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Despite how logical and rational we think we are, humans tend to be impressively irrational
and prone to making mental errors.
The first step is acceptance.
You, yes you, make mental errors and poor decisions on the regular.
We all do, myself included.
The good news is that once we educate ourselves and become aware of these biases,
they are much easier to control for.
Here's how to get past the mental errors that are holding you back as a student.
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com
We're going to start off with the big one.
The bias that wreaks havoc on all aspects of our lives: the confirmation bias.
Our tendency is to first take a stance or have a position on an issue
then we seek information that further confirms our beliefs and we deprioritize or ignore information
that contradicts our beliefs
and the stronger you believe that you know something,
the more you will filter and ignore information that contradicts your firmly held belief.
You may be thinking, "That's dumb. Why would people do that?"
The truth is new information that contradicts our current beliefs is energy-intensive.
It's not easy to reassess beliefs, correct misunderstandings,
and reformulate a new mental framework.
Human thinking doesn't follow the scientific method.
We don't naturally formulate a falsifiable hypothesis and then put it to the test.
Instead, we first form a hypothesis
and then unscientifically seek out validating information without truly testing it
As a student, chances are that you experience this in multiple aspects of your life,
from gym routines to what it means to eat healthy to even your study strategies.
You may believe a certain way of studying is working for you
even if the evidence suggests the contrary.
You may even cite a couple blog articles
or point to some classmates who supposedly do the same thing with good results.
The truth is we are terribly ineffective at actually being objective with our own self assessments
and know whether you think you're a visual or kinesthetic or auditory learner
doesn't actually change the way you should study as demonstrated by the scientific literature.
Follow the evidence-based study principles that I push on this channel and you too will find yourself excelling,
not only in your classes but also on the MCAT and USMLE Step 1 and Step 2.
If you have found any of the information on this channel useful, smash that like button.
It makes the YouTube gods happy and allows us to help more students.
If you were to win $50 today, you'd experience a boost in satisfaction
but if you were to lose the same $50 amount,
you'd experience a dramatically greater decrease in satisfaction.
This is loss aversion - our tendency to strongly preferred avoiding losses over acquiring gains.
You can use this to your advantage.
In two simple and similar studies, McEvoy and Smith and colleagues
demonstrated that changing the framing of class grades by utilizing loss aversion
could motivate students to perform better.
If points were earned and added to one's total, they were less motivating
than students starting out with points that were deducted for errors and incorrect answers.
The fear of losing points was more motivating than gaining them.
Loss aversion can be exploited to increase the effectiveness of behavior change.
Like with Stick, the website that has you put money on the line.
If you don't follow through with your goal, you lose the money as a student.
You could experiment with this yourself using loss aversion to motivate you with sticking to exercise habits
or sleeping by a certain time or even doing better in class
I'm not recommending you necessarily make a betting pool with your friends to see who gets the highest grade
but experiment with the power of loss aversion in motivating you to adopt those hard to stick habits.
In a broader sense, loss aversion can prevent us from taking risks
and if you're a pre-med student, you're more likely than the average person to be risk averse.
After all, the field of medicine tends to attract those who like to play it safe.
More often than not, the big scary decisions are far more Daunting in our minds than in reality.
If you're facing a difficult decision,
like I did when deciding between plastic surgery versus medical entrepreneurship,
I recommend you try the Fear Setting exercise.
It's a structured approach to assessing, weighing and preventing fears
while analyzing the opportunity cost and potential upside of difficult decisions.
I walk you through how I personally used it in my video about why I quit plastic surgery.
Lastly, one of our favorites, the Survivorship Bias
referring to our tendency to focus on the few winners in a selection process
and overlooking those who didn't make it.
We often hear survivorship bias as it applies to college dropouts.
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg
all dropped out of college to follow their entrepreneurial dreams
and each became wildly successful in their respective arenas.
Does that mean that dropping out of college is a good idea and is more likely to result in a massive success?
Absolutely not!
When you crunch the numbers looking at all of the people who dropped out of college,
you'll find that the overwhelming majority were not better off than those who finished and earned their degree.
It's just that the winners are remembered and the losers are forgotten
which makes it more difficult to assess whether a particular strategy leads to success.
Students often ask me about the specifics of my path because they believe that by replicating the details,
like which major I chose or which schools I attended, that they could emulate similar results.
I'd argue that those specifics are far less relevant than cultivating
the right mindset, study strategies and resilience to overcome the inevitable obstacles.
I had familial and health challenges in college.
Does that mean that you should seek out similar challenges for yourself?
Obviously not! That's idiotic.
Then why replicate the other details in my life?
There are multiple facets to anyone's story and it's silly to think we can cherry-pick just the details that count
while omitting the ones that we don't want to replicate.
The truth is both the good and the bad are part of a person's story
and they work together in unison in that individuals ultimate path.
Focus on the principles that you can learn and adapt to your own life,
not obsess over the minor nuances and specifics of someone else's.
The best thing you can do is to be the best version of you.
Understanding and being aware of these fallacies is the first step in overcoming them, but our job isn't done yet.
So, where should you go from here?
First of all, let me start by saying that I'm far from perfect and I'm still subject to these fallacies
but here are a few things that worked for me.
Let go of the ego.
It's not uncommon for much conflict and resistance to arise from the protection of one's ego.
If you feel yourself or see someone else reflexively getting defensive and closing off another way of thinking,
the odds are high that their ego is getting involved.
Getting someone else to let go of their ego is a challenging ordeal so focus on your own.
You don't always have to be right and you don't always have to look good for others or make sure you don't look bad.
I'm no Buddhist monk
but I have found mindfulness meditation and journaling daily
to help me be more aware of my own thought processes.
Certain books have been helpful too
including the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
Seek value don't add value.
Have you ever been in a situation where two people keep trying to one-up the other?
I know it's cringe-worthy and it's because both people are too focused on trying to add value
and seem important in the situation rather than sitting back and letting the other person shine.
as they say "If you want to be interesting, first be interested."
A curious and open mindset will take you much farther
than running around beating your chest saying how awesome you are.
I like to look at each situation and ask myself a simple question:
What can I learn here?
When someone is highly intolerant of a certain political stance or way of thinking,
doesn't follow evidence-based medicine and believes in naturopathy
or does something else that may be initially off-putting,
I always seek to extract value.
There is always something I can learn from them or from the situation.
And third, constantly question your assumptions.
The sneaky thing about these fallacies is that they apply to the supposed facts that we believe.
While they're easy to spot when we get into disagreements with other people,
They're harder to see in our day-to-day lives.
For that reason, structuring some self-reflection into your daily weekly or monthly schedule will serve you well.
Tim Ferriss, for example, does the fear setting exercise at least once per quarter, if not more often,
as it's remarkably effective at identifying and moving past self-limiting beliefs and fears.
I've also found that a daily journaling habit is beneficial in training me
to be more aware of my emotional states and my thoughts
rather than being a passenger to them.
I personally used the Day One journal app on my iPhone which syncs to my iPad and computer.
Every morning, it reminds me to journal at 7 a.m. and automatically populates a custom template
to reduce friction and make me more likely to follow through with this habit.
What are some other common biases or fallacies that you see students making?
Let me know with the comment down below.
The point isn't to eliminate all biases from your way of thinking. That's an unattainable goal.
We want to simply minimize their influence so we can think more clearly.
If you haven't already, please hit that like button if you learn something new
as it helps us a lot with the YouTube algorithm.
Much love to you all and I will see you guys in that next one.