10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)

Don’t Do All Your Assigned Reading
Here’s the thing about assigned reading: you can’t do all of it. And you 
probably shouldn’t.
Most classes assign way too much reading, and for many classes the reading 
isn’t even useful to do for one of two reasons:
1. The professor will cover the same material in class, or…
2. You won’t ever be tested on it
While the material in those textbooks is objectively useful, remember the theme 
of this book - reducing your study time! Your time in college is extremely 
limited, especially if you’re making good use of it by working on projects, 
building relationships, staying involved in clubs, etc. Oh, and maybe a bit of 
time to actually relax as well.
Put simply, if your reading assignments aren’t absolutely necessary to do, you 
shouldn’t allow yourself the time to do all of them. That time can be better used 
elsewhere.

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10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)
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But how do you figure out which assignments are necessary, and which ones 
aren’t? The first piece of advice I can give you is this: Readings can be separated 
into different categories:
1. Primary readings
2. Secondary readings
Primary readings generally include the required textbook for the class and 
possibly other readings based on what you’re learning. In general, you should 
make your best effort to do these readings.
Secondary readings are things like smaller books, articles the professor wants 
you to read, case studies, etc. In my experience, large portions of my grade 
never hinged on these types of readings, so they were prime candidates for 
either quick scanning or skipping altogether.
The other thing I’ll say is to constantly gauge your classes. Be mindful of how 
much overlap there is between what’s presented in class and what’s in the 
textbook. Pay attention to how much of your exams actually focus on things you 
could only get from the reading.
By doing this, you’ll be able to intelligently adjust your workload to fit your 
grade goal as the semester goes on without wasting too much time on reading.