An amazingly brilliant man, Cal Newport, wrote a book some time ago called How to be a Straight A Student.  Cal wasn’t interested in surviving college, he wanted to excel at college, and the school he attended was a high brow Ivy League school…Princeton.  Searching for help books on the topic of succeeding at school frustrated Cal and he ended up writing his own.

Since that time, Cal has started a blog, appropriatedly called Study Hacks.  But in reading through some of the posts, I’ve discovered with a tiny bit of tweaking, Study Hacks can apply to anyone’s life.  Take for instance the following tidbit from Cal’s post on November 11th:

• Our brains are terrible at remembering everything we have to do, which is why good capture and organizations systems are necessary.
• Our brains are wonderful, by contrast, at coming up with short-term plans that balance the subtle demands we face in the near future. Trying to force a one-size fits all action plan to our lives constrains this natural ability.

Haven’t we all experienced just such a thing?  It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 50.  Our minds are incredibly flexible and able to organize all sorts of information that is astonishingly fast.  Think about how quickly you assimilate a doctor’s appointment into an already busy week, and juggle that with picking up the kids from school or soccer, getting dinner on the table, and balancing that all with work responsibilities.  Yet, how hard is it for some of us to find the time to work on our current WIP?

I invite you to visit Study Hacks and other life hacking blogs to see what tidbits you can pick up and perhaps apply to your life.