Lesson 9: Identifying Your Less Important Time

Gary North

YESTERDAY'S ASSIGNMENT

Are you on schedule for listing all of the time estimates for your classes?

Have you made a list of possible partners in all of your courses? Have you handed the "Joint Study Strategy" recruiting sheet to at least one person? Until you do, don't read Lesson 9.

I call this marshmallow time. Fats Goldberg avoided marshmallows because they have nothing going for them except for being sweet. He wanted flavor.

You've probably got a lot of marshmallow time in your life. If you work after school, maybe not. But if you aren't on an athletic team, and if you don't have a job, then you've got a lot of marshmallows.

You need to identify them. They are going to pay for a big chunk of your academic success.

Time is passing. While you're awake or asleep or merely asleep at the wheel, time is getting away from you. You can waste it or make it work for you. It's your choice.

Ben Franklin wrote in 1746, "time is money." He was wrong. Time is far more valuable than money. If you lose money, you can work hard and make replacement money. You can't order another year of time -- or even a minute. When it comes to an hour of time, everyone gets the same amount of time per hour. When you don't, you die.

A warning: for some people, TV is addictive. There is a book about this: "The Plug-in Drug." When you sit down to watch TV for a few minutes, you may find that hours have gone by before you turn it off. If you have this addiction, you must ration TV time as if it were a dangerous drug.

My father-in-law was a brilliant scholar. He read a book a day -- underlining and making notes -- for at least sixty years. But when he was over age 80, he got cancer. To ease the pain by distracting his mind, he watched TV all day long. Television served as a drug. That's all right if you have read over 18,000 books and have written three dozen books yourself. It's not all right if you're in high school.

If you can't recall what the shows were about that you watched two nights ago, you are watching too much TV.

JUST SAY "NO"

Let me tell you my story. (Yawn. Snore.)

At age 14, in my sophomore year, I got a job in a record store.

(Records: round, black plastic disks with grooves imprinted on them, which, when a needle or stylus in a "tone arm" was placed in one of them while the disk was spinning, produced music, or at least what I thought was music. My parents thought otherwise. "Turn that stuff down!" Historical note: the first stereo headphones were introduced in late 1958, when I was a senior in high school. I bought a pair that year: Koss. The first commercial audio CD's arrived in 1982. Ancient history.)

I got on the school bus at about 7:00 a.m. I was at school by 7:30, when school began. We got out at 2:30. The bus dropped me off close to the record store at about 3. I worked until 6. Then I walked home. Unlike grandparents' mythical stories about walking to school in the snow, there was no snow where I lived: Manhattan Beach, California, south of Los Angeles. It was beach boy country. Surfing, USA. It never snowed.

(Side note: the kid brother -- he was about my age, actually -- of one of my best friends in high school really was a Beach Boy: Al Jardine. Al played lead guitar. He's the "Help Me, Rhonda" guy. The group was formed two years after I had graduated and moved away. They all lived in Hawthorne, which was five miles inland. If they had been honest, they would have called their group The Five Miles Inland Boys.)

On Saturdays, I put in a full day: 10 to 6.

In my junior and senior years, I was in the school plays. I was student body president in the second half of my senior year, so I had to cut back on my record store time. I was also in charge of putting together Southern California's annual meeting of the California Scholarship Federation, which was like the National Honor Society. (The NHS is not prominent in California.) Over 1,000 students attended.

I wasn't a straight-A student. I got more than half A's. I received one C: trigonometry. I survived.

I studied in the evening. I didn't watch much TV. I went to bed about 11. I probably didn't get enough sleep. Most teenagers need at least eight hours of sleep. Don't cut corners on your sleep time. It's not healthy. But you may be able to use cat naps during the afternoon to compensate for late-night hours.

I learned how to cut time corners. I had to. So do you. You can do it if you really want to.

Time is the #2 edge you can gain on your competitors. (The #1 edge is lecturing to the wall.) Your IQ is probably fixed. Your academic interests are probably close to fixed. So, you need to get an edge where you're really able to change.

