Notes: 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)
Introduction
Title and premise: 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less) by Thomas Frank. Goat icon on cover used as a playful motif; goats are smart and can succeed if focused. The book aims to help you improve grades while reducing study time.
Core philosophy: Grades don’t need to be perfect; define goals first. Coursework helps but isn’t magical; combine coursework with skills outside class, extracurriculars, connections, and time for fun.
Main goal reframe: Rather than viewing the final grade as the endpoint, see it as a measure of Desired Preparedness in a class, exam, or project. The grade quantifies the preparedness you’ve built.
Four factors that affect achieving Desired Preparedness:
Class Time
Learning Quality
Study Time
Study Efficiency
The initial form of the “Study Time Equation”: with Class Time fixed, Desired Preparedness fixed, the remaining variables are Learning Quality and Study Efficiency. Increasing either Learning Quality or Study Efficiency reduces the amount of Study Time required. The rest of the book provides strategies to boost Learning Quality and Study Efficiency.
Book structure: 10 steps (think of levels in a Mega Man game) that target different skill areas. The steps can be tackled in any order; you can skip to problem areas first. The author cites Derek Sivers: “Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.”
Overview of the 10 steps:
Paying Better Attention in Class
Taking Effective Notes
Getting More Out of Your Textbooks
Planning Efficiently
Building Your Optimal Study Environment
Staying Organized
Defeating Procrastination
Studying Smarter
Writing Better Papers
Making Group Projects Suck Less
Author’s voice and references: brief bio at the end; mentions of nerd fitness, habit tracking tools, and various real-world examples to illustrate concepts.
The Study Time Equation (Conceptual)
Let the Desired Preparedness be D, Class Time be C (constant if you attend all classes), Learning Quality be L, Study Time be S, and Study Efficiency be E.
Then D = f(C, L, S, E). Given C and D are fixed, there are two levers to reduce S: increase Learning Quality (L) or increase Study Efficiency (E) (or both).
Implication: You optimize by boosting Learning Quality and/or Study Efficiency to spend less time studying while maintaining or improving preparedness.
Practical take-away: Focus on the levers you control most easily; you can’t extend Class Time, but you can improve how you learn and study.
Step 1 - Pay Better Attention in Class
Core rationale: Since Class Time is a constant, prioritize Learning Quality to reduce later Study Time.
Common struggle: Motivation dips over a long semester; many distractions (e.g., games, social media, fatigue).
Don’t Overload The System
A professor in the MIS program warned: “Don’t overload the system!” referring to overworking your brain and body.
The idea that the body and mind are tightly linked: Your body state affects your mental performance.
Elliot Hulse quote: “The most important part of the game is your game piece!” (your body/mind state).
Health-forward lifestyle for performance
Eat healthy ~90% of the time
Regular exercise (join intramural sports or enjoy fun activities like DDR)
Sleep: aim for at least 6 hours per night
Resource suggestion: Nerd Fitness article “A College Guide to Eating Healthy”
Sit Up Front and Be Present
Front-row position increases focus and energy; anecdotal contrast between a distracted student vs a focused one.
Example story: Power Bar in professor’s purse and the author’s focus on learning—illustrates attention and presence.
Come Prepared
Develop a mindfulness habit: think about what lies outside the current moment and plan ahead (e.g., apartment hunting timeline, daily gear in your bag).
Practical habit-building: check Dropbox/files, pack the right notebooks the night before, etc.
Get Help from Your Professor (The Right Way)
Professors want to help; use office hours.
Corson Technique (Dale Corson, Cornell University): crack complex ideas by working through them sentence by sentence; come with purposeful questions: “What is it that I don’t understand?”
When seeking help: show what you understand up to a point and what you understand afterward to demonstrate you wrestled with the problem.
Benefits of this approach: saves time, improves professor impressions, and can lead to solving problems yourself.
Matt Ringel’s “15 Minute Rule” (similar concept):
1) Try to solve for 15 more minutes when stuck.
2) Document everything you do in that time.
3) If still stuck, ask for help. Motto: “First you must try; then you must ask.”
Be a Solution Finder
Develop habits to seek answers and solve problems; balance with seeking help after exhausting options.
Keep Those Hands Moving
Active participation improves memory retention vs passive listening.
In lectures: speak up, take lots of notes; note-taking reinforces attention.
