You don’t have to sacrifice sleep to get straight A’s in high school. I was a grind student for my first three years, getting A’s through sheer willpower and 1 a.m. study sessions. Then I found a better way. Senior year, I didn’t get a single A-minus, and I was spending half, maybe a third, the amount of time on homework. The secret? A high-leverage system that includes choosing the right classes, the 50-10 method, and class-specific study tactics that tell you exactly when you’re done studying. Here’s the complete system.
Today I’m going to talk about something I am deeply passionate about: how to get straight A’s in high school and sleep 8 hours every night. Before I get into this, let me tell you a story. When I was in high school in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, for the first three years, I was what I would now categorize as a grind student. I was a good student, but a grind student. I got my A’s basically through sheer willpower. I got my A’s by not sleeping at night. I got my A’s by relentlessly doing problem after problem at 1 in the morning at my desk instead of going to bed. And while that worked for a little bit, I hit a breaking point junior year where I realized it was not sustainable, nor was it the way I wanted to live my life.
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The book that changed everything
I had a year and a half of high school left and I said, “There’s got to be a better way.”
So I went on Amazon, and I typed in “How to be a straight A student.” It was the first time in my life at 16 years old that I said, “I’m going to try to create a game plan to better my life.” That was a pretty profound moment for me.
Cal Newport’s influence
The book I found was “How to Become a Straight A Student” by Cal Newport. Since then, I’ve actually met with Cal Newport in person, and he is an incredible person. But he truly changed my life in high school.
A lot of what I’m going to share with you today comes from his teachings, with my own spins on them based on 15+ years of working with high-performing students.
The results of the experiment
After reading that book and implementing the tactics my senior year, I became an entirely different student. I was a good student before, but it was through sheer willpower. After implementing these methods, I became a high-performing straight A student. I did not get an A-minus my senior year of high school. And I was spending half, maybe a third, the amount of time doing homework, doing problems. I had a lot more time for family, friends, and yes, sleep.
The results are there.
Why I’m sharing this
I think there is a real issue with high schoolers these days. At CollegeConsulting.us, we exclusively work with high-performing high schoolers who need a plan. What I hope to bring you today is exactly that: a plan.
I see a lot of high-performing high schoolers who continue to grind every day in high school because they haven’t ever been taught a high-leverage plan of attack. They don’t know how to take a homework assignment and say, “What’s the best way to tackle this?”
So my goal today is to teach you, if you’re watching this as a parent of a high schooler, or if you’re a high schooler yourself, how to stand out in high school, get straight A’s, without burning out.
Our whole notion at CollegeConsulting.us is that you can reach your dream school acceptance and sleep 8 hours a night and enjoy the process.
Part one: foundational study habits
Everything starts foundational. Before we get into class-specific tactics, we need to build the foundation.
Step one: choose the right classes
This comes in a multitude of ways, but here’s how I would think about it.
If a student already knows what their interests are, potentially has a path, potentially says, “I’m pretty sure I want to lean towards this area for an eventual college major,” that is really good to know.
Here’s why: if a student wants to major in the softer classes, meaning English, social studies, humanities, but they’re grinding through BC Calc and barely surviving, they’re not properly allocating their time. The story that student is going to tell to college admissions is not centered around BC Calc.
Choose the right classes based on the story you want to tell.
Now, some students say, “I have no idea what story I want to tell. I’m a freshman.” I got you. I understand that. Then continue to take a wide range of classes until you figure it out. Once you figure it out, start to allocate your highest-leverage activities towards the classes you think you’re eventually going to major in or want to pursue further.
The B+ Rule
On that note, we have something in our program called the B+ Rule. This is a blanket statement rule with nuances for each individual, but for the sake of this post, here’s the rule:
If you can get a B+ or higher in a class, then it should be worth considering taking. However, if you can only get a B or lower in a class, it’s actually worth it to drop down a level so you can get an A in a lower-level class, which will actually be deemed more impressive by college admissions.
