Calvin Newport and Heavy Work Loads

Calvin Newport wrote about how to study if you are studying medicine where the work load is way heavier than any engineering discipline. He writes about the schedule of an A-grade student in medicine who wakes up at 6 in the morning and works two 3-hour stretches every day. Each 3-hour session is broken down into three 50-minute sessions with 10 minute breaks. A long relaxing gap after 3 hours includes lunch and may be a nap. 

Waking up really early might be a key. You need to get rid of your work as early as possible when there is little distraction.

Read Original Article: (LINK)

The Plight of the Pre-Med

Of all Study Hack readers, pre-meds are among the most skeptical. They tell me that although they like my philosophy of doing a small number of things well, this is impossible forthem. Their course load is too demanding. Filling most waking hours with work is unavoidable.

Then there’s Nathan.

Nathan is pre-med at the University of Texas at Austin, where he’s currently tackling the weed out courses that give this major its bad reputation. Here’s what makes Nathan interesting to me: he finishes his work by 5:30 pm every weekday.

In fact, he doesn’t just finish it, hedominates it.

“On the last chemistry test, the average score was a 57,” he told me recently. “I made a 98…My professors are fascinated by me.”

Naturally, I asked him to share a typical day’s schedule:

• 6:00 to 6:30: Breakfast/Shower
• 6:30 to 9:30: Study
• 9:30 to 10:20: Class
• 10:30 to 11:30: Study
• 11:30 to 12:30: Lunch
• 12:30 to 1:30: Class
• 1:30 to 2:30: Class
• 2:30 to 5:30: Study
• 5:30 to 11:00: Chill by meeting girls, explore the rolling hills and lakes of Austin, listen to live music, etc.

Here are two things I noticed about Nathan:

First, he’s not necessarily working less than his peers. His schedule includes 40 hours of studying per week, which is about right for his course load. He simply consolidates this work better.

“But he wakes up at 6,” you might complain, “I could never do that.”

Nathan’s out chasing girls before most students have even started their work for the day. Fair trade, if you ask me.

The second thing I noticed is that he’s obsessive about focus. He doesn’t just “study,” he works on the 7th floor of the engineering library: one of the most isolated spots on campus (see the above image). He works in 50 minutes chunks, and does 10 minutes of calisthenics, right there on the library floor, between every chunk. In three hours of this focused studying, he probably accomplishes more work than most pre-meds do in ten.

I don’t claim that Nathan represents a specific system that all pre-med students should follow. To me, he’s just a nice example of a more fundamental observation: the happiest students are those who take control of their academic experience, molding it to fit their own ideal of a life well-lived.