Time management is a big one. If you can learn how to squeeze more out of the clock, you'll get ahead of the competition a little each day.

You had better find ways to apply what you learn in this course. The problem is, this takes practice. You can't learn how to play a musical instrument by reading a book on how to play it. Neither can you master the art of effective study by taking a course.

You're not alone. Others are taking this course. They are beginning to make changes that will give them an edge for the rest of their lives. They want reinforcement. You will want reinforcement. I make it possible for like-minded people to get together and share their insights.

What works for you? What doesn't? Find out if others are having similar successes and similar failures. You can do this by participating in my study skills forum. It's open to all members of this site.

MARSHMALLOW TV

Get out a copy of TV Guide or whatever you use to find out which programs you want to watch this week. Mark the shows you really don't want to miss.

In pencil, list these in your weekly scheduler. If they begin to fill up your waking hours, you will have to cut out the junk shows. But get everything entered.

The must-see weekly shows should go into your monthly calendar.

Television may be causing you to short-change your academic career. This could cost you a college career, a good job, and a nice home in a good neighborhood. Or maybe not. Maybe you'll finally change your ways at age 20 or 30. But bad habits are difficult to break. That is Fats Goldberg's message.

Start erasing shows in your weekly scheduler. Count their cost: lost time. Then erase the low-return shows.

When I was first married, my wife and I agreed to pay 25 cents per half hour for any show we wanted to watch. The person who wanted to see a show would pay. The other one could watch for free. We exempted the evening news and documentaries. We then gave the money to charity. There was almost no money. At 50 cents per hour (about $1.75 in today's depreciated money), only two shows were worth watching each week. I paid for one ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show"), and my wife paid for the other ("The Bob Newhart Show"). They were shown back-to-back on Saturday nights.

With our spare time, we started our home-based newsletter business. That business was the first step in our earning millions of dollars.

What if we had watched TV instead? What would "free" TV have cost us?

There are no free lunches. You must pay for your academic success. The place to start looking for academic currency is your daily consumption of TV.

Can you record your favorite shows? If so, you can watch them on your day off.

Yes, you are entitled to a day off. If you're Jewish or a Seventh-Day Adventist, it's Saturday. If you're a Christian, it's Sunday. If you're nothing in particular. I recommend Sunday.

Your day off is when you re-charge your emotional batteries. Working seven days a week is possible, but it's not wise. You should not treat yourself as if you were a machine. Work hard for six days, but on one day a week, you should relax.

I work 72 hours a week, but I do not work on Sunday. I relax on Sunday. I go to church, and I may go to the library or Barnes & Noble. I come home and usually take a long nap. I have done this consistently ever since my college days.

The only TV show that I always watch is "Sunday Morning." I learn a lot, usually about things that are not very important. I have a few laughs. Bill Geist is amusing. I watch a few shows on PBS, usually on travel or history. If I had cable, I might watch old movies or the History Channel. But that would be on Sunday or in the evening. There is an old saying: "If you want to be successful, you should work half a day. It doesn't matter which half."

I have estimated that you must pick up an extra 15 to 20 hours per week from your existing schedule. See how many hours you can extract from the marshmallow part of your TV schedule. Can you find 10 hours? How much of this can you tape record and watch on your weekend's day off?

REVIEW

You have to pay for success with time.

Time's a-wastin'.

Time is running out, no matter how you allocate it.

If you work after school, you must give up most TV, except on your day off. Record your favorite shows for viewing on your day off.

If it isn't in your scheduler, don't watch any TV show. Or allow yourself one hour's leeway, maximum, per week.

ASSIGNMENT

In your weekly scheduler, write down in pencil what shows you want to watch. Be prepared to cut out a lot of them if you're addicted to TV. Keep an eraser handy.

List your must-see shows in your monthly calendar. These aren't marshmallows. Watch them. But if you can record them and watch them on your day off, do it.

Don't forget to lecture to the wall: one page, one class.

PREVIEW OF TOMORROW'S LESSON: Bus time

Any time you want to ask me specific questions regarding your plans for college, you can find out where to contact me by clicking this link: Answers.