Summer-camp example: in some classes, high note-taking correlated with staying awake and engaged; in others, less effective note-taking led to drifting attention.
Note-taking habits/tools mentioned
Habit-tracking tools: Habitica, Lift
Public notes: Evernote outlines shared in class chat; increasing perceived importance in the class via public notes
Anecdotal illustrations
Distinct experiences in Econ vs Statistics courses demonstrate how deliberate presence and consistent note-taking improve learning outcomes.
Summary of Step 1 takeaway
Prioritize Learning Quality, maintain healthy habits, use deliberate strategies to engage in class, and structure interactions with professors to maximize learning while minimizing wasted time.
Step 2 - Take More Effective Notes
Purpose: Turn in-class exposure into lasting understanding with notes that facilitate efficient later study.
Five Excellent Note-Taking Methods (overview of the five systems):
Outline Method
Create bullet lists with Main ideas at the top level; Supporting details nested beneath; results in a hierarchical outline.
Easy to use on computer; ideal for concise, book-wide captures; risk of mindless transcription if not careful.
The Cornell Method
Paper divided into Cue column, Note-taking column, and Summary column.
During class: notes go into the Note-taking column (often via Outline style).
After class: formulate questions in the Cue column; write a summary in the Summary column to process material and create a study-ready guide.
The Mind Map Method
Visual, branching tree of ideas; start with an umbrella term in the middle, branch out with related terms; use colors and pictures to enhance memory.
Great for visual learners and for topic-wide views; can be combined with other methods in hybrid systems.
The Flow Method
Flow-based note-taking (Scott Young) emphasizes holistic learning and constructing an interconnected web of concepts rather than hierarchical notes.
Notetaking should reflect the brain’s natural web, with constructs, arrows, and backlinks; aim to integrate new ideas into existing knowledge on the first processing.
Strengths: reduces rote copying, encourages personal interpretation and connections.
Challenges: hardest to master; best for topics with many interconnections; may be less suitable for highly dense, detail-heavy courses.
The Write on the Slides Method
If slides are provided, print them and annotate directly on them; acts as a “lazy man’s” but efficient approach.
Pros: creates a timeline of the lecture; useful when slides track a linear progression of ideas.
Cautions: still requires active engagement and translation of ideas into your own terms.
Paper Notebooks vs. Laptops (research-backed guidance)
Longhand vs typing: study from Psychological Science
Findings: longhand note-takers wrote ~173 words on average; laptop users wrote ~310 words; typing increased word-for-word transcription.
Implication: typing can degrade learning because it often leads to verbatim recording rather than processing meaning.
Processing sequence explained: information is filtered through senses, then meaning must be processed in the brain before it’s recorded.
Example illustrating deeper processing: a sentence like “Megatron is a Decepticon” demonstrates how meaning links to broader networks (Transformer, robot, TV show, etc.). If you focus excessively on transcription, you miss these connections.
Practical tips from the author’s experience
The Outline method is convenient for computer notes and summarizing a book chapter efficiently; however, it can invite mindless copying if not used actively.
The author’s MIS class approach: share notes publicly to raise personal importance and quality; Evernote outline notes with public links posted in class forums.
Flow-based notes vs traditional methods
Flow-based notes produce a personal, original representation of the material, helping to integrate information on the first processing rather than later.
The Flow method is a cornerstone of holistic learning and is best used when its interconnected structure aligns with the subject matter.
Key quotes and influences
Scott Young on Flow-based notes: the method is a creative process, not merely recording; “Flow-based notetaking is a creative process, not a recording process.”
Cal Newport on reading systems: high-achieving students don’t rely on rigid systems like SQ4R; they use simple heuristics that suit the class, and Newport endorses a flexible approach over strict acronyms.
Recommended habit-building notes
Experiment with Mind Maps, Outlines, Cornell, Flow, and Slide-based annotation; find a hybrid approach that maximizes retention for your subjects.
Summary of Step 2 takeaway
Master multiple note-taking systems; choose the one that best matches the course material and your learning style, while avoiding mindless transcription and leveraging active processing to maximize learning efficiency.
Step 3 - Get More Out of Your Textbooks
Core challenge: textbooks contain essential information, but reading all assigned material is often unnecessary and time-inefficient.
Don’t Do All Your Assigned Reading
Professors assign more than needed; much reading may overlap with class coverage or not be directly tested.