Are there nuances where the B+ Rule wouldn’t apply? Yes. But we have many students who are grinding out B-minuses in BC Calc, one of the hardest classes across the country. Our opinion: stop. If you’re going to get a B-minus, drop down to the lower-level calculus class, get that A, and then focus on other aspects of your application.
Choose the right classes. That starts you off foundationally.
Step two: get organized
This might seem silly. You might be thinking, “Jack, why are you talking about day-to-day what should be in a student’s backpack?”
Because the environment you set for yourself sets you up for success or failure. The amount of students I see who are super hardworking, motivated, brilliant, and they’ve never once been taught how to actually organize their backpack for a day of classes in high school.
Simplicity is king
When it comes to organization, simplicity is king. I recommend that every student have simply:
One folder (or binder) for each class. This is to store papers, handouts, things your teacher gives you.
One notebook for each class. This could be a paperback notebook if you’re old school, or if you use laptops in the classroom, a folder on your laptop designed specifically for that class to take notes in.
That is all you need.
There are a lot of gurus out there who will say, “Oh, you should have 10 different assets assigned to each class.” Simplicity is key when it comes to organization.
Step three: create a go-to study location
Now let’s talk about your environment. Have a go-to location where all you do is study.
It doesn’t need to be a grand office. But it should be a zone where only studying happens there.
The human brain tries to optimize for its environment. If you are studying at the dinner table, first of all, there are probably a plethora of distractions. But secondarily, it’s actually harder for your brain to switch into study mode.
You can look at “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. He talks about how the environment is a trigger to the human brain. This applies for adults, but this certainly applies to teenagers whose brain is constantly growing and evolving.
Have a go-to location where all you do is study. That could be a section of a room. That could be a section of your bedroom. But ideally, make that section the place you go to study every single day after school for your homework assignments. It will help your brain trigger into go mode when it’s time to study.
The 50-10 method
So now you’ve got your go-to zone. You can feel that sense of organization already, right? You’ve chosen the right classes. You have organization when you go to those classes. And now you have organization when you go home to do homework and study for tests.
When you do study, use what we call the 50-10 method. That means 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off.
How it works
50 minutes on means set a timer. Ideally, that timer is not on your phone. It could be on your watch. It could be on your laptop. It could be a timer on your desk. By the way, I literally have a 50-10 timer on my desk. I got it on Amazon for $7 and I still use it to this day as a 33-year-old.
The brain studies most efficiently in on and off chunks like this. Four-hour marathon study sessions, eight-hour marathon study sessions like I’ve seen students tell me about, are not as effective.
The goal here is to get straight A’s and sleep 8 hours every night. The goal isn’t to get straight A’s and be miserable. There are people out there who can promote that approach. That’s not what we promote.
The 50 minutes: all in
When your 50-minute timer starts, you go all in. You are solely focused on the task at hand, whether that’s homework problems or writing an essay.
The 10 minutes: all out
When your 50 minutes are up, the timer will go off. You are all out. This is crucial because you’re going to use these 10 minutes for your brain to reset.
What do I mean? Get up from your chair. Go downstairs. Go hug your mom, hug your dad. Eat some food, drink some water if you want. Go on Instagram, go on TikTok, whatever is your true way to rest. Relinquish your brain from actually processing the information at hand.
Then guess what? When the 10 minutes is up, back in.
The math
You would be shocked how much you can accomplish if you just do three of these sessions. If you do three sessions over an evening, you can do the math: that’s three total hours of studying.
You would be shocked at how much more effective you are versus what we see often these days: students studying at their dining room table with their phone right next to them, their phone pinging every 20 seconds with a new text, a new TikTok, a new Instagram, a new DM.
The 50-10 method compared to that is night and day.
If your student struggles with managing their time effectively, my free High School Time Audit can help them see exactly where their hours are going and reclaim time for what matters.
Airplane mode: pour fuel on the fire
Here’s what can pour fuel on the fire: airplane mode on your phone.
Every one of these 50-minute chunks, airplane mode. So there is no option in your mind to say, “Well, I’m at the 27-minute mark and my brain’s starting to get a little tired. Let me just check my phone.”
