오래 앉아 있다고 해서 공부 효율이 좋은 건 절대 아니다.
고시를 한번에 붙은 친구들의 핵심 습관 3가지
1. 90분 집중했다면 마지막 15분은 무조건 회상·복습에 쓴다.
단순히 시간만 채우는 게 아니라, 배운 내용을 머릿속에서 꺼내는 시간을 반드시 확보한다.
2. 형광펜으로 줄 긋고 반복 읽기 대신 적극적 회상을 늘린다.
빈칸 메우기, 스스로 퀴즈 내기, 백지 복기 같은 방법을 중심으로 하고,
“읽었다/봤다”와 “진짜 안다”를 명확히 구분하는 게 중요하다.
3. 쉴 때는 제대로 쉬고, 할 때는 온전히 집중한다.
공부할 때 “내가 왜 이걸 해야 하지?” 같은 잡생각이 들어오지 않게 훈련하고, 휴식 시간에는 공부 생각을 완전히 내려놓는다.
이 세 가지만 잘 지켜도 앉아 있는 시간 대비 결과가 완전히 달라진다.
효율은 시간의 양이 아니라 방식에서 나온다.
The most important growth happens when no one is clapping.
It’s the extra page you read,
the workout you did when you were tired,
and the patience you chose when you felt defeated..
In theory, consistency is about being disciplined, determined, and unwavering.
In practice, consistency is about being adaptable. Don't have much time? Scale it down. Don't have much energy? Do the easy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape to meet the demands of the day.
Adaptability is the way of consistency.
No amount of admiring an activity will make you good at it. Whether it's math, music, coding, or anything else: you have to do the exercises the same way athletes have to train, not just watch the game.
The easiest way to stay mediocre is to keep your goals abstract and your days unexamined. Vague ambition lets you feel serious without forcing contact with serious work. The truth shows up in what you repeatedly do, not what you admire.
"You Are NOT Lazy, You Just Lack a Habit" is the first of 182 passages in Advice on Upskilling.
Here's a snapshot of the table of contents back when it was small enough to fit in on one page:
Most students in the standard education system are continually asked to learn things for which they have not yet mastered the prerequisites.
That is the primary reason why learning math tends to feel so hard and confusing.
It's like you can barely ride a bike and someone is asking you to do a wheelie.
But if you get rock-solid on your fundamentals, you get your prerequisites in place, suddenly everything becomes clear, like you took the Limitless pill or something.
It's so easy to think you're incapable, even dumb, when really you're just unpracticed on some prerequisite skills.
E.g. there was a time I tutored a Real Analysis student who hadn't gotten much practice with proof-writing beforehand.
She thought she was gonna fail the class. She thought she might just not be cut out for it.
But we just shored up some of those missing proof foundations and then she came out with a well-deserved A.
And then she took Fourier Analysis the following year and crushed it! Didn't even need my help.
There is also a flipside: it's also easy to think you're a genius, when really you're just better-practiced on prerequisite skills than everyone around you.
That's a great situation to be in, provided that you recognize why things are going so well -- but if you conclude that "geniuses like me don't need much practice," then, well, your advantage is short-lived.
The moral of this story is that prerequisite knowledge is intellectual capital and can take you from academic rags to riches -- or from riches to rags, if you squander it.
"What are you passionate about?" is often less useful than "What have you repeatedly practiced?", because sustained reps reveal preferences more reliably than self-reports.
Most people don't abandon ambitious goals just because they lost interest.
Usually it's more like they stop experiencing progress, and being stuck in a rut is boring and demotivating, and that shows up as loss of interest.
If you want the motivation to come back, the interest to come back… well, focus on making the progress come back.