What if you have to finish your thesis in two months. Here you are, in the summer, seeing everybody having fun, everybody enjoying the hot weather, their holiday, their free time. But you have to write a thesis. This can be a problem and the deadline is only two months away right? But on the other hand, the deadline is ONLY two months away!

Constant fear
Working with a deadline will give you a constant fear, because you always have the deadline in mind. Of course, having a deadline is the best reason for procrastination, you have two months left, so why start now if you can also start tomorrow! I’ve written two articles on procrastination, why people put things off. The conventional theory is because it is just human nature, we want to wait till the very end of the deadline, so we have to work really hard to get the job done. What I think, and I call that the New Theory, is that people just LOVE procrastination, for three reasons:

1. The moment itself – you will do things that you like more
2. The satisfying feeling afterwards – You will feel more satisfied if you did a job in a short amount of time.
3. You tell everyone – People will notice it and admire you of how fast you can do something.

Admit that you love procrastination and you’ve solved 50% of the problem. Now just don’t give in, just do the job you have to do.

Parkinson’s law
Only two months left and you are starting to freak out? There is so much to do in so little time? Let me tell you one thing, it isn’t that bad at all. And that is because of Parkinson’s law. Parkinson’s law says: ‘Work expands with the amount of time you give it.‘ This means that if you have 2 hours to make a presentation instead of 1, you will make a great presentation, with cool pictures. A good looking presentation. But if you have only 1 hour, the presentation will still be good, but it won’t have the best lay-out ever. A bad thing? Probably not, you’ve saved 50% of your time.

This is the same with your thesis you need to write. You don’t have a lot of time left anymore, but that isn’t a bad thing, basicly because you can now focus on the core content! What really matters to your thesis instead of all the layout tweaks and options.

80/20 principle
And that brings us to the 80/20 principle. If you look at your thesis at a whole project, you will notice that 80% of your time will be in 20% of your thesis, like lay-out. You are probably working a lot on the lay-out, because you find it really important to make that very good. But you should try to use your time and effort for the things that really matter, the important 80%. This means you should try to eliminate things out of the 20% from above. If that 20% is taking up so much of your time, try to find ways of eliminating it. Maybe you can outsource the lay-out to your nephew who is really into graphics and everything. Locate where 80% of your time is going to and see if that is only 20% of the project you are working on. If so, try to eliminate that 20% or find ways to reduce the amount of work what it takes.

Get in the flow and get sh*t done!
Everything what is left now is YOU writing the thesis. Do it, stop procrastinating and get to work. Wake up early, take a shower and have a good breakfast. Make a cup of coffee for yourself and just start writing. Shut everything else down, just write. Within 15 minutes you will be in the flow and you will get sh*t done. If you have problems with starting to write, just do it. Write and after 15 minutes you will be fine. Before you stop writing, look over the first 15 minutes of writing and edit it and it will be as good as the rest again. Have a routine, set up rituals. Schedule 6 hours a day for writing, for a week long. And at the end of the week, look back at what you have done and be satisfied with what you have accomplished, you can rest in the weekends again. Monday again? Start writing again. Your thesis will get shape and you will be finished, in time, without fear and with a great end product! Good luck.

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This is a guest post by Lauren, also want to send in a guest post? Visit the contact page!

Whenever I go to a bar or other social gathering place in which it is typical to be approached by men, I am aghast at how terrible some guys are at hitting on girls. Freud and just about every man have wondered since the beginning of time, “What do women want?” Well I’m here to clear up some things and tell you what the deal is, if only to put an end to the seemingly unstoppable tsunami of cheesy pick-up lines and desperate attempts made by men everywhere.