Nope. Your phone is on airplane mode. Or put it a floor below you or a floor above you or in a drawer.
It will be hard at first
Heads up: the first couple of days will be difficult. You will not enjoy this.
But it’s amazing what happens after 3, 4, 5 days of doing this. You will realize this is attainable for any high-performing student in this country. You start adding these habits routinely, consistently. This is absolutely possible.
Part two: class-specific study tactics
We now have the foundation. We’ve talked through foundational habits. That is general. Now let’s get into the specifics.
In high schools across the United States, there are three buckets of classes:
- Objective soft classes (English, social studies, languages)
- Objective hard classes (math and science)
- Subjective (essays, presentations)
Let me walk you through each. If you can have these foundational habits and then apply them to each of the classes you will ever have in your four years of high school, you are going to be unstoppable.
Objective soft classes: the quiz and recall method
Objective soft classes are your English, social studies, and languages. These have right and wrong answers, but they’re more about memorization than problem-solving.
There is one best way to study for these classes: the quiz and recall method with flashcards.
How it works
Let me use my sophomore year social studies class as an example, which was 20th century United States history.
When we talk about classes like that, they are not the hard math and sciences, but there are right and wrong answers to portions of them. “When was the Declaration of Independence signed?” There is an answer. “When was the shot heard around the world?” There’s a right answer.
This will be a multiple-choice setting. Same with English: “What happened in chapter 2 that angered the main character?” There’s going to be a right or wrong answer.
Creating your flashcards
Every single possible question you could be asked on an eventual quiz or test goes on a flashcard as a question on the front-facing side.
If it’s a small quiz, you might have 10 possible questions. If it’s a massive test, you might have 150 possible questions.
If you’re saying, “Jack, I don’t know what possible questions I could be asked,” that is not an issue for me. That is an issue for you to talk to your teacher about, because every single teacher in this country needs to make it very clear what you could be quizzed on. If you don’t know, go ask them.
Eventually you will get down to: “Okay, I know that all the questions could come from this reading block, these possible lessons. Therefore, I can take everything I might get asked and put it into question-and-answer form.”
The process
Put the question on the front of a flashcard. You can just use typical index cards. The goal here is simplicity.
Now let’s say you’ve got 50 possible questions. You’ve painstakingly written them with the question on front and answer on back. You now have a stack of 50 flashcards.
Your goal is to sit at your study environment, start a 50-minute chunk, and start going through those flashcards.
Here’s what will happen. At the start, you will get most of them wrong. This is how prepping for a test works. When you get them wrong, put them in one pile. The handful you get right on your first batch through, put them in a correct pile.
You’ve gone through them all. Now go back through. But at this point, you’re not at 50. You’re down to 43. You got seven right. Those seven, you do not have to look at again till the very end.
Now you go through again. This time from 43, you go down to 30. Fantastic. Now you’ve got a batch that’s right and a batch that’s wrong.
Keep going like this. Eventually you will get to a point where you have answered every single flashcard correctly.
The double-take
Then, just as a double-take, take the whole pile. Now you’ve got 50. Do one more run through. You’ll find that every once in a while you might get one or two wrong again. Do it again.
Eventually you will have all 50 correct and you feel ultra confident.
The beauty: knowing when you’re done
If it’s strictly an objective test with no subjectivity, no essay writing, you know it’s only going to be multiple choice, here is where the beauty lies:
You are done studying.
The amount of students who pull near all-nighters because they don’t have an end to studying, there is no goal line. It’s just “I’m going to study until I fall asleep at my desk.”
This method gives you an end. In the example I just gave, when you are 50 out of 50 correct, you’re done. Go sleep 8 hours a night. Go hang out with your parents. Go hang out with your friends. High school is only four years. You only get it for four years of your whole life. Go enjoy it.
The vast majority of your peers will never know when they’re done studying. They will simply study right up to the test, bleary-eyed, take it, and say, “Well, now it’s over.”
You will be able to sit back and say, “I finished studying for that test 3 days ago.”
They’ll be like, “What do you mean you finished?”
