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Some people can do the work and just get that A. However, that’s not most people. Most of us have difficulty and some, A LOT of difficulty, especially those with creative minds.

Having a creative mind means always living in the now, following the current thought, and losing the past and the future. This makes it difficult to accomplish tasks. But humans are blessed with a mind, and you can plan for those mistakes and if you can overcome those limitations, you can do anything.

So if you want A’s and you want to get homework done and projects completed and avoid procrastination, you’re going to need a strategy and a plan, and here is that plan.

The problem with getting things like projects and homework going is that sometimes you lack motivation. The metaphorical rock of a task for someone with a creative mind or someone who isn’t Type A is much larger than the one for others but you are also weaker in pushing it. However, you can do several things to get it going.

1. Prepare the rock.
   It is harder to move a square than rolling a rock, so spend some time preparing for the task, break up the homework into small pieces so when you get the ball rolling, it keeps rolling. For instance, if I had 100 pages to read in a week, I’d break it into 20 pages a day. So if you have 10 problems, make it 2 problems a day. That way you don’t try to do too much and feel like you make progress. Just the plan will make the square boulder feel smaller and more round.

2. Use leverage.
   A lever will move a rock better than pushing it, so what is your lever? Perhaps telling others to make pressure on yourself, becoming accountable to others. Create deadlines that force you to get it going. I like to write reminders and set alarms or put things into the calendar. I have a calendar for the day and the week so I constantly see the goals and mark off the days and check off accomplishments, that way you can see the ball rolling. Find your levers and tools, write them down, and use them. Write them down because you will forget them and it is good to remind yourself.
   
3. Avoid and Use Inertia.
   Getting the ball rolling is hard, but to keep it rolling is a lot easier. It is important to not stop because we know that getting it going is hard for us. Keep the rock going with a checklist, with daily goals that you MUST hit, with check-ins and games like a list of all the days you hit the goal. I create weekly and daily and monthly goals that I get to cross off. Remember that if you stop for a day or two, you will lose a lot of things from your brain. Keep a journal to write daily progress and write notes about things that went right and wrong. It doesn’t have to be a long entry. Journal app Day One allows me to make a quick one to two sentences about my progress, my thoughts on my progress, and things I can do better for tomorrow. The main thing is to keep moving and remember, if you did stop, you will move again, once you get the ball rolling.

4. Use Gravity.
   You can push a ball on a flat surface to a goal, or you can raise it up on a ramp and let it roll down by itself. If you set up the bag before you go to school or put shoes outside your bed to run in the morning, or set the floss in front of you so you see it, or as I, for instance, put the calculator in a visible area to always see what I have to do. If you organize the day around your actions and goals, you can have them be on autopilot so you don’t have to think of “what do I do now”, the day will roll along like a boulder down a ramp. So think ahead and prepare things so you don’t have to work against gravity for the things that are hard and let them sort out.
   
5. Get Help.
   The Egyptians used sheer numbers to build the pyramids, so if you are undertaking a big project or have a big test use help as well. Sometimes you will have to recruit others and know that you will have to help them, but without them, you will not get to the goal as fast. If certain things are too hard for you, find someone who likes to do it, like I have someone filling out paperwork at work because I forget it and they are good at it. If your group you can find someone who is good at keeping track of something in a project or get a study group with people who like helping each other and are good at subjects and will keep you on task. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, never measure yourself on the weakness but instead on strength and let others use their strengths to help you, it will make you both feel good.

So remember, everything in life is just physics, including achieving your goal. For some it’s harder to meet them, but not if you prepare your task, use tools to make it, avoid inertia by not stopping and using it by going forward, using gravity to let things be automatic, and getting help to get around weaknesses. If you do that, you will be unstoppable. Some people have a harder time focusing and getting things done. But it happens often that if those people put their minds to getting around their limitations, they will be even more successful than those who don’t have to work at it. Because you’re not dumber, you’re just better with the big ideas, but big ideas need details and for that, big idea people, make strategies.

Dear students,

I was reading this NYTimes article about how to write a thesis as I am writing my Master’s Thesis.