1. Don’t be so transparent. To me, the biggest turn off is obvious intentions. If you approach a woman with a cheesy compliment, or if you make it apparent that you are trying to hit on her, then your chances of success plummet. Trust me.
2. Be interesting. Some men think that if they’ve got good looks, they don’t even have to try. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. While it is not advisable to try too hard, the best way to approach a girl is with an interesting conversation topic. Don’t come off as conceited, but don’t just stand there either.
3. Listening is sexy. Once you’ve started a conversation, it is imperative that you ask a girl what she thinks, and then you actually have to listen. There’s nothing sexier than a guy who listens and responds.
4. Touch, but be subtle about it. Women really like being touched. And when I say “touch”, I don’t mean “grope”. The gentle shoulder graze, or lightly tapping the girl’s knee when making a point in conversation–these are all great, indirect ways of making physical contact without being creepy about it.
5. Teasing always works. Once you’ve made some headway in terms of conversation, humor is the best way to make women comfortable. Making fun of yourself and gently making fun of the girl are great flirting strategies. Girls love a guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Even though it may seem slightly counterintuitive, teasing a girl without insulting her is a legitimate way to become intimate with someone quickly.
6. Finally, don’t try so hard. Many enterprising young men approach women with the ultimate objective of–to use the old euphemism–”scoring”. While this can be a noble goal in and of itself, putting on the goal-scoring blinders can inadvertently give you tunnel vision to such an extreme extent that you’ll end up failing. If you go in with the simple goal of having pleasant conversation, you’ll at the very least leave with a solid acquaintance, perhaps even a long-term friendship. And, who knows–if you don’t try so hard, you may just end up achieving some sort of physical gratification.

Now of course, these are just basic tips, and they aren’t meant to be read as a manifesto on approaching every single woman in existence. Successfully approaching a woman is highly contextual, so different situations will call for different strategies. These tips, however, are just general guidelines that will hopefully help you get the foot in the door. The best advice I can offer you is pretty simple–be confident, and be kind.

This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99[at]gmail[dot]com.

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The end is near, my fellow students! At least of this academic year. Finals are right in front of us which makes it almost time to close up a little bit, to end the academic year.

Ending the academic year.
What is next? What do you need to do before you go back to your parents’ place?

• Clean up! Everything around you is probably a mess. You need to clean up, clean your room, but also clean your head. Empty it, write down. Furthermore, leftover to-do lists. Do you need to pay some bills? Do you still need to return a book to the library? Meet with a couple of friends before you leave? Gather all your to-do’s and write them down on a big ‘Before I leave To-Do list’. In that way, you will have a view on what you need to do before you take the plane back home!
• Go back to your parents. You will live with your parents for a couple of months again. How is that going to be? On one side, they will take care of you. This means good food and clean clothes again! But on the other side, they will keep an eye on you and you will notice. You can’t just stay away from home, you need to inform your parents. Make sure you get in the state of mind again, or you will definitly clash with your makers!
• Set a goal for the summer. I will explain this one later this week. But for now. Make sure you do something with the big amount of free time you are going to get. Spending 3 weeks on a couch isn’t very nice, not for yourself, not for others. Enjoy your free time, but make it count also!

With this post, I would also like to anounce that I am going to have a new schedule for the summer. Instead of 3 posts, Monday, Wednesday and Friday I will post twice a week. Probably on Tuesday and Thursday. Just because there isn’t much to write about in the summer on a college blog! After the summer I will take back my normal schedule of 3 posts a week!

Happy summer everybody.

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Certain people seem to do a lot of great things, even exceptional things. And these are always the same people. Is there a reason for this focusses on certain people with certain actions? Why are always the same people doing the cool stuff and the rest mediocre things?

Because they have higher standards. Doing cool things all the time is normal to them, normal as doing normal things is to you. Awesome things are just the cool things you do every once in a while, they are just cool to them, not awesome.

An example. Peter is a finance major, aside from his major, Peter is in an organisation who improves the financial situation of people in third world countries with micro-finance. And on top of all of this, Peter is president in the executive board of an international congress about microfinance with over 700 visitors! So he is doing really cool things and on top of it an AWESOME thing! How is this possible?

The awesome thing Peter is doing isn’t awesome anymore according to him, it is just cool. Improving the financial situation of people in third world countries is just something he does, just normal. His standard is way higher than ours.

And that is the key. You need to higher your standard in order to do awesome things. Doing cool things is one thing, but when you are doing a lot of cool things, your standard will be higher and the cool things you do are just normal and everyday stuff!

It is like you are driving with 35 mph all the time, 70 mph seems very fast. But if 65 mph is your normal speed, 70 doesn’t seems that fast at all!

How to higher your standards

1. Find some cool things to do. Are you now in a committee? In some sort of organisation? And that is cool? Do something more and make it normal. When you are in three different committees, the one you did isn’t cool any more, because it is just an average thing to do, just another committee.
2. Shift your mindset. You will notice that your mindset is shifting, cool isn’t cool like two years ago. You are doing things right now which were cool back then, but normal nowadays.
3. Find new cool things! A committee is just normal now, what about a daily/executive board? That is cool, right?

