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.

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

This is a complete different point than waking up. This post will focus on how to get awake when you woke up already. You know that slow morning feeling right? Overslept while you have a test? You need to get awake instantly? Here are some tips to get awake.

6 tips to get awake when you woke up.

1. Illuminate yourself. Open the curtains, turn on the light. We have a biological clock which is triggered by light, use it! Get light in your eyes, let your biological clock know that the day has begun!
2. Coffee! The most easy way. Put off your alarm and put on your coffee machine. Caffeine is the most easy way to wake up right-away. Drink some coffee, be awake.
3. Sing a song. When you put on your favorite number right when you woke up, you might sing along, dance along and act crazy. This behavior will arouse the secretion of adrenalin, which makes you alert and awake. Don’t feel ashamed, sing out loud and you will get awake!
4. Eat sugar. Sugar awakes you. Eat something with sugar in it, make a sandwich with peanut butter and sugar (yucks? No, it’s delicious) and get awake!
5. Get in the cold shower. The moment you step into the cold shower, you will get a great adrenalin rush and you are awake. Not a nice feeling, but it works.
6. All of the above. Wake up, open curtains, put on coffee machine, put sugar in coffee, put your favorite song on and sing in the shower. If this doesn’t wake you, you probably need more sleep!

Getting up is one thing, getting awake is another one. I hope this will help you in the future to get awake.

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

You’ve read the powernap article, and you are enthusiast. You think of when you need it and you have only one conclusion, at college. When you are tired and you just need that short nap to start studying again. But that ain’t possible! Or is it?

I think it is. Some people will laugh as they read this, but I do powernapping at our library. And it works great. Jeaulous? Wanna do it also? Here some tips.

• Find a quiet spot. We have little cabinets in the library, with a door you can close. You won’t get disturbed in there, so you can take a nap. There are enough quiet places at your school, I am sure. When you don’t know any place, just go to the toilet. You can nap over there, it isn’t comfortable, but it works!
• Make the nap really short. Research has been showing that you shouldn’t nap longer than 20 minutes, because it will affect your night sleep. So, only sleep for ten minutes, because that is the optimum. Sleep for 10 minutes, wake up, get back and nobody has been missing you!
• Put your hands in your arms. You don’t need to have a quiet spot for yourself. When you are in the library, with a lot of people around you, you can just lay your head in your arms and sleep for ten minutes. Tell you neighbour to wake you after 15 minutes, he won’t mind. Nobody can tell you are sleeping and you have your powernap!

Powernapping is even at college not that hard. Just do it, find yourself a nice quiet place, have a short nap and enjoy!

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

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.

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

Having a hard time keeping up with what the prof is saying in a lecture? And after reading about the awesome Cornell Notes you probably want to write everything down. But you cannot keep up, so you cannot write anything down and you cannot learn anything from that lecture! Stress stress stress.

There must be a way right? To keep writing everything down the prof is saying and to pay attention. And lucky you, there is. All it takes is a little (really a little) creativity and 3 minutes after the lecture.

How to keep up with your notes in a lecture
When you are sitting at a lecture, writing down the material your teacher is covering, find little abbreviations (shortcuts, however you wanna call it) to write down. For instance, if the teacher is talking about cardiac heart failure, you probably don’t want to write down that word all the time, so you write CHF instead of the long word Cardiac Heart Failure.

Isn’t this obvious? Yes it is. But nobody is using it in a smart way. When you are jotting down notes, make sure you abbreviate a lot. Have a lot of abbreviations for words, so you can write faster and pay more attention. But! Make sure what these abbreviations mean. You can write down the word you are going to write down a lot one time completely and write the abbreviation after it (e.g. Cardiac heart failure (CHF)). This can be done in class, so you don’t need the extra 3 minutes after class. But you can also revise your notes (as you are already doing probably because of your Cornell Note Taking) and write down the abbreviations at the top of your paper. You will have a short, cool list on top of your notes with a couple of abbreviations. Awesomeeee!

Quick tip for the people who take notes with their laptop
When you have your laptop to take notes on, install WordPilot (TextExpander for Mac) and fill in a couple of words ahead. What this little application does is making you able to write only the abbreviation, but the full word will appear in your word document. This is how I answer my email 5 times faster. Instead of writing ‘Kind regards, Stefan Knapen, http://StudySuccessful.com, http://StefanKnapen.com, http://twitter.com/StefanSSF’ I just write down ‘kr’ and it will expand that abbreviation to the whole sentence.

Put words in ahead of a lecture. If it is about microfinance, fill in words like ‘mf = microfinance’, ‘pfia = poor farmers in Africa’. You are creative enough to find you own abbreviations!

Good luck, have fun, write faster.

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

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!

It’s friday! So time for a couple of quick links. You have probably a couple of college sites in your Google Reader already (if you haven’t check my post on 5 great college blogs), but have you seen these college blogs before? Relatively new, but making their way to the top soon. Click them, check them, subscribe to them.

• Collegethrive. Tips, advice and resources! Ran by Dan Northern, who had a guest post over here not that long ago!
• CampusByte. Study skills & New technology. Ran by Jay Willingham.
• Pre-med Hell. Rants of Neurotic Pre-Meds. A college blog devoted to pre-meds, pretty awesome!
• Discusscampus. College questions and answers. Not that much of a blog, but a site where you can ask questions and answer questions from others.

Heard about them before or a blog you miss over here? Share it in the comments!

