the School Destroyer.com Network on Blogger: How to Hack Homework Time by up to 50%

What’s the one thing we all hate about school the most? It’s probably homework. Think about it: after a long, hard day of school, you’re probably tired and ready to go do whatever really makes you happy. Instead, you have a long night of homework, projects, and studying ahead of you. And that just plain sucks.

I used to have a big problem with homework in middle school. My grades were suffering and I was getting Bs where I should’ve gotten As and Cs where I should’ve gotten Bs. And I blame how I was doing (or not doing) my homework for it.

I would come home and say, “you know what? I just don’t care enough! I think I’m just going to do whatever I feel like, and as for my homework, oh well!” Doing my homework got me so down and out that I just gave up doing it.

And of course this isn’t good for your grades, especially if you have a teacher that checks HW for completion daily.

But luckily, things have changed since then. I’ve read a lot of self-improvement and learning books, and did a lot of experimenting, and finally I started to figure out a way to make homework less of a burden. (In fact, I even recently wrote an eBook about it called How to Do Homework (Faster), which you can download here.)

So how can you “Hack” your homework time per say? Well, the answer is pretty counterintuitive. Instead of just sitting down and working at your homework, you have to spend more time NOT doing your homework and less DOING it. Sound backwards? It is.

So here’s the two ideas behind the SchoolDestroyer Method to Hacking Your Homework Time.

1. Spend Time ensuring that you’re working at Max Efficiency

2. Reduce the Time you need to complete your homework and studying well

For the first step, let’s first define what “max efficiency” means. Maximum efficiency means a couple things:

You know exactly what homework you need to do
You have it all prioritized and know what order to do it in
You have plenty of energy and your brain is ready for learning
Distractions are gone and you have a great work environment

I cover the 3rd and 4th steps plenty in the eBook, so if you want to learn about having more energy, better brain health, and the perfect homework environment, check out How to Do Homework (Faster).

Anyways, let’s talk about those first two parts. Obviously if you’re going to do homework, you need to know exactly what you’re going to do. I use a sort of funnel to make sure I know everything I need to do.

If you’re anything like me, I have two types of teachers: Those who assign homework the night of in class, and those who hand out syllabuses with due dates for the upcoming month or so. I also have two tools to help me keep track of what I need to do: My school’s agenda, and a software for Mac OSX called Schoolhouse.

An example of a school agenda or homework planner. Most schools give these out.

What you can see to the left is an example of a school planner or agenda. They show you a week at a time and have spaces for you to write your daily homework assignments. In school, as homework is assigned, I write in here in my agenda.

Then, once I get home, I take everything from my agenda, and from the different syllabuses I have for courses, and put all of the night’s homework into a software for Mac OSX called Schoolhouse. There I can insert due dates, put the homework in by course, and assign priorities to each task so that I know what order to do my homework in.

Schoolhouse (osx) app where I organize my homework daily

So once I do all that, not only do I know everything that I need to do during the night’s homework time, but I also have a priority order to do it in. I also do the part about energizing and getting all ready by getting rid of all distractions, eating a good snack, and unwinding, all of which are topics I cover in the new eBook. So if you’re interested in learning more about prioritizing or other pre-homework rituals, check out the How to Do Homework (Faster) eBook.

So then you should be ready to work at max-efficiency. Now let’s talk about decreasing the time you need to spend doing your homework. There’s a couple things that slow me personally down when doing homework:

Facebook
Having to leave what I was doing to get materials or a book I forgot
Lack of motivation
Lack of energy
Other distractions/friends

So the “Lack of Energy” part we already discussed by taking time to unwind and also eating a good snack. Make sure you have water on hand while you do your homework too. But here’s how you can make sure you’re working fast and getting rid of those other distractions:

For Facebook: Just close out! Stay far away from internet when doing homework! And if you need the internet, know exactly what you need it for and clearly tell yourself what you’ll be doing. Stick to it.

For Materials: Get it all before you start work!

For Motivation: Try turning on some music while you work. Quiet classical music is sometimes recommended. More on this in the eBook…

In the eBook I actually spend a lot of time talking about Facebook and a) why it’s evil, but b) why it’s so so so necessary, even for homework. There’s even a little section called “How to Use Facebook to Do Homework Faster” or something like that. If you want to read it and have an excuse to be on Facebook when your parents catch you during homework time, you’ll just have to read the book!

Now in addition to all of this good common-sense but often overlooked information, there are things called speed-study / speed-learning techniques that you can check out, but we’re not going to cover those here. For more information on speed studying, i’d refer you to Dr. Marc Dussalt, his blog, and his book called How to Get the Best Grades with the Least Amount of Effort.

So if you do a couple minor changes to your homework routine: Working at Max Efficiency, and Working Faster/Without Distractions, just focus on your homework and you’ll see your homework time go down DRASTICALLY.

Now, if you’d like even more nifty information, and the full top-secret, step-by-step School Destroyer Method to Hacking Homework Time, you’ll have to check out How to Do Homework (Faster). Here’s what some students had to say about the eBook:

“I wish I had some of this stuff in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade!” – Tricia M.

“Well, it actually made me feel a little stupid because I crammed for a test about an hour ago. Now I realized I could have made it a lot easier on myself. I like that it doesn’t tell you to be a crazy worker bee that never stops, but that it wants you to balance it all. I think this will help me be a lot more productive and feel more satisfied that I’ve done everything I want to do. Thanks!”

“Just wanted to let you know that your book helped. Got all my homework done in like 2 hours including a chem project… thanks!” – Katie L