Jason, a straight-A student from the University of Pennsylvania, uses the term "pseudo-working" to describe how many of us study. The pseudo-worker looks and feels like someone who is working hard － he or she spends a long time in the library and is not afraid to push on late into the night － but, because of a lack of focus and concentration, he or she doesn't actually achieve much.
This phenomenon can be seen in most colleges. For example, at Dartmouth there was a section of the main library that was open twenty-four hours a day and the students I used to see in there late at night crowded in groups, drinking coffee, were definitely pseudo-working. The roommate who looks through her chemistry notes on the couch while watching TV is pseudo-working. The guy who brings three meals, a blanket and six-pack of Red Bull to the study zone in preparation for an all-day paper-writing marathon is also pseudo-working.
By placing themselves in distracting environments and insisting on working long hours, these students are damaging their brain's ability to think clearly and efficiently to achieve the task at hand. In the end they get half the results with twice the effort.
The bigger problem here is that most students don't even realize that they're pseudo-working. To them pseudo-working is work － it's how they've always done it, and it's how all of their friends do it. It never crosses their mind that there might be a better way. Straight-A students, on the other hand, know all about pseudo-working. They fear it, and for good reason. It not only wastes time, but it's also mentally tiring.
In fact, the most important skill in becoming a better student is the ability to get work done quickly and with a smallest amount of wasted effort. Some cognitive science research concludes that about 50 minutes is the optimal learning period to maximize the material integrated per time unit. So how do these students achieve this goal? To understand their way to success, consider the following simple formula (公式): work achieved = time spent × intensity of focus.
Pseudo-working features a very low intensity of focus. Therefore, to achieve something by pseudo-working, you need to spend a lot of time. The straight-A approach, on the other hand, increases intensity in order to use less time.
