I implore you to earn a 4.0 in CMU's 15-251 ... I dare you ...

I don't agree that this is some sort of foolproof way of getting out of doing any work studying, but I definitely think this method could be really useful.

So all the prep work involved with getting this "study sheet" done doesn't actually contribute to you learning? I call shenanigans!