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The Straight-A Method: Pillar #1: Capture

The document outlines The Straight-A Method framework for academic success. It is based on 4 pillars: capture, control, plan, and evolve. It then describes the principles of underscheduling, innovating, and focusing to achieve a "Zen Valedictorian" lifestyle with low stress but high achievement. Underscheduling involves simplifying commitments, innovating means standing out through unexpected accomplishments, and focusing is becoming an expert in a few key areas. Following these principles allows students to impress without overloading themselves.

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84 views3 pages

The Straight-A Method: Pillar #1: Capture

The document outlines The Straight-A Method framework for academic success. It is based on 4 pillars: capture, control, plan, and evolve. It then describes the principles of underscheduling, innovating, and focusing to achieve a "Zen Valedictorian" lifestyle with low stress but high achievement. Underscheduling involves simplifying commitments, innovating means standing out through unexpected accomplishments, and focusing is becoming an expert in a few key areas. Following these principles allows students to impress without overloading themselves.

Uploaded by

colorblindzebra
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Straight-A Method

The Straight-A Method is supported by four pillars: capture, control, plan, and evolve. Each pillar is associated


with a high-level goal you should strive to achieve as a student. Here’s the promise: If you can satisfy these
four goals — regardless of what specific strategies or systems you use — you will ace your courses. 

Pillar #1: Capture


 Getting Things Done for College Students…Made Easy
 Follow a Sunday Ritual
 A Time Management System for Students Who Are Terrible at Time Management…
 How to Stave Off Stress with a Mid-Semester Dash

Pillar #2: Control


 Don’t Use a Daily To-Do List
 How to Reduce Stress and Get More Done By Building an Autopilot Schedule
 Pulverize Large Assignments with the ESS Method
 The Retreating Deadline Method
 Choose Your Hard Days
 Fixed Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work
Hours
 How to Use Time Arbitrage to Maximize Your Productivity Profit

Pillar #3: Plan

 My World Famous Mechanical Exam Prep Process

 Drizzle Test Preparation Over Many Days


 Smart Notes
 Use Technical Explanation Questions When Studying for Technical Classes
 Use Focused Question Clusters to Study for Multiple Choice Tests
 How to Ace Calculus
 How to Solve Hard Problem Sets Without Staying Up All Night
 Rapid Note-Taking with the Morse Code Method
 How to Use a Flat Outline to Write Outstanding Papers, Fast
 The Paperback Writer Method
 Three Pass editing method

Pillar #4: Evolve


 How to Perform a Post-Exam Post-Mortem
 Case Study: How Tyler Aced a Difficult Course
 Ignore Your G.P.A.
How to Become a Zen Valedictorian: Decreasing Your Stress Without Decreasing Your Ambition

The Framework

The idea is to find a way to become less overloaded and less stressed without becoming less impressive. There
are three main principles: underschedule, innovate, and focus. If you can satisfy all three — however you do it
— you can achieve the Zen Valedictorian lifestyle.

PRINCIPLE #1: Underschedule

1. Simplification: Have one major. Balance easy courses with hard courses during a given semester. Slash
and burn your extracurricular commitments to the bare minimum.
2. Efficiency: Improve your study and productivity skills. Live the pillars of the Straight-A Method. The
better these skills, the easier it will be to underschedule.
Previous posts that will help you understand and satisfy Principle #1:

 The Radical Simplicity Manifesto


 The Laundry-List Fallacy
 The Danger of Pseudo-Work
 The Auto-Pilot Schedule
 Fixed-Schedule Productivity

PRINCIPLE #2: Innovate

The Zen Valedictorian strives to be interesting not widely accomplished. The psychology of impressiveness


reveals that people are more impressed by someone who makes them ask “how did he do that?” than
someone who has a sizable laundry list of standard activities .

The goal of this principle is to stand out from the crowd by means other than simply outworking your peers.

To satisfy this principle, keep looking for low-hanging fruit. That is, identify interesting, unexpected directions
toward which you can push your involvements. Take the normal course of action for someone in your situation
then pump up its ambition by 50%. Next ask: if I had to make this happen, what would it really require? More
often than not, you’ll realize that what once seemed hopelessly ambitious is, in reality, possible if you’re
somewhat clever and, more importantly, actually follow-through. Keep completing. Keep pumping up your
ambition and finding ways to get somewhere more lofty. The interestingness will rise sharply with each new
push.

Previous posts that will help you understand and satisfy Principle #2:

 The Law of Complementary Attraction


 The Grand Project
 The Information Theory of Success

PRINCIPLE #3: Focus

The Zen Valedictorian is a specialist. He focuses on a small number of areas and works consistently over time to
become outstanding in them. He realizes that the relationship between reward and skill level is not linear, but,
instead, exponential. A corollary of this truth: being excellent at one thing can yield significantly more
rewards than being good at many. 

The goal of this principle is to maximize the rewards and interesting opportunities afforded while minimizing
both the time investment and the schedule footprint; i.e., total number of unique activities: a metric that
strongly predicts stress. The world rewards experts. It is indifferent to generalists. And it could care less how
hard you worked.

To satisfy this principle the Zen Valedictorian will, by default, make his academic major an area of focus. He
chooses a subject that intensely interests him (not the subject that seems most practical). Because he believes
in underscheduling, he has the time need to put serious thought into his class assignments. He soon becomes a
department star, which opens up a wealth of exclusive opportunities and rewards hidden from most students.

He will also typically chooses a single extracurricular activity in which to become excellent. By the time he
graduates, a Zen Valedictorian should be well-known on campus for his focus-area skill.

Previous posts that will help you understand and satisfy principle #3:

 The Einstein Principle


 Productivity is Overrated
 The Project Purge

Pulling It All Together

The Zen Valedictorian Framework derives from a careful understanding of two important questions:

1. What generates stress?


2. What makes someone impressive?
It notes that the answers to the two questions are different. It takes advantage of these differences to make
possible the dream of a low-stress impressive student lifestyle.

Specifically, it notes that stress comes from having too many obligations pulling at your time. The principle of
underscheduling prevents this situation from occurring.

Impressiveness, on the other hand, comes from doing things very well in a way that defies expectation.

My goal here is nothing less than to dramatically remake your vision of a successful college career. This
transformation is not trivial. But I assure you it will be worth it.

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