The goal is to reduce time spent on reading while maintaining grade risk; use time on what matters for exam performance and projects.
Reading categories: Primary vs Secondary readings
Primary readings: required textbooks and core materials; generally worth doing.
Secondary readings: articles, case studies, smaller books; often less essential for grade and can be scanned or skipped.
Know How You’ll Be Assessed
Different classes have different assessments:
Multiple choice tests
Essays or short-answer questions
Data analysis in labs
Reports and presentations
The assessment type informs what you should pull from readings and which details to prioritize.
Reading strategies aligned to assessment types
For multiple choice: focus on bolded terms, definitions, and specific details that are testable from the reading.
For essays: extract the main ideas, summarize in your own words, and be able to build on them.
For data-heavy work/labs: focus on methodology, results, and interpretations that will appear in questions.
Don’t Read Textbooks Like Newspapers
Reading passively for gist is insufficient for deeper learning.
Use active reading to engage with material and build understanding, not just surface familiarity.
Active Reading Strategies (Cal Newport’s influence and the author’s adaptations)
The author emphasizes five practical strategies rather than rigid acronym-based systems:
Pseudo-Skimming: skim at a staggered pace, slowing for important paragraphs and quickly scanning filler ones (background, asides, exceptions, extra details).
Read Chapter Backwards: prime your brain with the chapter’s review materials, vocab lists, and questions before in-depth reading.
Create Questions While Reading: generate questions to drive Active Recall later; use section headings to derive questions.
Active Recall: regularly test yourself with questions; this strengthens retention more effectively than passive reading.
Pay Attention to Formatting: bolded terms, italics, lists often indicate key ideas or terms; mark and extract these as study anchors.
Mark Up Your Book and Take Notes: annotate or use sticky flags for key points; margins are useful for connections and personal thoughts.
Keep actual notes: take notes after reading sections in Evernote or a notebook; later convert notes into questions for self-quizzing.
Summarize What You Read: summarization is central to Active Recall and retention; sharing or typing summaries can reinforce learning.
Practical note on annotating and study efficiency
If you’re renting textbooks or cannot mark them, use sticky flags to mark important sections; margin notes and annotations help link material to existing knowledge.
The author emphasizes that the best summaries come from teaching the material to someone else or to yourself as if you were explaining it, which aligns with the Learning Pyramid concept (see below).
The Learning Pyramid and summarization
The basic idea (with caveats): teaching or explaining material leads to higher retention than passive reading or listening.
The author notes that some experts dispute exact percentages on the learning pyramid, but the general trend that teaching improves retention is supported by experience.
Summarization and teaching are presented as efficient strategies for extracting essential material from readings.
Summarization and active learning workflow
Read a chapter once; then type bulleted notes from memory; return to fill in details from the text.
When preparing essays, consider writing notes in paragraph form to suit the assignment’s demands.
The Power of Habit reference
The author cites Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit to illustrate how summarizing can reinforce learning through repetition and consistent practice.
Final takeaway for Step 3
Read strategically: identify what’s essential for assessment, skim or skip non-critical material, and use active reading techniques to retain core concepts efficiently.
Additional notes and references (context and practical tips)
The author’s practical toolkit and resources mentioned throughout the book:
Nerd Fitness for healthy living guidance
Habitica and Lift for habit-tracking
Coggle for mind mapping
Evernote for note storage and sharing
Quotes and ideas worth remembering:
“Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.” — Derek Sivers
Cal Newport on avoiding overly rigid acronym-based reading systems; seek simple, effective heuristics instead
“The most important part of the game is your game piece!” — echoed in the body-mind emphasis
Real-world examples used to illustrate points:
Personal anecdotes about being front-row in class vs back-row; hallway examples of attention and engagement; the contrast between Stat 226 and Econ 101 experiences.
The 15 Minute Rule as a practical problem-solving framework for when you’re stuck.
Public sharing of notes to increase responsibility and quality.
Mathematical notes (LaTeX-friendly):
The Study Time Equation conceptually:
With Class Time and Desired Preparedness fixed, the controllable levers are Learning Quality and Study Efficiency, which influence Study Time:
Practical implication: increase Learning Quality or Study Efficiency to reduce Study Time.
Final reminder: adapt the steps to your class, your goals, and your lifestyle; use the steps as flexible levels that you can tackle in any order to maximize your learning with efficient time use.
Title
Notes: 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less) via Comprehensive Study Notes