Imagine homework as an opponent you must face and fight every day.
Each time you start, so does the timer and the bell goes off.
The Rhythm and Structure of Fighting Your Homework
This daily fight lasts 6 rounds total, and each round is 25 minutes long. When each 25-minute round finishes, take a 5-minute break as you count down until the next round where you must jump back into the ring focused and ready to deliver a pummeling onslaught of productivity.
And during each round you must stay focused to land as many hits as possible, whether that’s correctly solving as many math problems as possible, or reading as many pages as you can while taking high quality notes to be used for fostering discussion in class or capturing the key thematic elements of your reading for future essays, or aiming for a 90% accuracy rate in memorizing vocabulary and processes in biology.
In each round, you’re fighting to win. To accumulate as many points for completion and correctness as possible. To dominate and emerge victorious by the end of the 6 rounds with not only your work completed, but having become a more capable fighter in the future when you have to face familiar academic opponents on tests and exams.
The goal is go no longer than 6 rounds total per day. That’s 3 hours of homework, or rather taking no longer than 3 hours to complete all of your homework most days.
The reward if you can successfully commit to this goal is that you never take longer than 3 hours per day to finish your homework, and along the way you will cultivate the skill of focus and master effective fighting technique (i.e., studying: memorization, active recall, problem-solving) to succeed in future fights.
Applying Strategy to Fights
At least once per week you review a week’s worth of fights, looking at how you must adapt to each new opponent’s unique fighting styles.
Maybe the week ahead is lined up with projects, so you must properly plan ahead and diligently take apart your projects in pieces, the same way a fighter might tire antagonize their opponent to tire them out (thinking strategically and planning long-term for the entirety of a fight) and attacking specific body parts in a deliberate sequence.
Or maybe the week ahead is filled with exams, so each daily fight will be a series of trainings focused on drills (memorizing terms and recalling specific processes) to master the right movements.
What Are You Really Fighting For?
Approach your homework and schoolwork as a fight because it is the chance to fight for something.
Whether it’s academic achievement to gain admission into your goal college or to distinguish yourself academically to qualify for a scholarship, you will need to engage with your work like it’s an opponent to compete against and be conquered. Doing so requires self-mastery — cultivating discipline, prioritizing training, simulating what the actual fight will be like (testing yourself through active recall and practice exams before the actual exam).
At the very least, it will give you a new perspective through which you can view this inevitable responsibility.
Because what if instead of saying you’re doing homework, you were instead fighting for your life? How much more serious, focused, diligent, motivated, quickly, and deliberately will you be in your movement and actions then?
