Top Ten Tips For Studying Independently

1. Study every day. Even if only for ten minutes. Especially when you are not motivated. DO IT EVERY DAY.

2. When you get stuck, look at other sources.

3. When you get stuck, step back for a second and then re-focus on it to see if it becomes clear. ASK FOR HELP. Email someone.

4. Write due dates up on a card and put them up in full view. The accountabilities should focus you when you are not alert.

5. Save your notes in an organised way so you can draw on them for revision.

6. Know and be flexible with the different study approaches. Case studies, flash cards, summary pages, short answer writing, and verbal discussion are examples of some different study approaches. 

7. Each subject is a new form of thinking. Focus on the formal requirements and the structural elements of that, to grasp the entire subject at once.

8. "How does this apply to my life?"; "How do I explain this to someone who isn't learning this?";  "How does the writer/teacher/tutor think differently from me and how can I emulate him?"; "How can I research and repeat this information best?"; "How can I falsify this statement in three different ways?" In other words, interrogate the knowledge for potential and possible meaning.

9. Create a completely clear desk with only the ONE THING you will be studying right now on it. Put everything else away.

10. Read all the assigned textbooks before the first class.

The Top 17 Most Practical Tools to Delay Gratification, Increase Self Control, and Develop Self-Discipline.

I read 25 articles and books on delaying gratification, increasing self-control, and developing self-discipline, and these are the most practical tools I have found. I submit them without any BS self-help talk or insincere cant. They work if you work them.

1. Daydream. 

People who let their minds wander from time to time are more likely to reconnect with goals and let go of stuff that is instantly gratifying. Tool: when you finish one task that consumed a lot of cognitive energy, take a mental break. Look away from your screen and stare off for a few moments to see where your thoughts take you.

2. Gratitude. 

Considering what you could appreciate and be grateful for is boring but it changes your brain for the rest of the day. Gratitude can lead you to value your future options more. Feeling thankful is strongly correlated with a person’s tendency to prefer waiting longer for better rewards.

That’s true even for material rewards, not just abstract or emotional ones. Practicing gratitude can even help subjects wait for more money as opposed to opting for less cash right away. Researchers found that it was the feeling of gratitude in particular, and not just any positive emotion, that made the difference.

3. Affirm the values that are important to you out loud. 

This makes it more likely that you are able to make choices that lead you to happiness and success. If in public, go to the disabled toilet and do it in the mirror.

4. Accept and Commit to a Valued Direction.

Acknowledge and make space for the temptation or distraction, then gently re-commit to a value and a direction you can go in.

5. Schedule rewards. 

Imagine you have within you a little child and find something that will thrill that child and give that to the child.

6. Distract yourself. 

When struggling with an impulse, replace tempting thoughts with fun thoughts. Think "fun thoughts". Think "soft thoughts". If possible, physically remove yourself from the situation, or at least keep the object of temptation out of sight. Keep your mind busy with enjoyable activities.

7. Reframe Your Thinking

Reappraise the object of temptation. We have a hot system and a cool system in the brain. The hot system makes temptation difficult: thoughts of stress or weakness or false ideas trigger this. The cool system is chilled, kind, calm, nurturing, beneficent and loving. Turn thoughts that evoke the hot part of the system into those that allow the cool part to flourish.

8. Relax already.

Researchers at the University of Illinois found that people primed with words suggesting action, such as "start," or "get on with it," were more likely than others to make impulsive decisions that undermine their long-term goals. In contrast, those primed to “rest” or “stop” found it easier to avoid impulsive decisions. This suggests that the relaxed state is better at inhibiting the pull of temptations. Pushing yourself to "move on" may result in more risky behavior or impulsive decisions. As a tool, you can simply hold in mind the word "relax", "calm", "cool", or "peace" for a few second and it will work.

9. Do some short play of exercise.

When it comes to self-control, short play of moderately intense exercise is all you need to boost your strength in this area. The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for self-control, and short assays of exercise result in increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex. 

