Let's talk about Theodore Roosevelt for a second.
Back in 1876, before he was president of the United States,
before he grew his epic mustache,
that I sadly will never be able to equal,
he was just a freshman at Harvard University.
And as Edmund Morris points out in his biography,
Roosevelt had a ton of interests at the time.
Boxing, dance lessons, bodybuilding,
naturalism, and many, many more.
So many, in fact, that he had barely
any time to spend studying compared to his peers.
And yet Roosevelt excelled at Harvard.
During his freshman year he took seven courses
and out of those he earned honor grades in five of them.
So how exactly did he do that?
In the book Deep Work, the author Cal Newport
explains that Roosevelt would begin his scheduling
by considering the eight hours from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
He would then remove the time spent
in recitation and classes, his athletic training,
which was once a day, and lunch.
The fragments that remained were then considered
time dedicated exclusively to studying.
As noted, these fragments didn't usually
add up to a large number of total hours,
but he would get the most out of them
by working only on schoolwork during these periods,
and doing so with a blistering intensity.
To put that another way, Roosevelt used the time pressure
caused by his busy schedule to amplify his concentration.
And as a result, he spent far fewer hours
doing studying and homework than his peers,
but he still did really well in his classes.
And that's the overall goal here.
You clicked this video 'cause you wanna do homework faster,
but you also wanna do a good job of it.
You don't want to phone it in or just skip it altogether.
Of course, building an intense work ethic
like Teddy Roosevelt will definitely
get you part of the way there,
but there are also some more tactical decisions
and changes that you can make to the way you work
that are gonna help you crush
those homework assignments more quickly
and that's what I want to focus on in this video.
To begin, we're gonna look at something
called the hard-start jump-to-easy technique,
which is a test-taking strategy talked about
in the book, A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley.
To use this technique, essentially you look over
your test before you start and identify which problems
are difficult and which problems are easy.
Then you jump straight into one of the difficult ones.
But crucially, once you get stuck on that difficult problem,
you have to disengage and go to one of the easy ones.
Then after you've solved a few of the easy ones,
you can jump back and more often than not
you're gonna find the insights that weren't there before
are gonna come to the forefront in your mind
and you're gonna be able to solve that problem.
This technique works so well because
it engages both of your main modes of thinking,
your focused mode and your diffused mode.
And A Mind for Numbers spends a lot of time
talking about both of these modes
and explaining why using both of them
is crucial for solving tough problems.
To go through it really quickly,
the focused mode is what you use
when you directly concentrate on a problem
and you try to work through it logically.
And this is the state of mind
that you start in with pretty much any problem,
whether it's solving a calculus equation
or trying to flank your enemy team in Overwatch.
By contrast, Oakley says that
diffuse-mode thinking is what happens
when you relax your attention
and just let your mind wander.
This relaxation can allow different areas of the brain
to hook up and return valuable insights.
And she goes on to note that,
diffuse-mode insights often flow from preliminary thinking
that's been done in the focused mode.
So really it's this back and forth interplay
between the focused mode and the diffuse mode
that makes this technique so powerful
for solving tough problems.
But it also comes with an additional benefit
in that it helps you use your time effectively,
which is really important in a test
when you have a limited amount of time,
but it also can apply to your homework.
Yes, you don't have a limited amount of time per se
with your homework assignments,
but you do wanna get them done faster
and this technique can do that for you.
I do have one little caveat though.
With your homework, spend a little bit more time
trying to solve a tough problem once you get stuck.
Don't disengage after one or two minutes.
My reason for this is that with a test,
you should ideally have those concepts
buried somewhere in the back of your mind.
But with your homework, that's really the training ground
where you're gonna build that initial understanding
of those core concepts.
So in that situation, spend a little bit more time
wrestling with those problems before stepping away
and letting the diffuse mode take over.
My next tip is something that you should apply
while you're in class.
And it's gonna especially useful
for when you're taking math classes,
or physics classes, or really any kind of class
where you're applying concepts
and trying to solve complex problems.
When your professor or your teacher
is going through an example problem on the board
or guiding you through the process,
make sure that you're writing down
every single step of that example problem.
This is incredibly important to do
because there is a huge gap between being able
to follow along with what someone else is doing
and understand it and being able to do it on your own.
And you probably could think of many time in the past
where you've gone through example problems in class,
your professor is guiding you through them
and you understand everything,
but then you come to your homework later on,
it's using the same exact concepts, but then you're stuck.
Now I know that I used to get really frustrated
in these kind of situations,
but it's just a reality of the skill-building process.
It's just like watching somebody do a skateboard trick
and trying to do it on your own.
You have to build that muscle memory
and it takes a long time and a lot of deliberate practice.
So think of those example problems in your notes
as the equivalent to having like a YouTube video
of someone doing a kick flip.