Shall I answer the last question for you? An executive board, that is cool right? No it isn’t. It is f***ing AWESOME. You only shifted your mindset in such a way that doing something awesome is just cool now.

I find this idea hard to write down, I hope you understand the general idea I try to transfer to you. In order to do awesome things, cool should be your new standard. Higher your standards to higher the results of your everyday activities.

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I couldn’t prevent to overhear a conversation of two guys in the train today. They were talking about side jobs for students and said something about the perfect side job. It was a job were a guy didn’t do anything. Just sit there, hang out a little bit. Is that really a nice side job? What do you wanna do when you are making money?

What makes a good student side job?
This view is my view. How I see it and I am really curious about what you think.

• Interesting. A nice side job should be interesting, you need to get up every day and be interested in what you do.
• You can learn from it. Of course, I am some sort of wanting-to-be life-long-learner. So everything what I do needs to help me with that goal. A job? You are working like twelve hours a week, make it useful, make it something you can learn from!
• Well paid. Obvious, you are spending a fair amount of your student life to that job, make it worth it! Get paid well, make it worth your time.

Your opinion
What is your view on this? What kind of side jobs do you have? Share your thoughts in this little poll I have over here. I’m curious what you think about it, what we can learn from your experience.

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When you are helping, what do you do? Do you give the very, very best you can give? Are you doing everything to help the girl or guy you are going to help? Are you giving that little extra that they wouldn’t expect, but are really satisfied that they got it? Are you giving them a reason to give you a 10 instead of an 8? Are you worth that very 10?

In my post ‘Fight just one more round‘ I already discussed how training one more round can make the difference between good and excellent. I want to continu that path now, but not with training, but with helping people.

For example: The International Student Congress of Medical Sciences

I was in the organisation of the ISCOMS 2010 and had the chance to help a lot of people from all over the world. The ISCOMS is a student congress where biomedical students from all over the world can present their research and interact with other students from other universities and even other countries. And they all came to the beautiful time of Groningen, where I live.

These students needed the way to go somewhere and they couldn’t find the way. I went together with them to that place, guided them all the way. I could tell them the way (It is over there, good luck) but I chose to walk all the way with them and give them that little extra. That was really helpful for them and for me two! I learned more about their culture, more about their personalities. And after the congress I got a lot of positive feedback.

Another example. When we were in Volendam, a typical Dutch village where you can make pictures in Dutch outfits and eat our local specialties, I invited a guy from India to eat hering with me. And guess what, he did it, we ate hering together and it was great. Giving him a typical Dutch experience was great, for me and for him!

Giving the extra which makes the experience from good to awesome

That was giving them a little bit extra, to change their ‘good’ experience to an ‘awesome’ experience. And that is what you needed to ask yourself. Do you want to give the one you are helping the very best? Not fighting one more round, but helping one more round! Helping them all the way to where they need to go. Not solving their problem of course, but helping them really good.

Helping one another is nice, giving them your very best is awesome, both for you, as well as for the other one! Good luck.

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Last year, I wrote a little post on what to do after the exams. Pretty good list and you should really do a couple of things I described over there. Start a college blog and share it with me, I want to help you, always! Anyway, I found a couple of other things very useful to do this summer!

4 awesome things you can do this summer

1. Become an entrepreneur. Now is the time to start. Entrepreneuring is a cool thing to do and we are way too scared as students to start our own company. Not satisfied with what you boss at your side job is doing? Deliver the service yourself! For instance, when you are giving additional lessons to a couple of high school students, and you are having a contract, you will pay a lot of money to your boss, without having a reason to, just start for you own! Give the lessons from your own company and you get to keep all the money!
2. Become an intern somewhere! I don’t often recommend this, as you can get cool jobs which are payed also according to me. But with this economy, not a lot of people are hiring. But interning, that is something they can’t refuse! Become an intern for a couple of weeks and learn your ass off!
3. Get into the internet. The internet was huge, but it is getting even more huge. If you want to enter, now is the time. Spend this summer learning about all the possibilities internet has. Learn about social media, SEO, blogging and internet marketing. Learn how to use a computer and especially the internet, you will love it the rest of the year.
4. Live your dream. Now is the time. We have endless possibilities as young people right now. The internet gives us instant contact to everybody you want to contact. Interact with people, get things done and follow your dream. Awesomeness is awaiting.

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One of the key components in the way I manage my study load is speedreading. I can call myself a speedreader with an average speed of 600 words per minute.