“I finished. I knew all of my flashcards.”
I’m living proof. I did this. I didn’t get a single A-minus senior year.
Objective hard classes: the quiz and answer method
Objective hard classes are the maths and sciences. These subjects innately have more problem-solving. It’s not your typical multiple choice. There could be multiple choice, don’t get me wrong, but you will have more problem-solving.
The goal is to take the exact same quiz and recall approach, but instead of flashcards, you use a notebook. I call it quiz and answer.
How it works
Let me use my physics class senior year as an example.
You’ve got a textbook and it’s very obvious. The teacher says, “Here are the sections of the textbook that could apply on your upcoming test.” According to those sections, each has 25 questions in the back associated with them, and you’ve got four sections. So you’ve got 100 possible questions that could parallel the test.
The only difference for the quiz or test is that the teacher will just replace the numbers. But if hypothetically you knew how to do every single one of those 100 problems, you would be able to solve every question on the test. The only difference is the teacher’s going to pull 15 of those 100 and just change the numbers.
This is how hard subjects work.
The process
Same thing as before. Get your 100 questions ready. Get a notebook out. Set your 50-minute timer. Get ready. You are now in your environment. You are locked in. And you go.
100 problems is going to take a while. Yes, you’re studying for a major test. But it’ll be way, way shorter than studying with no plan at all. And again, you have an end result: when you get 100 out of 100, you’re done.
Label one to 100 in your notebook if you want. Complete the first problem. Did you get it right? Yes or no. Literally have a check mark. Check: I got it right. X: I got it wrong. Move on to question two.
Here’s what’s more common with problem-solving than multiple choice: if you’ve been paying attention in class, if there were 100 possible problems, you will get minimum 50 right on the first pass. When you’re dealing with problem-solving, as long as you’ve been paying attention in class, you will get a significant portion right the first time.
So those 50 are out. Now you’re at 50 problems that you got wrong. Go back. And yes, you can and should prepare for tests over multiple days. But as you can see, as long as you plan this out, none of your testing sessions should be long, laborious, and they certainly should not impede on you sleeping 8 hours every night.
Eventually your X’s will turn into check marks. And when you get to 100 out of 100, you’re done.
My results
This is the exact process I used for my calculus class senior year, my physics class senior year, and I didn’t get a single A-minus.
It’s this unbelievably relieving feeling when you just know you’ve done every kind of problem you could possibly see on the test, and the only difference is they’ll switch out the numbers. Unbelievably relieving.
But again, the vast majority of high school students do not do this because they’re never taught a start-to-finish process.
Subjective assignments: the early and often method
Lastly, subjective: essays. There could be essay writing in either of the other categories, but for the most part, essay writing comes into the more soft classes like English, social studies, and language.
In the ChatGPT era, I don’t know how much longer essays will be asked for in school. But at least as I’m filming this in 2025, essays are very much still a part of high school and college. So we’re going to assume essays are still a thing.
When it comes to essays, the key to understand is the power of early and often.
The human dynamics at play
Your teacher who has assigned your essay is a human. Your teacher has absolutely, because every teacher does this, put their hands up and said, “Hey, I have office hours. If you want to walk me through your essay after I give the prompt, your essay is due in 10 days. If you ever want to come by and ask about your thesis, ask about your outline, let’s talk.”
And guess what? No one ever does.
Instead, what the vast majority of high schoolers do is wait on the essay until 48 to 24 hours before. Then they write the essay bleary-eyed at night. They hand it in and they hope.
That is the definition of a grind student. By the way, you can get A’s that way. It’s just far less consistent than the process I’m showing you.
How to get A’s on every paper
Early, often, and communicate with your teacher.
I’m not going to give you tactics like “here’s how to write the perfect opening sentence.” That’s not what this is about. I’m teaching you to understand the dynamics, the high-leverage play.
The high-leverage play when it comes to high school essays is to simply check in with your teacher at each major milestone of your essay. By the time you get to the end of your essay, your teacher will have approved every milestone.
