Studying should be like training for sports

If you wanted to run a marathon in two months, how would you prepare for it?  Would you run a few miles each day, slowly adding distance over time?  Or, would run 20 miles the night before the big race?

If you wanted to squat twice your body-weight in a power-lifting meet in three months, how would you train for that?  Would you try to squat 1.9 times your body-weight the night before the meet?  Or, would you squat on a regular basis, slowly adding weight over time?

If you have any sense, in both scenarios above, you would choose the progressive, steady approach over making a last-ditch effort.  Studying, whether it be for an exam, a class or for your own personal edification, should be carried out in much the same way that you would train for an athletic endeavor.

Studying for 15 minutes per day, 7 days a week is a far more effective way to learn than studying for 2 hours once per week.  If you want to learn a new skill, make a habit of spending a little time on it every day.  Doing so will enable you to learn material at a deep quickly and retain it for a long period of time.

Time-saving tip for submitting letters of recommendation

Every time an undergraduate applies for graduate school, a graduate student applies for a postdoc, or a postdoc applies for a tenure-track job, he or she must ask at least three professors for a letter of recommendation.  And, every time and tenure-track professor goes up for a promotion, his or her institution must ask 5-20 professors for letters or recommendation.  As a result, many professors find themselves writing 10-20 letters of recommendation per year. 

Many institutions recognize that writing a letter is a time-consuming task.  As such, they make submitting a letter a quick and painless process: click on a link, upload a letter, done.  But, at some institutions, in order to submit a letter, a professor must additionally fill out some bullet-based rating of the person he or she is writing about.  When one considers that undergraduates typically apply to 10+ graduate schools, filling out such bullet-based rating systems quickly eats into a professor's time.

My department chair suggested a method to me a few years ago that he uses to minimize the amount of time he spends on such rating systems.  At the end of every letter of recommendation he writes the following:

P.S. If your application system requires that I fill out a number- or bullet-based rating form, I have either omitted this or filled out the highest rating for everything if the system did not allow me to continue otherwise. I appreciate that you use this information in your evaluations, but I recommend that you change your system to account for the over-extension that all of us in academia experience with writing of many letters of recommendation each year.

This method saves him time and does not hurt the student for whom he is writing a letter.  I now use this technique when I write letters and find it to be a significant time-saver.

Betting against your desired outcome

A few years ago, my favorite American football team -- the Minnesota Vikings -- made it to their conference championship game.  If they won the game, they would play in the Super Bowl.  This was the third time in my lifetime that the Vikings had played in the conference championship game.  On the two previous occasions, they lost in overtime in heart-breaking fashion.

As the most recent championship game approached, I thought to myself, "I'd pay $100 to guarantee that the Vikings win."  Unfortunately for me, $100 was not a sufficiently large amount of money to bribe the Viking's opponent -- the Philadelphia Eagles -- to lose. 

So, I decided to place a $100 bet on the Eagles to win the conference championship.  That is, I bet against the Vikings.

My reasoning was as follows.  Had the Vikings won the game, I could view my losing bet as a $100 payment for the Vikings winning the game.  Had the Vikings lost the game, the disappointment I would feel after seeing them lose the conference championship game for third time in my lifetime would be offset from the winnings from my $100 bet.

In case you are wondering, I collected on my $100 bet.  I still have not seen the Vikings play in the Super Bowl.

There are many situations in life in which you may want something that you cannot buy.  For example, you may want the next leader of your country to be affiliated with a particular political party.  In many of these situations, there are betting exchanges in which you can bet against your desired outcome (check out PredictIt.org for political bets).  In order to assuage the pain of your desired result not occurring, you might consider doing as I did and placing a bet against your desired outcome.

Want students to solve more practice problems? Try this.

Most textbooks in STEM disciplines include at the end of every chapter a number of practice problems.  Solving these problems (or at least trying to) is, in my view, one of the best ways for students to learn the material in a given text.  Because solving problems is an effective tools for learning, I assign some of these problems as homework to be turned in and graded.  Unfortunately, attaching a grade to a homework problem has an unfortunate side effect.  Rather than try to solve these problems on their own, some students simply copy the solutions from their friends (or from a website).  These students get credit for "their" work, but miss the opportunity to learn.

Here is a simple remedy for the above-mentioned unwanted side effect.  I tell students that one of the problems on an upcoming exam will be similar to one of the homework problems in the textbook.  Doing this accomplishes two things.  First, because I do not specify which textbook problem I am referring to, I ensure that that students will look at all of the problems (or, at least as many of them as they have time for).  Second, by telling students that the exam problem will be similar to a textbook problem, I ensure that students will actually try to understand how to solve the textbook problems rather than simply copy the solutions.

Use this trick and you will never have to entertain requests for homework extensions again.

Every professor I know has to deal with requests from students to turn in homework after the specified due date.  And, every professor I know of is annoyed by this.  When, I first began teaching, I attempted to minimize the number of late homework requests I would get by stating in my course syllabus that every student would be allowed to turn in one (and only one) homework late without being penalized.  But, as any seasoned professor could have predicted, this simply resulted in students turning in one homework set late, and then asking for an extension on a subsequent homework.  Over the next few years, I attempted a number of different strategies designed to combat lat homework requests.  None of them worked.  But, a few years ago, I had a significant breakthrough.   On my syllabus, I now write the following:

"Late homework policy: I make sure to always cover all of the material needed to complete a HW set before I assign it. And I always give students at least one full week to complete the assignments. As such, late homework will not be accepted under any circumstance."

Of course, simply writing the above phrase does not accomplish anything.  Students do not read the syllabus nor do they listen to me when I go over the syllabus on the first day of class.  The real breakthrough was the following: Question #1 of Homework set #1 in every course I teach is the following:

"What is my late homework policy?"

Since I began putting this question at the start of the first homework assignment, I have not needed to entertain a single request to turn in homework late.  And the concept is easily to extend.  Presumably, if there were other information from my course syllabus that I wanted to etch into my students' brains, I could create a analogous homework question.

If you are a current or future university professor, let me just say "you're welcome!"

Why it may be beneficial to let others make decisions for you

In general, it is important for individuals to make decisions for themselves.  The process of making a decision forces people to educate themselves and consider what they find important their lives.  It is only through practice that people can learn to become more skilled decision-makers.  But, there are times when individuals may benefit from allowing others make decisions for them.

I, for example, delegate many of my investing decisions to a financial advisor (actually, a robo-adviser).  I do this for a number or reasons.  First, while I am capable to creating a diversified portfolio and regularly rebalancing it, I found when I managed my own portfolio that I would second-guess myself and change my investment strategy over time.  Second, I found the process of managing my portfolio to be stressful.  By allowing a robo-adviser manage my portfolio for me, I both reduce my stress and make it more likely that I stick to a long-term investing strategy.

Another area of my life in which I have found it helpful to allow others to make decisions for me is strength training.  For those not familiar, in order to build physical strength, one needs to have a methodical plan to gradually increase the weight one lifts over time.  Although I am capable of creating a long-term plan to build strength, I find that, without a coach, I tend to deviate from my plan and lift heavier weights than I ought to.  By hiring a coach to program the weight, sets, and reps that I lift, I am more likely to lift weights that are productive to building physical strength.


In the examples above, I found that I either could not make logical decisions for myself (because I let emotion get in the way), and/or the decision-making process caused me undue stress.  In such situations, I believe that allowing a person or algorithm to make decisions for me is beneficial.  If you can recognize areas of your life in which you cannot make logical decisions or making decisions causes you undue stress, you may want to consider allowing others to make for you in those areas.