It is hard to believe but it has been over five years since I created this book. Not many people have read it. But it is like a capsule about my time in college. I am now 38 and I am finishing up a Master of Science and an MBA and considering a PhD. I think of this moment in time, I think of what it means to be educated today. It means so much, because those who do not complete college education, are nearly guaranteed a life of poverty. Having college education will not absolve you of debt or make you rich, but it will prevent you from being poor. Even so, the education has come to be devalued. Professions are disrespected, degrees are scoffed at. The time and effort it takes to get one is assumed to mean nothing. But it is not nothing. The effort it takes to get a degree transforms a person. Take any college graduate and compare their ability to think and write compared to a high school graduate. There is no comparison. Compare a Master’s graduate ability to work and a Bachelor’s graduate, there is no comparison. Compare the expertise and trajectory of a PhD with a Master’s graduate, there is no comparison. They are all in a league of their own. They are different not because they are different people, at some point the Master’s student and a PhD candidate were no different from each other, but the experience of research, of failure, of writing and publishing changed the person.

When I began my Master’s thesis, I knew that the difficulties I would face were the difficulties of a man who completed a Bachelor’s and was transforming into a Master of Science. It would not be easy. The man would not want to change, it would take concerted effort to make that man. I have not yet succeeded, I am on the way though. When I complete that thesis, I will be a different person, someone who can take research, complete it after many years of work, and present it to the world.

The world scoffs at scientists who speak of climate change, it scoffs at doctors who try to give vaccines, it does so because too many, went through college for the college experience instead of the learning. They crammed and they passed and they assumed that all that knowledge had no value, that passing the class had value. They have no idea how they changed, how they became better people, even if they cannot recall all that they learned.

I plan to write another book now, for the Master’s and PhD students. I hope to convince you that you are not about to waste your time, you are investing in creating a better you, for a better world. I hope to also convince the rest of the world, that knowledge is not easy to gather, that studying is hard work, that people who have a degree, fought hard to get it and it is more than a piece of paper, it is the culmination of learning hard to learn knowledge, reading of dozens of dense textbooks, of writing dozens of hard to research papers and of dozens of experiments that failed and one that opened up the world to all of us, to something new.

Knowledge isn’t free, it has value, we have value. Let’s value knowledge and those who worked so hard to get it and then pass it on, through work or through teaching. Because without knowledge, when we discount knowledge and trust in hypotheticals and demagogues and charlatans without knowledge or experience, we create chaos and suffering.

This will be a little different. Less description on what to do and more about my experience in my first day of MBA. Today was my business school orientation. I’m doing a program abroad, my second Master’s in Executive Business Administration.

Thoughts were that this was different from any other school orientation. They didn’t take us around the campus. There was no booze and we barely had time for the snacks and food provided. It was an hour of introduction to very successful people in the class who were driven and interesting. Then we had some presentations from professors, an hour case study where we met our groups and then were shown just how many things we would learn to make better decisions in our future teams.

There were a lot of people who are married with kids who talked about their kids. There was a VC with a podcast, a sales guy with a book, a Jordanian who rides motorcycles and delivers aid in Syria, a PhD who has a medical startup, a Japanese business consultant and a Palestinian photographer among many other equally impressive students.
My team was an interesting woman who works for Noble and knows  my friends who work there. Another guy on our team  happened to find out that his best friend was in the program at the program. He works at Melanox which is a company that bought Luxtera where I also worked at one time.

This group of people is very different from my Ecology class. Much older. This time I didn’t feel age-wise towards the top of the class but in the middle class of age. They were far more assertive, speaking up and chiming in even though it is the first day of orientation.

The ratio in the class is pretty bad, mostly men and mostly Israelis. The dress code was pretty casual,  one of the professors wore TEVA sandals and a t-shirt. But majority wore button up shirts and jeans.
One thing that I found strange is no business ethics course, that seems like a must in this day and age.

I am pretty excited to see how this goes. I think it will end up being challenging but good.

One reason why it is important to pick the right major and profession is because you cannot stop learning just because you graduated. You will be expected to learn everyday to advance yourself. It means reading journals, text books and magazines on your trade. It means taking classes and it means never stopping to learn, if you want to keep your job.

So much learning is impossible if you don’t love what you do. If you don’t honestly care about the work you do and those who you do it for, you will burn out, you will become jaded, you will either quit or be fired. So if you’re reading this book, I know you care for your time and getting it right the first time; so pick the right major and the right job, so you never stop learning.

So this gets to the meat of this post. To succeed in work after you graduate, learn as much as you can consistently and repeatedly.