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

Niels Gouman stated in my ebook Nine ways to get motivated for college that watching a video can be a great way to get motivated. He posted one youtube clip with it, which is simply fantastic. I’ve found 6 others. Watch them and get to work. Just do it!

Warhawk Matt Scott: ‘No excuses’

Take it to the next level

I’m not an athlete?

My better is better than your better

Awake

Michael Jordan: Failure

Chris Bryant

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

The hardest part of studying for a test is probably the distribution of your time. When are you going to study? Are you going to start early, start late? I have drawn three curves. You can see how talented I am with paint. On the X-axis there is the time. On the y-axis here is the amount of studying you do.

Curve A
Normally, students tend to fall in curve A. Only study when it is needed. Two weeks ahead of the test they understand they have to start to study, so they start. Study a little bit more over time, until your exam, then stop. Stop studying for a while and build up the amount of studying you do again. Does this works? To get good grades, yes. But to understand the material completely and be fully prepared? Probably not. And another bad thing about this curve is the cortisol level in your blood. When you are studying in this curve, you will have a lot of stress right before the test. You have to do a lot, you freak out about the amount of work you have to do, and you want to party your stress away after the test.

Curve B
This curve is how teachers tell you to study. Do a lot of work all the time, start studying extra hard right before the test and have a little bit of free time after the test. Then you have to study with the same amount of work again for a couple of weeks. This way is proven to be right, but let’s be honest: It’s not very fun. It’s boring and you will have to work hard almost all the time. Works great, but again, it won’t work to people who have going on more in their life. This is the way as Scott H Young described in my ebook

Curve C
This curve is how athletes train, they train and they train until they train very hard and then they reduce their amount of training right before the big game. This is called tapering. This gives the sport guy a chance to peak at the point they need to peak. The rest right before the game will make him extra alert, his muscles extra strong and he will get the most out of his training. What if we do this at the university? What if we stop being either unsuccessful with curve A or bored with curve B and start being more like a sport guy. We need to peak at the test right? Why don’t we give our brains the chance to get some rest, to have a peak.

These three curves stand for different types of studying before a test. We are in curve A, according to our teachers we should be in curve B, but shouldn’t we be in curve C? Think with me please, in which curve should we be? How do we have to study for a test? After I showed these curves to a friend he came up with the perfect curve, which I will explain next week!

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

Everybody knows that you can learn a lot from a lecture. At least, that is what the teachers want you to believe. Attend every lecture, just keep listening and you won’t have to study anymore. A bunch of bullshit, according to me. According to me, there are 3 factors which makes it worth to go to a lecture.

The 3 factors that determine if the lecture is worth attending

1. Is the material hard enough? If the teacher is in front of class talking about things you already know, why should you spend another hour listening to him? You can spend your time with studying material you don’t understand and becoming way better than your peers. Look at last week, how many lectures did you attend which probably weren’t that useful because you already knew the material covered? If this is more than 2 or 3 hours, you may start considering skipping the lecture before it has even started, with only looking at the subject. When you already understand the venous vein function curve already, why would you spend another hour on it?
2. Did you prepare the lecture good enough? In a lot of cases, you don’t have to prepare the lecture, but you have to have some basic knowledge to understand what the professor is saying. If you don’t understand what he or she is saying at all, you will just come home with a head ache and the will to drop out of college right away. Probably not that good of a motivator, right?
3. Is the professor good enough? This is the most important factor for me. Is the professor worth listening to? This sounds more worse than I mean it. What I mean is: is the man or woman able to speak in front of a class? I have seen teacher who kept staring to the monitor and repeating what the slides said. We are in college know, we are paying a lot of money (or others are doing it for us) and that is why I expect to have good (if not very good) speakers in front of me, explaining things where they know a lot about. And when the teacher isn’t good, I won’t be able to listen just because I am frustrated about the fact that the money is not well spend. You probably have lectures from the same professor a couple of times in the semester, so if you already know that that person shouldn’t be in front of class and you know you can’t stand that, you probably shouldn’t go at all.

These are the three factors that determine if the lecture is worth attending or not, these are external factors which you probably cannot influent that much (except the second). But there are also reasons to not go to a lecture because of you.

The 3 factors from within which determine whether you should go or not

1. Are you awake. I’ve discussed this one in the first chapter of my free ebook, so I won’t get that deep on this one. But it is really important to be awake during the lecture, you should be able to understand what the professor is saying and to process the material he is covering. A lecture is important and a lecture can cause you to not read the study material anymore because you already know it, but you should be paying attention at the lecture, which isn’t possible when you are sleeping, right?
2. Are you able to concentrate? Do you have a clear mind? Do you have a lot of things going on which distract you from the talking voice in front of class? Are you able to pay attention? For instance, if one of your best friends has lost a relative just the other day, you probably cannot pay attention because you are thinking about him/her. This doesn’t make the lecture worth going to, you may need to go to your friend in stead..
3. Are you in the mood to be a knowledge sucking sponge? Cause if you aren’t, will the time be spend useful? When you are not in the mood at all, you probably end up drawing flowers or talking to friends, not that effective. You need to be motivated and in a certain mood to suck up all the knowledge the professor is spreading over you!

I know, not a lot of people will tell you to skip a lecture, I am also not a big fan of not attending them. But look at the last couple of weeks, how many hours have you spend at lectures which you could use in a better way? I know people who don’t go to lectures at all but pass with great marks. You may have a better use for your own time, also this is a part of time management.

Find out which lecture you probably shouldn’t attend and have peace with it. So if you are not going, read the chapter in the book a little bit better, talk to your friends about what they have learned, how does this work for you? Let me know.

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