The more camera angles you have
of that person doing the kick flip,
the more easily you'll be able to see
what's going on and what you're doing wrong.
It's the same story with your notes.
If you have a one-for-one representation
of exactly what the professor did on the board,
you're gonna be able to go line by line
through it and see exactly where you are confused.
And don't just stop at those example problems themselves.
While you're in class, for each step in the problem,
ask yourself, do I truly understand what's going on here?
And if you don't, simply draw a little arrow
and make a little note in the margins that explains it
so you'll know later why you're trying to implement it.
Finally, one additional tip for finishing
those homework assignments more quickly
is to try doing your homework at school.
When I was in college, I would occasionally
have semesters where there was like
a one to two hour gap between my last class
of the day and the class that came before it.
And this actually turned out to be a pretty good situation
because I was basically gonna stay on campus
for those two hours, I wasn't gonna go home.
And really the only thing to do was my homework.
Now having that gap of time where I had
to be to class within two hours
created a little bit of time pressure
that made me work more efficiently,
but also being on campus,
I was in the right context to do the work,
because I don't know about you,
but when I come home, the last thing I wanna do is work.
This is the complete wrong context for it.
This is where my bed is, where my video games are,
where my kitchen is, there's all sorts
of different things that I want to be doing.
But at school it's a totally different story.
Now maybe you are different.
Maybe you do like to work at home.
And if that's the case,
I do have one additional tip for you.
Instead of doing your entire homework assignment at school,
take some time as soon as you can after class
to simply preview your assignments.
When I was writing the script for this video,
I talked with my friend, Martin, and I asked him,
"What caused you to spend more time
"on homework than you would have liked?"
And he said the main thing was that
he had to spend a ton of time
trying to re-familiarize himself
with the requirements of the assignment,
figuring out all the places in his textbooks
and notes that he had to reference,
and it just took a lot of time to set up
and it would demotivate him.
Now if you wanna cut down that lag time,
then as soon as you can after class,
spend just a few minutes going through
the details of the assignment.
Mentally note the concepts that are gonna be covered
and then note where in your textbook and your notes
that you're going to need to reference.
And if you want to take this a step further,
you can actually get these little plastic
sticky book notes and you can go to those spots
in your notes, mark them,
so that way when you come home
and start working on your assignment,
you can easily turn right to the exact page.
Now once you've mastered the art
of finishing your homework assignments quickly,
the next challenge is deciding what to do
with all the time you've gained.
And of course, you could spend some of that time
playing Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle,
which is exactly what I'm gonna go do
after I finish filming this video.
But you might also dedicate a portion of that time
to building a skill that you've always wanted to learn,
like learning how to edit videos
or design graphics or build iPhone apps.
And if you want to build that skill quickly,
just like you finished those homework assignments quickly,
then a great place to start learning is over at Skillshare.
This week I want to highlight
one of the newest courses on Skillshare,
which is Phil Ebiner's complete
beginners course on Adobe Photoshop.
Now I am not much of a photographer,
but as a YouTuber, I've had to learn
the ins and outs of Photoshop to create my thumbnails.
And you might think that making a thumbnail
is pretty easy, but for me at least,
it's actually a pretty complicated process
to get something that really stands out
on the YouTube home page.
After I've got the picture I want to use,
I have to cut myself out of the background cleanly,
use the selection and masking tools,
I have to add a colored background
and set its blending mode,
and then I have to add shapes and text.
And these are are skills that took me
quite a while to learn, but they are also all skills
that are covered comprehensively in Phil's course.
So if you're a budding YouTuber
and you want to improve the graphic design on your channel,
which I can tell you from personal experience matters a lot,
or if you're just a photographer and you wanna learn how
to correctly color grade your photos,
you can take that course and amp your skills really quickly.
And if there's something else you want to learn,
then Skillshare's library of over 17,000
hands-on practical courses
is almost guaranteed to have you covered.
Membership on Skillshare starts at about 10 bucks a month,
which is right around the cost of two lattes,
though I have checked and sadly
they don't take payment in lattes,
but the first 500 people that go down
in the description below and click that link
will get a two month free trial of unlimited learning,
so definitely go check it out.
A big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video
and helping to support this channel.
And as always, thank you guys so much for watching.
Now if you have something I didn't mention in this video
that would be helpful to other people,
definitely go leave it in the comments below
and give this video a like if you liked it,
and if you didn't, you know what to do.
Otherwise, you can subscribe right there
for new videos every single week,
or you can go right there to get a free copy
of my book on earning better grades.
You should also check out this week's podcast episode
where we talk about 10 essential life skills
that every student should know.
This is one of my favorite recent episodes,
so definitely go give it a listen,
or you can find another video on this channel
by clicking right there.
Thanks so much for watching and I will see ya next week.