When we look at our study load, what is the thing that takes up the most time? Where do you have to put a lot of time in when you are studying? Reading. Reading over 10 chapters of big, tough books isn’t rare in college. Reading over 200 pages in Medical Physiology is nothing new for a med school student. And how do most of the students handle this amount of work? By simply not doing it. They accept the fact they can’t read everything (which probably isn’t necessary) and just don’t read anything. They understand the material in another way, by reviewing notes, reading small chunks of material from their books and just not reading it.

With books over 80 euros.. I just don’t think that is a very smart idea. You pay 80 bucks for big books and you don’t read them? Why are those chapters assigned when you don’t have to read them actually? They probably are useful in one way or the other. Everything you don’t read, is probably useful as ‘interstitial material’. They support the key components as examples and a more in-depth view on the stuff covered. Not necessary, but certainly useful!

Regarding this, I decided to learn the art of speedreading. In that way, I don’t have to spend a lot of time reading the material, the money I spend on books is well-spend and I cover everything! Look at this piece of math:

A person who reads on the normal speed takes 9 hours to cover the reading assignments. The average student doesn’t read anything, but spend around 8 hours on understanding the material anyway. I read 2-3 times as fast as a normal person, so I need only 3 hours for reading. With taking notes during the reading, read parts again the total amount of time I need to understand the material is only 4-5 hours. That is only half of the time the average student needs to cover the material!

Keep this in mind when you are learning the precious skill of speedreading.

The best part of speedreading is that it doesn’t take a 400$ course which takes 3 days of practise. I first learned how to speedread reading ‘the 4-hour workweek’ by Timothy Ferriss (recommended for everybody interested in Lifestyle design, personal development and general productivity tricks). He explains early in his book what speedreading is like and he gives a little piece of training. You don’t need to buy his book in order to learn speedreading, he has published the article on his blog as well! Please read it here, so I don’t need to copy everything (which I just don’t like). The actual training is on his blog, that is the one you need to follow and practise!

The 3 most important tricks to speed up your reading

• Don’t read out loud in your head. I hope you understand this sentence. When you are reading, you are reading out loud, but in your head. This is really, really slowing down your reading. Especially because you don’t need it. You can read faster by stop reading out loud.
• You need to know where you are when you are reading. Have your finger or pencil at the point of the sentence where you are. When you don’t do this, your eyes will go everywhere on the page, except the part you want to read. In order to keep focus, have your finger pointing at the way you are. Besides that, your finger can be a good way to have the same speed all the time!
• You don’t need the first two words and the last two words of a sentence to understand the sentence. Just stop reading them, skip the outer two words, you will see them anyway in your eye-corners, so you are going to understand the sentence anyway!

Keep those three tricks in mind when you are speedreading and you are already ahead of everybody else.

Speedreading is an active form of reading, so don’t think ‘speedreaders’ are speedreading all the time. When I grab a piece of fiction to just relax and enjoy the novel I read, I won’t be speedreading. When I am going to speedread, I will lay my book down on the table, sit straight with my head above the text. I will point my pencil at where I am and start speedreading. After half an hour I will take a short break and then I go on. Speedreading isn’t a thing you always do, it is a choice everytime again. ‘I am going to speedread now’ means that you are going to set the environment in such a way that I am able to speedread!

You don’t understand everything you read. A question I get a lot is ‘do you learn everything you read?’ No I don’t. And that is fine. When you have to read over 300 pages about the Dutch healthcare system, only 25 pages worth of words are actually important. So not understanding everything isn’t a bad thing! Accept the fact. When you are afraid of missing key points, write the key points down when you are coming across them. Make a short summary for yourself in order to understand the text you read.

My advice (or advice from a speedreader) right now is read Tim’s piece on his blog, grab an easy to read book and start practicing. Start speedreading right now. Keep in mind you don’t have to understand everything. You can better speedread something twice than reading it slow once. Repetition is the mother of wisdom.

And document what you are doing. How do you learn to speedread? There is written about it, but not a lot written about it, so keep documenting your findings and keep sharing them!

Have you download the free ebook on motivation already? Download ‘Nine ways to get motivated for college’ from Stefan Knapen now!