8. Eat or drink something sweet.

Sugar is fuel for the brain. Acts of self-control reduce blood sugar levels. Low levels of sugar predict poor performance on self-control tasks and tests. Willpower can be restored by raising your blood sugar. Periodically replenishing glucose will strengthen your ability to maintain self-control. It seems that a small amount will produce the effect while a lot of sugar will just give you a sugar stone.

9. Pause before you make a decision

Even a delay for the space of a breath can profoundly improve your decision-making abilities. And as the old saying goes, “don’t make a permanent decision out of a temporary emotion.”

Disciplined people, when angry, sad, or frustrated, pause and make space for those emotions without acting on them. A few minutes or hours spent waiting for emotions to cool down is well-worth making a rational decision that plays out well in the long-run.

Especially in regards to money and relationships this is vital.

10. Meditate.

Meditation increases the reserve of willpower we have available and improves attention, focus, stress management, and self-awareness. It should be number one tool but few people do it.

11. Eat a more plant-based, less-processed diet. This makes energy more available to the brain and can improve willpower. It also make you feel better.

12. Use an activation tool. 

Don't wait for it to feel right. Most activation tools are people, feelings, or sayings. Common activation tools are: “Do it now”, “I am responsible”. A powerful activation tool is to simple count from 5 down to 1 and tell yourself you will take action when you get to zero. These prime the brain for action.

13. Forgive yourself and move forward by starting the day again.

Go back to the action where you were acting with discipline and start again. This may be literally climbing back into bed and starting the day again with the alarm and a coffee and water, or it may be arriving at work again. Just start again.

14. Design irregular breaks. 

Schedule mini-breaks into your work. Set a timer for your break so it doesn’t turn into a slacking off session. Schedule a reward for when you get back to work at the end of the break.

15. Do Something Small, Simple, Slow and Short. 

Some people are more self-disciplined than others. But self-discipline is a learned skill. When overwhelmed by a task, ask yourself “What is something I could do that is small, simple, short and slow?” and do that. 

16. Practice deliberately.

Before each practice time set a specific focus for where you would like to improve. This makes it easier to see your growth. Identify growth points by focusing on where you would benefit most from practicing. Ask yourself, “What would benefit me most to improve now? How would it improve your overall performance?”

17. Ask For Help.

People often make the mistake in thinking that reading or studying more should come first in building a skill. Books are seeds, but you need other peoples’ help to grow them.  You need practice with others to build skill. Coaching and instruction works because it allows for the immediate input of new growth focuses that could otherwise take months or years to discover.

Checklisting at the Start of the Day.

Eighty percent of the time, I prepare the day and have absolutely no idea what is the single most important thing I should do that day. 

I only spot this when I review the weeks afterward. In the moment it feels like I am doing the most important thing. But because there is no disciplined process of inquiring, deciding, and applying the most important thing, often I miss the mark. And by "often", I mean "mostly". 

With that in mind, I developed a checklist that provides a disciplined approach to preparing the day. The ideal result should be a feeling of simplicity and clarity, as well as distinctly better quality outcomes in daily and weekly life. To try it you will need a scratch pad, a pen, and a written list of goals.

Here it is, then: the checklist for planning the day.

1. Get out a scratch-pad (about the size of your palm) and pen.
2. Get out your written list of goals and written definite major purpose. 
3. Ask "Whats the one thing I could do today, such that by doing it, everything else because easier or unnecessary? Write the answer in your scratch-pad, without judgment about how good or bad it is.
4. Read your definite major purpose, aloud, to yourself. Write down up to three results you notice related to that purpose.
5. Read every single goal and write up to three results related to that purpose.
6. Double your numerical estimate of the results possible. Think big. 
7. Prioritize: Put an "IMP" to important ones.
8. Prioritize: Put an "URG" to urgent ones.
9. Prioritize: Top 20% gets one star "*"
10 Prioritize: Top 4% gets two stars "**"
11. Prioritize: Top 1% gets three stars "***"
12. Down the reverse side of the scratch pad write: Who, What, Where, When, How, Next Action.