Think about it
Can you think of a teacher who, after having approved your thesis, approved the subject you’re writing on, approved your first draft, approved your second draft, given you tweaks for your revisions, would then give you anything but an A when you finally submit that paper?
It doesn’t happen.
In our program, we’ve taught this, and time and time again, students come back to us and report, “I get an A on every one of my papers.”
The timeline
This takes planning because it does not work if you do it 48 hours before. You have to start this process when the essay is assigned.
When the essay is assigned, if it’s due in 10 days, you need to immediately write down: “Okay, 10 days. When are my check-ins with my teacher going to be?” And you need to be relentless about it. You need to be willing to go to office hours.
Here’s the thing: those office hours check-ins might take 10 minutes. And those 10 minutes are going to save you 10 hours on the back end.
So instead of having a bleary-eyed night writing your essay before it’s due, you will know calmly that:
- You checked in at the 2-day mark when you thought of your thesis
- You checked in at the 4-day mark when you came up with your outline (teacher approved it, gave you a couple tweaks)
- You checked in after you wrote your first paragraph just to make sure (teacher had a couple tweaks and said, “Keep going. This is awesome.”)
- You checked in after your first draft (the teacher was like, “Wow, this kid is relentless, but I kind of respect it.”)
- You checked in after you revised your first draft (the teacher said, “Wow, I’ve met with you five times now. You are relentless. This is unusual. Most students don’t meet with me this many times. But to be honest, I’ve now approved your thesis, your outline, your first draft. Here’s my couple tweaks on your final draft.”)
Once you do that, you go back, you tweak it. Do you think when you submit that essay, they’re going to give you anything but an A?
This is human dynamics, folks. This is what we teach our students from a high-leverage standpoint. The total amount of time used is significantly less than the bleary-eyed grind student, which I was for my first half of high school, cranking out essays 48 hours before.
The bottom line: you can have both
That is start-to-finish how to get straight A’s in high school and sleep 8 hours every night.
The goal isn’t to get straight A’s and be miserable. The goal is to get straight A’s and enjoy high school. To have time for family, friends, activities, and yes, sleep.
You only get four years of high school in your whole life. Go enjoy it.
But enjoy it with a plan. Because the difference between the grind student and the high-leverage student isn’t talent or willpower. It’s having a system.
Ready to take the next step?
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I’ll give you a heads up: our paid program is exclusively for high-performing high school students. We have a fairly extensive survey process. 23% of families make it through that survey process and actually have a call with us.
But if you think you have a high-performing high schooler who could benefit not just from high-level things like this, but from personally designed coaching, feel free to apply.
And if you just want to start with the free materials, that’s awesome. Congratulations. Thanks for being here. Good luck helping your high schooler get to straight A’s and sleeping 8 hours every night.
Frequently asked questions about getting straight A’s
What if my student is already a “grind student”? That was me for three years. The good news is these habits can be implemented at any point. The first few days of airplane mode and 50-10 will be hard, but after a week, it becomes natural. Start with one habit and build from there.
Does the B+ Rule mean my student shouldn’t challenge themselves? No. It means they should challenge themselves strategically. Take the hardest classes in the areas that align with your story and interests. Don’t grind through BC Calc if you’re going to major in English and it’s destroying your GPA.
What if my student’s teacher won’t tell them what’s on the test? Every teacher has to make it clear what material the test covers. If they say “chapters 5-7,” then every possible question comes from chapters 5-7. Your student can create flashcards or problems from that material. If truly unclear, your student needs to ask directly.
How long does it take to see results? Most students in our program report significant improvements within 2-3 weeks of consistent implementation. The mental relief of knowing when you’re “done” studying is almost immediate.
Can these methods work for AP classes? Absolutely. I used these exact methods in my AP classes senior year. The quiz and recall method is especially powerful for AP exams with their heavy memorization components.
What about students who “study better” with music or distractions? This is usually a coping mechanism for not having a system. When you have a clear endpoint and structured sessions, you don’t need background noise to make studying bearable. Try 50-10 with airplane mode for one week before concluding it doesn’t work.
