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7 tips to improve your grades

Some different productivity tips.

I've done pretty well academically in high school. I scored a 1550 on the SAT and have all As on my transcript so far. I figured I'd share 8 of my productivity tips—at least the ones that work well for me.

1. Replace Your Phone with a Deck of Cards

I know "get rid of your phone!" is the most common productivity tip of all time. My twist is keeping a deck of cards close to me: they're easy to fidget with, but aren't distracting in the same way that phones are. Plus it's nice to play cards with a friend during a break, rather than scrolling on social media.

2. Don't Take Pretty Notes

Have you seen people take pretty, aesthetic notes like these?

a YouTube thumbnail displaying images of pretty notes

Call me a hater, but I think taking aesthetic notes is very inefficient. I can take scrappy notes way faster than anyone can take aesthetic notes. It doesn't matter if your notes are aesthetic, because popular study techniques like rereading and highlighting are largely ineffective.

I use two notebooks and one type of pen.[1] That's all I need for all my schoolwork.

3. Make a Fire Playlist

Make a playlist (ideally containing songs without lyrics[2]) and make an effort to focus intensely when listening to that playlist. If you can train your brain to associate the playlist with intense concentration, then listening to the playlist—even when you're initially distracted—will help you enter a focus state.

4. Use a Thinking Vault

I define a thinking vault as

Whenever you have an important thought, like:

Immediately write it down in your thinking vault! Then keep it there until you resolve it. If you use your thinking vault effectively, you can consolidate everything school-related into one place. This does wonders for your peace of mind, since everything is in one place.

5. Learn to Type Faster

I wrote a whole post on the power of learning how to type faster. Here's a quote from that article:

Let's say you spend only 15 minutes/day typing and that it takes you 30 hours of concentrated practice to double your typing speed. Then you save 7.5 min/day = 45.6 hours/year every year for the rest of your life.

The ROI is so insane that it's practically impossible to argue against.

6. Organize Your Bag

To be more productive, you should eliminate unnecessary friction. One cause of unnecessary friction is insufficient organization—i.e. not having a consistent place for all of your important work-related items.

Every single day before I head to school, I count the 12 items in my backpack. They all have their own designated place. Once I get to school, it takes me almost no time to unpack them. It's awesome!

If you consistently organize your things, you’ll spend more time thinking about the things that actually do matter—not worrying about if you left your pen at home, forgot to refill your water bottle, or cannot find your computer.

7. Work Hard, Play Hard

Don't do work while you're relaxing. There is a time and place for both productivity and relaxation.

Cheetahs are the fastest land animals on earth—they sprint up to 70 mph (110 km/h). They also spend most of their time sleeping.

Cheetahs work very hard for short, focused bursts of time and then rest. Be a cheetah—spend 3-4 hours in the morning[3] doing your most important work. Then rest: no one can be productive all the time.

Conclusion

I hope you find at least a couple of these tips helpful. I encourage you to try them out and see if they work for you!

  1. Five Star notebook, ring-bound notebook, black pens ↩︎

  2. Big fan of Daft Punk and Kubbi for those types of songs. ↩︎

  3. Or whenever you are most productive ↩︎