10 Ideas for Studying Better at University Business Degrees.

1. It’s not personal. Accept that the best university business courses are run like business. The systems are not personal, but simply to improve non-personal outcomes.

2. It’s not about entrepreneurship. Accept that your fellow students will have nothing in common with you; most business students want corporate jobs. If you want to meet other business people, you will have to join professional groups such as Toastmasters or Business Network International.

3. Select your study buddies carefully. Most of the students will be children. Eighteen years of age is not what it used to be: most of your fellows will have little to no grasp of the subjects.

4. Knowledge asymmetry. Accept that you will automatically know a lot about some subjects, but know nothing about many others. Just because you are being patronised by subjects you already know a lot about, doesn’t mean you can’t learn life-changing information at the exact same time.

5. Treat it like a job. Reading, writing, and attending lectures and tutorials are subsets of thinking. The primary work is thinking. If you do not input good material, you won’t be able to think good thoughts. Take care of your inputs 80% of the time. This gives rise to a further tip:

6. Don’t worry about understanding. Just do the work.

7. Nobody has any interest in your understanding the work. They only have an interest in teaching the materials. Take responsibility for your own understanding after business hours.

8. Establish a schedule and stick to it based on general promises to yourself. For example “I will spend four hours studying today” does not specify when or how you will study, but establishes a basic structure by which to spend time that will allow flexibility as well as letting you keep your promise to yourself.

9. Deeply feel the body every single day. Instead of spinning the mind around endlessly and resorting to caffeine to stimulate it, rest the mind in the body by pursuing tactics like sports, yoga, dancing, or deep relaxation.

10. Nurture your motivation and your social life. These two areas can impinge on your learning process unless you keep them carefully in check. So balance your ego drives and social connections carefully.

Those are ten ideas for improving your business studies. Hopefully this helps you with your learning process, and helps you enjoy your studies more.

How to Read Textbooks

Here are the best and briefest tips for reading textbooks fast:

• Mindset is important. "The hardest part about learning from a textbook isn't grasping the material; it's staying motivated."
• Mindset. Generate the feeling that you really want to master the subject, from a personal interest. Put out of mind that you are preparing for a test. Some textbooks are friends, and some are foes. Be determined to get what you want out of it.
• Prepare. Do the reading before the lecture and tutorial. It won't make sense without it. Treat college like a job and have set reading hours in the library.
• Vocabulary. Learning the vocabulary - don't skip an undefined word.
• Understanding. Ask yourself, if uncertain, what does it really mean?
• Google for resources to fortify your understanding
• Read out loud anything you don't immediately grasp fully.
• Motivation. Do it every day.
• Motivation. Incentivize progress: plan something fun at the end of each chapter.
• Control your pacing. 
• Take notes only in a manner that will be organized for future reference, and don't take too many notes. Consider taking notes at the end of each section or chapter.
• Keep your breaks short. A good rule of thumb is 43 minutes study and 17 minutes rest and play.
• Notes. Nail concepts down by doing a few homework problems.

• Only write notes after finishing the section and then going back to write it all down.
• Re-read and review. After the lecture, go over the material and write a short summary and key questions. Check and confirm your understanding.
• Contemplate. Think about the concepts as you walk around and allow them to reveal themselves to you. 

5QRH - http://www.saddleback.edu/uploads/la/rl/powerpoints/revised%20sq5r%20version2.pdf
3QHR - http://www.studygs.net/texred2.htm

Rubber duck debugging - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

So you want to read Vasily Grossman's Soviet Novel 'Life and Fate'?

I first picked up Grossman's novel casually just under a year ago, during the springtime. I read 50 pages then quit.

I was baffled by the dry reportage, the lack of stage direction, and the strange alternations of bare journalistic prose with broad modern novel prose. And I didn't understand what the hell the novel was about.

