back in 2012 elon musk talked about in an interview what he called his single best piece of
advice and i used this advice and i integrated it deeply into my study strategy at university
and it made a massive difference it was a huge part of how i managed to achieve a 4.0 gpa
and that advice was the feedback loop implementing a feedback loop into your study strategy is huge
i talked about it in depth in the one-on-one coaching i'm doing for the transformio grades
in 30 days course i launched a couple of months ago you can check it out there's a link in the
description but the amount of students that i coached that were struggling with their exams
but then they implement a solid feedback system into their studying strategy and then they're able
to completely turn their grades around just from that one change in their studying it really is
staggering how powerful this is so in an interview elon musk said i think it's very important to have
a feedback loop where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing
it better i think that's the single best piece of advice constantly think about how you could
be doing things better and questioning yourself so the feedback system that i implemented when
i was studying for my degree at university is super simple and can be implemented by pretty
much anyone there are three parts to the feedback system step one reflect on the day's productivity
or performance at the end of every day step two reflect on every exam or assignment grade
step 3 reflect on whether current productivity or performance is in line with goals and what
this feedback system is designed to do is that it's designed to keep your grades increasing and
increasing it's important that just because you see your grades increase slightly you don't just
stop there and get complacent but your feedback system will help you keep aiming higher and higher
and achieving higher and higher grades so let's go through each step to see why is so powerful
and how it can significantly boost your grades step one reflect on the day's productivity or
performance at the end of every day so at the end of every day i would reflect on what happened that
day so what study strategies worked well for me and what study strategies didn't work well for me
did i get distracted and start procrastinating more than usual and if so what was it that
triggered that procrastination i realized that in the mornings i was the most awake and energized
so i designed my study plan so that i would study the most difficult and intensive subjects
in the mornings at that time and in the afternoon just after lunch i'd be feeling more tired and
have less energy so i studied the easier subjects and if i did have a particularly unproductive day
that's fine it happens every now and then but it's absolutely imperative that you learn from
it so it doesn't happen again or at least it's less likely to happen again so maybe you got
distracted bingeing youtube that day and didn't get much studying done and it happens to all of
us where we get distracted sometimes and so we don't study much that day but that's where your
feedback system comes into place to catch those days where you're particularly unproductive and
so the next day you implement actionable steps to stop you from making those same mistakes again the
main idea with this step is that each day because you're constantly reviewing your performance and
what you're doing well and what you're not doing well you're slowly making incremental
improvements that over time over a period of a month or two months or three months they will
snowball into some pretty significant changes and those changes will be reflected in your grades
step two reflect on every exam or assignment grade every exam grade i received back every
assignment grade i'd received back i would look at the feedback if there was any normally with
assignments there would be feedback from the lecturer but with exams often there wasn't
there was just an exam grade but if i did get any feedback from the lecturer i'd write it down and
make a point of making sure i improved for the next assignment but also i'd ask myself did i get
the grade that i was aiming for and if not why not was there anything i could have done to improve my
grade that i can implement into the next exam or the next assignment my aim was to learn from the
feedback given to me and keep getting better every year throughout my three year degree i remember
getting the grade back for my first assignment in my first year at university and i was given 76
equivalent to a first class degree a 4.0 gpa on a grade depending on which system you use but
i received no feedback on my mac sheet and i saw some of my classmates their mac sheets
they had some feedback so i met with my lecturer later that day and i asked him for some feedback
he read my paper again and said that's really good just keep doing what you're doing and so
i pressed him further i received 76 so there's still 24 have wrong in there eventually he gave
me some points to work on but it goes to show how seriously i took constructive feedback and
how keen i was to improve on the work i was doing for every exam and assignment so this feedback
loop is unquestionably part of every successful person's growing process being able to receive
feedback is one of elon musk's biggest strengths and as steve jobs once said it doesn't make sense
to hire smart people and tell them what to do we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
and musk does exactly that he hires smart people that are constantly giving him feedback on every
part of his business and that's what you should be doing asking your teachers or lecturers or
anyone you can for as much feedback as possible so you can continue to keep improving it's a really
basic thing that a surprising number of students just don't do the amount of people that i see
cramming in their revision before the exam or pulling overnight is in the library
and of course their exam grade suffers because they haven't prepared sufficiently
but then when the next exam comes they'll do exactly the same and then the next exam comes
and they're again pulling overnighters it's this kind of ineffective approach that the feedback
systems that you put into place help stop step three reflect on where the current productivity or
performance is in line with your goals the third and final step is to make sure that where you're
studying at right now it's in line with your goals it's super important that you're constantly
monitoring your progress at school or university because i see this so often where a student
studying has not been in line with their grades maybe they weren't staying hard enough maybe there
were other distractions in their life but then their exams come around and it's too late you
need to catch it and fix your studying performance well before your exams arrive and i get it it's
a super easy mistake to make maybe even know that you're not studying where you should be
or you're not studying the number of hours that you should be and that you're going to fail your
exams if you continue like that that's where the feedback system comes in it encourages you to make
incremental improvements every day to kind of pull you out of that hole you're in and i talk far more
about this feedback system and give you dozens more advanced study strategies to go through in
the transform your grades in 30 days course but please only take the challenge if you really are
ready to put in the work and put in the hours because if you are i'm more than happy to work
with you one-on-one with coaching calls to support you along the way throughout the course there's a
link in the description and if you are ready i look forward to working with you very shortly