So I was in the train last weekend. All of the sudden a girl came in my coupe, nothing special here. That girl had black hair, a fancy colored purse and a big headphone on her head. Still nothing special, just another emo-kid. But that girl had a nose ring in her nose, yes the things cow have. That girl had actually pierced her nose (yes, the septum part, not a nostril) and put a ring through it. I was thinking: ‘Well, what would be that like?’ And of course, as I most of the times think; how is that going to make you a better person and a better student. Then I got it, I understood it. The girl was being remarkable as nobody was, she was doing something everybody wonders about how that feels, she was being unique, authentic. Maybe we have to start wearing our own nose ring to become a better student?

I don’t wanna pierce my nose!
Obvious, me neither. I don’t ask you to pierce your nose. But I do ask you to take a little bit of action, to change the way you are and think. If you want to become successful, want to have a good job, what do you do? Start being normal? Not really. You need to stand out from the crowd, be unique. How do you do that? By joining a club? By getting good grades? Again, not really. When you get good grades, you become good, but you won’t become remarkable.. When you join a club, you still aren’t remarkable, you’ll just be somebody who managed to do a club besides your major, nothing new there, there have been thousands before you.

Being remarkable asks for remarkable acts. If we really want to stand out from the crowd, you need to do something what makes you stand out of the crowd. Don’t just do things other people could also do, find something in which you are already good and improve that. You are a good speaker? Develop your skills more and become a stand-up artist. You are good at school? Improve and become even better. You aren’t remarkable with A’s, you are remarkable with A+’s and extracurricular education. You are good at writing? Improve your writing and publish a book while you are in school! Being a good speaker is nice, but being a remarkable speaker is awesome. When you have been at big events as a speaker already, your potential bosses won’t ignore you. Being a A-student is cool, but being a A+ student is even better. There are more A students, but there are only a few A+ students and when you have a double major and still manage to get A’s, you are being remarkable. Writing for a school paper is great, but you are not alone, when you actually publish a book, you will get noticed!

Remarkable isn’t the same as very good. Being remarkable is the opposite of very good, it is different than everybody else, but in a way that people can only applaud you for what you do. If we want to stand out from the crowd, we don’t want to be very good, more people are very good, being remarkable is something completely different, remarkability is something which others can only dream of, which others can only try to be.

Start pursuing your goals, start being remarkable. Find what you are good at and improve that even more. You are good now, you want to become very good and eventually remarkable.

Let’s go to a piercing shop and get a nose ring, let’s start being remarkable.

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This could be one of the most important posts you have read about goal-setting in a long time. That is why I ask for a little bit coorperation! Think about the last time you were setting a goal for yourself. You probably have one right now. What is that goal? What kind of a long-term goal do you have right now? Write that down, right now, before you read any further. I will add a nice picture of a thesaurus (and a real dinosaur) here, so you don’t know yet why you have to write it down!

Alright, done? I’ll bet you have written down anything like: Exercise more/Study more/Eat healthier/Spend time with family more/become leaner/play less video games.
This means not a clear goal, just a vague discription. If this is correct, read on. If you don’t have a vague goal, you can skip this post.

What is the problem with a vague goal?
What’s wrong? Everything. When you are writing a goal down, and it isn’t concrete, you can never control it. You can never look back at the week and ask yourself ‘Did I exercise more?’ because you can always answer with yes! ‘Yes, I’ve walked to class instead of taking the car’. So what? That is exercising more, but not nearly enough. ‘I didn’t took that pizza slice the other day.’ Ok, but what did you take? If you don’t have anything you can control, it won’t work!

The other thing is that you will tell people about your goal (‘I want to study more’), but they can’t control you! When they are asking you: ‘Did you study enough this week?’ You can say: ‘Yeah, I’ve been paying attention at the lecture monday.’ ‘But you haven’t studied chapter 5?’ ‘No, but I did study more because I have been paying attention, right?’ Foolish.

Start defining your goals
Stop with the vague goals and start defining it in hard number you can control and get feedback on. ‘I want to exercise more’ becomes ‘I want to run 2 times a week’. ‘I want to study more’ becomes ‘I want to read 4 chapters a week’. ‘Eat healthier’ becomes ‘At least 4 meals with vegetables’ and so on. This makes your goal controlable. You can check yourself if you have completed the goal or not. Other can ask you whether you are doing good on the goal or not and they can help you.

Giving a good definition to a goal isn’t easy, but it makes completing the goal way easier. Take a little bit of time right now to define your goal. Look at what you have written down and make the goal a nice goal with numbers and everything. Start execute it and have fun reaching and completing the goal!

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Have you download the free ebook on motivation already? Download ‘Nine ways to get motivated for college’ from Stefan Knapen now!