Of course we all know what it's about, don't we? It's about the battle of Stalingrad, It's about the Shaposnikova family, It's about the Second World War!

But lacking the same context on these subjects as Grossman, the need for such a novel is simply not evident to the common reader. Honestly, my first impression was that I was reading a ripoff of Tolstoy's "War and Peace". And indeed there are moments when we feel a sort of de ja vous from that other, more sunlit world of Tolstoy's Napoleonic Russia. But while the connections between this novel and that other great one are fruitful, this is a separate and stand-alone novel. 

So why the need for "Life and Fate"?

Before I answer that question, let me just say that I like to read a Russian novel every winter here in Australia. Something about the heavy Russian soul makes me feel light and happy in the dark days of our tepid Australian cold season. I don't know why Russian literature cheers me up, but it does. Chekhov makes me feel smart and grateful to be alive. Dostoyevsky makes me laugh like a devil. Tolstoy makes me smile and feel astonished at the beauty of the world. And so on. They just help me. But this year I decided, "Why not go Soviet this winter? Why not read Grossman's 'Life and Fate'?"

The idea excited me. All the other Soviet literature had proven bad. Bulgakov's Master and Margarita novel had proven so disappointing, a kind of surreal Dostoyevsky time-travel pulp novel. Solzhenitsyn to be a poor man's Tolstoy, except where Tolstoy abdicated his genius to Christian cultism, Solzhenitsyn seems to have allowed politics to consume his art. And while Isaac Babel was a genius, he was as sad as a blood moon. Only Ivan Bunin had proven truly astonishing, and he was from the expat Russian crowd, less of a Soviet and more of a Russian democrat like Chekhov, and therefore of an earlier age. Of the lot of them, only Grossman remained unread. So I was naturally excited to read him.

But his novel seemed impenetrable.

I'd like, therefore, to present some short notes on reading Grossman's "Life and Fate", that enable the reader to gain entree to the novel most easily and quickly. Here they are:

Context. The Battle of Stalingrad is the biggest, baddest, and most horrible ground war in human history. And we know almost nothing about it here in the West. "Life and Fate" is about that.

Context, part two. The reality of the Eastern Front of World War Two is so alien to us here in the West, so impossible for us to imagine, that it needs in and of itself some indepth study. The single best summary and overview point is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series. Anything else you read or see on the subject will seriously repeat the same points Dan makes here, less clearly and less effectively. It's that good. So I recommend you purchase Dan's talk on the subject, which is astonishing in almost every respect.

Context, part three. If you want pictures and a slower pace of absorption of the full horror of this historical event, you can check out this youtube playlist, or this one, or this one. The reality of the Battle of Stalingrad is the reason why this book is worth reading, first and foremost. This aint a walk in the park. The best way to prepare is to understand that Grossman was at the battle and saw it all, and so he can write with authority on this event which is almost totally unknown to us.

Structure. "Life and Fate" is a trilogy or a novel in three parts. Part one is 306 pages and 71 chapters. Part two is 289 pages and 63 chapters. Part three is 256 pages and 61 chapters. The book therefore has a total of 195 chapters.

Pace. If you read two chapters a night, you'll be reading roughly one percent of the book each day and will be done in 100 days. That will take you from the dead of winter to the end of springtime, when you should instead have been reading something French. That frankly is too long a time to spend on a novel. On the other hand, if you read five chapters a night, you'll be reading it in 39 days, just over a month. Also (let's be real here) too long a time for a single novel. No; if you want to read this novel, and not give up from boredom or simple moral and emotional exhustion, it must be done in two weeks. This means you must read 14 chapters a day, in order to get through the novel at an efficient pace. Any slower than that, tl;dr.

Pace, part two. Wanna read this novel fast? If you read 28 chapters a day, then you will finish it within 7 days. But consider reading the rest of these notes before you finish and having the character list bookmarked. Just for an idea of how much that is: the first 28 chapters take up 128 pages. Wanna go crazy-fast? Just read 65 chapters a day and you'll be done in three days. But it's gonna hurt!

