3 Laws of the "Relaxed Superstar"
1. The Law of Unscheduling: Pack your schedule with free time. Use this time to explore.
2. The Law of Focus: Master one serious interest. Don't waste time on unrelated activities.
3. The Law of Innovation: Pursue accomplishments that are hard to explain, not hard to do.
Instead of "Passion"
Passion is cliche. You can spend a lot of time and effort on an activity, but that alone doesn't make it impressive (rather, it might seem constructed, formulated to meet some external expectations). What colleges really want are students who are interesting. Interestingness is a natural by-product of a deep interest. To become interesting, the activity is nearly irrelevant: "it's not the activity that matters, but rather the effect the activity has on your personality.... The old definitions focused on the characteristics of the activities, not the traits of the students" (p. 21). Research by Linda Caldwell at Penn State shows that students can *learn* to be interest-prone by leaving lots of leisure time in his/her schedule, using that time to explore lots of potential things, and also leaving casual free time to reflect
Set up an ideal student workweek: During a normal week, your work should be done by dinnertime on weekdays and require one half day on the weekend. For this to happen, you must learn to reduce homework time. An important insight to remember is that technique trumps effort:
Technique 1: Be organizedEnvironment plays a key role: Set up basic work rules about when, where, and how long to study.
Technique 2: Let your notes do the heavy lifting (QEC method, question, evidence, conclusion)
Technique 3: Reject rote review in favor of active recall
Technique 4: Write papers over 3 days (organize/outline, write, review/edit)
Technique 5: Reflect on these questions -- What preparation helped? What didn't? What could I have done, but didn't, that would have made a big difference? How can I prepare better next time?
Rule 1: Work in isolation to avoid distractionsTime management: "The key to avoiding pile-ups is to spread out your work." Get a big calendar, write out your assessments, look two weeks ahead and then work backwards to set up a schedule for completing tasks.
Rule 2: Work in chunks (50/10, pomodoro, etc.) for greater productivity
Rule 3: Get as much done during the school day as possible
Rule 4: Avoid state-transition cues (aka distractions that interrupt your focus)
Rule 5: Keep your energy levels stoked (healthy snacks)
Rule 6: NO INTERNET!
When all else fails, QUIT. The Final-Straw Effect says that you don't need to quit everything, but rather just quit the extra things that get added on and cause the whole thing to destabilize (showboat, required, cf. elective courses).Explore to become interesting: Tips on how (and why) to cultivate a reading habit, launch a Saturday-morning project, join communities, and using the advice-guide method for getting guidance to "crack the code" for a field of interest.
What to focus on:
Michael Silverman = the student used to illustrate the power of #2, the Law of Focus
The Superstar Effect = the idea that the most talented in a field earn disproportionally more rewards than those who are only slightly less talented:
- See also: "The Economics of Superstars" by Sherwin Rosen (1981) for mathematical models for why the best outearn their closest rivals
- "The Winner-Take-All High School" by Paul Attewell (2001) Attewell discovered that being number one in your class provides an increase in acceptance probabilities that's equivalent to adding an extra 70 points to you SAT I scores and 60 points to your SAT II scores.
But since it's hard to be valedictorian, your chances are better in aiming to be an Extracurricular Superstar: You will receive a big impressiveness bonus for an extracurricular pursuit if you're the best at it of all applicants, even if the activity is not the most competitive. (So the reward is greatest for those who pick less competitive pursuits.) Still, it's not enough for the pursuit to be unusual (like underwater banjo), because it must also be a marker of some kind of exceptional ability.
Robert K. Merton on the Matthew Effect (1968): showing how, among other things, eminent scientists will often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is similar. In other words, a small early advantage grows into something bigger. Which leads to the Complimentary-Accomplishments Hypothesis: once you’ve accomplished something that is unambiguously impressive, you’ll begin to achieve complementary accomplishments with little effort.
The Laundry List Fallacy: Adding to your schedule an activity that could be replicated by any student willing to sign up and invest a reasonable amount of time in it can hurt your impressiveness. It follows that creating a laundry list of mediocre activities reduces your chances of the superstar effect.
How to develop a focus:
- First, start with a deep interest.
- Don't worry if the interest doesn't coincide with what you think of as your "natural talents" because Talent is Overrated -- by Geoff Colvin (2008).
- Become good at it by accepting the Goodness Paradox: "Most people assume they know how to become good. Yet most are not good at anything." So assume you know nothing, question your assumptions, learn from others, immerse yourself in the activity to reap maximum rewards.
- Many rewards will seem to fall into your lap once you've done so -- see Leveraged-Ability Hypothesis: "Once you pass a certain threshold of skill in a field, you’ll encounter many opportunities for related activities that will improve your perceived ability without requiring an excessive time commitment."
See also:
- A SUMMARY AND BROAD POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND DISAGREEMENT WITH CAL NEWPORT’S BOOK ON HIGH SCHOOL EXTRACURRICULARS
- Someone else's notes on the book
