A Gardner's List: StudyHacksPlus

• Achievements worth achieving require hard work. There is no shortcut here
• effort, sustained over a long amount of time, is required.
• This time fracture can prevent real accomplishment

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• You need to do the same. Understand what the best exemplars in your field do well. Figure out why. Then ask how you can mix, match, and reconstruct these elements into something new and even better.
• If you’re looking to become a leader in your field, honestly evaluate your talent level. Don’t compare yourself to others who have had success. That’s a path toward frustration. Instead, ask yourself, candidly, whether you’re so good you can’t be ignored. If not, then get back to work.

• • Being productive does not make you accomplished.
   
  • It does, however, make being accomplished less stressful.
• Tenacity. A grating thirst to get it done. These are the precursors of accomplishment.
• But productivity is not a substitute for this work.
• If you acknowledge the role of hard work, you can adjust your mindset to be one that expects and values this trait. This is what, in the end, will make the biggest difference in what you end up getting done

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• If you are productive without harboring this intense desire for completion, you will end up just being busy.
• Completion-centric planning rectifies this problem. It refocuses you on completion of projects — not tasks — as the central organizing principle for each day
• to finish a project you must “know what done looks like.” Next to each project type a concise description of what action must be completed for the project to be completed
• If you can’t finish one, think of the single thing you could do that would get you closest to this goal over the next few days
• Your goal here is to make as much progress on your projects as possible despite the other responsibilities you have each day
• If you want to make your mark, you have to learn how to charge after things with a furious zeal

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• Here is my actual schedule. I work:

   
   
  • From 9 to 5 on weekdays.
   
  • In the morning on Sunday.
• • Choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation.
   
  • Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule.
• Ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule.
• This focus lets me churn out quality results without the wasted time of constantly dancing back and forth between multiple efforts
• I often work in hidden nooks of the various libraries on campus. I check and respond to work e-mail only a few times a day. People have to wait for responses from me
• Any regularly occurring work gets turned into a habit — something I do at a fixed time on a fixed date.
• Habit-based schedules for the regular work makes it easier to tackle the non-regular projects. It also prevents schedule-busting pile-ups
• If I need to start something 2 or 3 weeks in advance so that my queue proceeds as needed, I do so
• f you don’t do this, you let the never-ending stream of work push you around like a bully. It will force you into tiring, inefficient schedules. And you’ll end up more stressed and no more accomplished
• Fix the schedule you want. Then make everything else fit around your needs. Be flexible. Be efficient

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