Names. Every group of chapters hangs on a name, not on a plot point. Once you know whose name the chapter hangs on, then you know what the chapter means. Chapters don't exist to advance the plot (which after all is minimal; there's a lot of story, certainly, but the plot is mostly internal and limited to feelings and ideas); the characters' inner experiences in and of themselves are the plot. If you don't know the difference between story and plot check out E.M.Forster's short book on Aspects of the Novel.

Style. It would be a misrepresentation to label Grossman a mere reporter. What Russian novelist could settle for reportage after "War and Peace" anyway? But the obnoxious Tolstoyan grand essay, in the style of the Enlightenment French essayist, was already old and funky in Tolstoy's day, and no longer suits modern needs. So instead Grossman opts for an oddly Germanic style of reflection, which, however, has a subject matter which reminds me more of Proust than of Thomas Mann! The chapter I have in mind is chapter 11, where Krymov is contemplating the passing of time. Notice how clipped and precise the diction is here? There is nothing French about it, and everything reflects the stolid prose of the Germans. And yet it is about the flowing and subtle matter of time, a matter which we are accustomed to reading about in the French, but never in the Russian. Only Tolstoy evinces an interest in time, and then it is only in the light of the eternal. So Grossman's prose remains a Tolstoy in pieces, a shattered Tolstoy benighted in an apocalyptic Napoleonic War Part Two.

Theme. It would be too much to say that Grossman enters his character's heads. He doesn't. With the soldiers especially we feel ourselves hovering on their shoulders like an angel of reportage, or focused on what their hands and eyes are focused on. Naturally a soldier should be outward-looking I suppose. But the interiority of these characters is so remote, so strained and elusive, that we could almost be dealing with machines rather than men. Is this the homo sovieticus we heard so much about in the high days of the Cold War? A man without feelings, without ideas, without connection, except to the State above and alone and to the State's instruments of war and peace? If this is homo sovieticus, then it is as a nightmare Tolstoy, an inversion of the sunny Russian world of Leo Tolstoy. Soviet collectivism is a dark thing, to be sure; but there is that which is unsaid in this prose that is a good deal darker than anything we can say; things about the feeling and the heart and mind of men living in such a system, which (thankfully) no words exist to tell of.

Names, part two. We had said that each chapter is hung on a name like a coat is hung on a peg. Let's examine which names are used as pegs. Chapters 1 to 6 in the German concentration camp are hung on the peg of Mostovskoy, ending (like music) on the tone of "Let's give the Germans a run for their money!" The following war chapters are hung on four Russian officers' names, General Chukyok (7), General Krylov (8), Lieutenant-General Zakharov (8), and then a beautiful sequence of front-line chapters (10-12) hung on the note of Krymov. In chapter 13 Chukyov on the front is visited by an historical figure, Yeremenko, and the two men dance around the obvious question of "the meaning of Stalingrad", without ever saying what's really on their minds. Then we follow one Major Byerozkin into the actual warzone for an inspection of the troops inside the fighting in chapter 14. Only then, after 14 harrowing chapters which would have lost the reader unaware of the historical events, do we finally meet Lyudmila Shaposhnikova, who provides the hook for the two chapters, 15 and 16. Finally, her son Tolya takes centerstage (albeit through her consciousness as a reader) with his letter in chapter 17. Each chapter is hung on a name like a coat on a peg, yes. But we can see from this that each name is an emotional key, the key of a bit of music, and so the entire discordant mess of this book resembles nothing so much as a discordant musical quartet by Shostakovich.

That ought to be enough to get you started. These notes present my path to grasping the novel as fully as I can, as a Westerner. I wish you all the best in reading this great Soviet novel, one of the very few to have survived this terrible period of history. 

UPDATE July 9th: I quit on this book just over half way. 
All the historical and cultural interest cannot defeat the bleakness and hopelessness of the scenario of Nazis versus Soviets. 
I have heard there is a virtue in not completing things that are of lower value. And this novel is definitely of lower value to me now.
And it's also true, I believe, that one cannot judge a novel unless one has read the whole thing, beginning, middle, and end, so I will refrain from passing judgment on this novel. But I will say that Grossman's novel is of lesser importance to me now, having read 418 pages of it.  Never have I given up a novel which interested and involved me. But - you know - life's too short. I may write an appreciation of what I have read so far.

Pixar's Brave and the Black Bear of Menopause.

Another day, another liberal chick flick.

Pixar's Brave is a beautifully drawn film about liberalism (that is, about the ability to choose our destiny without natural constraints). The ostensible plot is simple: the feminist teenage heroine chooses to remain single and unmarried even though she is obviously of an age to have sex and bear children...

...Never mind that she's living in a tribal society where her marriage options become grievously limited in a few years.

...Never mind that no contraception exists in Celtic Scotland to allow her the freedom to make this decision.

...And never mind that real life traditions don't actually dictate she marry the firstborn, but only to pick partners from her own class.

No, history, biology, and decency is all just so much subjective guff for this Pixarian Scotland. Why? Because feminism.

With respect to Jack London's book, we might call this film, "Call of the Uterus".

But while she is the cause of the plot, she is hardly the effective hero. No - that role is taken up by her mother. And while it's subtle, her mother's process is actually more realistic and relevant to our ageing society.

Because it's only when her mother, changed by her daughter's selfish actions into a black bear, has been returned to humanity that we see the grey lock on her forehead - the grey hairs of menopause. It's subtle, but very real. The mother's transition to maturity is the real story.

Please let me repeat this point in more detail. The real story is not one girl's foolish and ahistorical struggle against sensible social tradition and biological demands. No. The real story is about the black bear of menopause. The real story of Brave is the tale of a woman driven mad by biology and restored to sanity by her willingness to step out of the shadow of her immature husband the king and become her own individual. Pixar's Brave is a story about madness and maturity, not a tale of marriage and magic spells.

We all know something about the strong magic of menstruation. It's a far more real and solid magic than being turned into a black bear for two days. (Come to think of it, with its two day black bear of madness, the film can also be read as a allegory for a the female heroine's first period and the discovery of her sexual power.)

One of the tell-tales of this movie is the literal and metaphorical lack of blood in the film. The bloodlessness is not only in the oddly unnatural and adolescent violence, but in the almost complete lack of the color red until the rolling of the credits at the end. Here the unspoken red spot is rendered invisible and metaphorical, displaced onto the ending credits in a sort of delicate, tampon-advertisement discretion.

It about Autumn, people, not menopause!

The three ages of modern women are represented here - the free-spirited idealised elder (who spends her days memorialising the glory days of menopause by carving wood, and travels the country), the multitasking menopausal mother, and the liberal, spoilt millennial.

What is missing, however, is a genuine adult man. Where is the masculinity in Pixar's Brave?

Where have all the real men gone?

Real masculinity is only glimpsed in the spectre of the dead prince, who is the only ideal suitor for the princess. Only the dead prince could match her immature intensity with a corresponding maturity and emotional depth. But the only real man is spirited away in a puff of feminist liberty - a dream from the distant past, to be enjoyed as erotic literature on the side. All the other men in the film are, to a person, neutered, emasculated, or teenage boys in adult drag.

So empowerment in a feminist world relies on liberty. It's a lovely dream we live in, isn't it? And isn't it nice we can afford contraception to give us this brief moment of historical freedom? We can appreciate our relative freedom from almost complete bondage to biology and history which we have purchased via contraception and by our unique Christian distinction between religious tradition and state. We have purchased this historical space dearly. Today, women are free, almost 25 days of a thirty day month, to make and enjoy movies like this. It's a good deal for everyone.

Let's hope it lasts.