If you’re anything like me, chances are you’ve grown up believing certain supposed
truths – if you study harder, you’ll get better grades.
You’re either good at math, or you’re not.
Following the teacher’s advice is the best way to get a good grade.
False.
Stay tuned to learn the truth.
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.
If you’d like to learn more about how I implement systematic optimization in my own
life, or why I quit plastic surgery, check out my second channel, Kevin Jubbal, M.D..
Link in the description below.
The first lie is that if you study harder, you’ll get better grades, or alternatively,
you’re not getting straight A’s because you simply aren’t working hard enough.
Don’t get me wrong – putting in the time and effort studying is a necessary part of
doing well in college and in medical school.
But if you’re like the many students that grind hard and still fall short in class or
on the MCAT, it has less to do with your effort and more to do with your approach.
The vicious cycle works like this.
Sally studies hard and wants to be a good student.
When midterms come around, she gets a B-, and because she’s pre-med, she knows she
needs to do a lot better.
So for the next several weeks, she dedicates even more time studying, forgoing social events
on weekends to be productive.
The second round of midterms come around and now she earns as B+.
Better, but she’s aiming for an A. So, she works harder, now skipping her evening Zumba
and dinner with her roommate so she can hole up in her room with her textbooks.
She doesn’t even call her mom on the weekends anymore.
A few weeks later, she receives her final grade.
To her dismay, it’s a B.
What happened?
Sally was so focused on working harder, believing that was the answer to improving her grades.
But as we talk about time and time again on Med School Insiders, your performance as a
student is not siloed from other aspects of your life.
Being an effective person makes you an effective student to be effective on test day, not the
other way around.
Rather than putting in more hours studying, Sally’s efforts would have been better spent
examining why she didn’t get a better grade.
She would have discovered she was already putting in plenty of time with the books,
and further examination would point to one of two factors as the culprit: either her study strategies
were ineffective, or her test taking skills were subpar.
By working harder and forgoing other activities and habits that lead to a balanced life, like
good nutrition, regular exercise, and quality time with friends, she actually became less
effective.
She was experiencing the early stages of burnout.
How you study is more important than how much you study.
If you’re not sure where to start, our Study Less, Study Smart video goes over the study
hacks I learned in medical school that I wish I knew in college.
It has over a million views and hundreds of students have directly reached out to me to
say it’s radically improved their performance.
I hope you find it useful as well.
Have you ever heard that you’re either smart, or you’re not, and therefore your fate is
sealed?
Smart students will score well across all classes, and dumb students are doomed to do
poorly.
You’re looking at me confused.
I know, you don’t need me to explain why that’s nonsense.
But still many believe a derivative of this lie, which is that you may be good at English,
and bad at Math, or vice versa.
The key here lies in the language we use and the mindset that we adopt.
Let’s say you’ve historically scored poorly in Chemistry or Physics.
Like many of the students I tutor, you may tell me you’re just “bad at science.”
By saying this, by believing this, you’re reinforcing an identity of being someone who
is bad at science.
So despite revamping your study strategies, you’ll never reach your full potential in
science.
For you to get an A in Chemistry would now be directly contradictory to the identity
you’ve taken on for yourself.
This is cognitive dissonance at play, and this wreaks havoc on so many students.
If, instead, you say “I used to score bad in Physics because I had the wrong approach,”
you now open up the possibility of crushing your science courses moving forward.
It’s subtle, but believe me this has the potential to completely revolutionize your
performance.
This simple trick has saved so many of my own students.
The reason is that now your subconscious believes you can do much better.
The underlying assumption has shifted, and this empowers you to make the most of your
new study and test taking strategies.
Be careful the next time you lament about not being good at a certain subject.
Not being good at something is taking on an identity.
And identities are incredibly powerful at constraining our perceptions and future actions.
Rather, be someone who is constantly improving.
If you improve 1% every day, you’ll be 38 times better in one year.
No, that’s not a mistake, that’s just the power of compounding in action.
If you’re also a fan of the compounding effect, let the world know by mashing that
like button.
The idea that being a better student will make you more successful later in life is
part true, part false.
People love to latch onto the stories of famous entrepreneurs who were drop-outs or not necessarily
strong students.
To them, I say look up the definition of survivorship bias.
Elon Musk wasn’t a bad student because he couldn’t figure out how to get A’s, it’s
because he was so far ahead of us mere mortals that school wasn’t challenging or interesting
to him.
Others have even spun an argument that if you’re a C student, you’ll be better off
in the long run.
The people pushing that would make for great lawyers.
The truth is, if you’re a mediocre student, or a decent student, or even a good student,
there isn’t a strong correlation with your lifetime success.
However, if you’re a stellar student, the top fraction of a percentile, you’re likely
going to do well, regardless of your path.
One could argue it’s because of intelligence or even work ethic.
I say it’s because of other factors.
If you’ve gotten to the point that your’e scoring in the top 0.1 percent, you’ve figured
it out.
You’ve worked hard to get there, despite obstacles in your way.
You have grit.
But equally important, you’re adaptable.
And if there’s one thing you can count on in life, it’s change.
99.9th percentile students are those who aren’t afraid to experiment.
They’re even stronger than 100th percentile scorers because they are actually statistically
literate, unlike the latter.
They look at their results, and the systems that generated those results, and they go
back to the drawing board.
They assess, adapt, and implement, constantly improving their processes and their own personal
operating system.
They’ve cultivated the right mindsets, honed their systems, and will continue to excel
at what they do not because of the specific tactics and details, but because they have
the underlying systems and processes that facilitate peak performance, regardless of
the circumstances.
The best part of it all?
These are teachable and repeatable processes that you too can learn.
Long term success doesn’t come from dank memes or watching motivational videos to get
you hyped.
It comes from the fine tuning of repeatable systems and processes that facilitate the
results you want.
That’s how I scored in the 99.9th percentile on my MCAT, got a full tuition scholarship
to medical school, and matched into the hyper-competitive specialty of plastic surgery.
It’s always bothered me how if you go to a tutoring or admissions consulting company,
it’s hit or miss.
You either get a good advisor or you get unlucky.
If you went to the Apple store and had a 25% chance of a fantastic laptop and a 75% chance
of your laptop having issues, then you wouldn’t be going to the Apple store.
Yet for some reason people tolerate this.
Until now.
Med School Insiders is innovating and turning the tutoring and admissions consulting industry
upside down.
If you work with us, you’ll always get a phenomenal advisor.
How do we do it?
Simple.
As you can probably tell, I’m obsessive about optimizing systems and processes.
Together, with my team, we’ve painstakingly optimized our internal processes to guarantee
the best service, every single time.
From recruiting top talent to innovative incentivization structures and continuous quality improvement,
our obsession with perfecting our systems is the secret to the Med School Insiders difference.
Don’t believe me?
Our results speak for themselves.
We have industry leading satisfaction scores and our students’ success is second to none.
Visit MedSchoolInsiders.com to see for yourself.
What are some other lies that you’ve been told as a student?
Let us know with a comment down below.
As we approach 600,000 subscribers, I just want to say thank you.
It’s been truly a privilege that you would take time out of your day to hear what I have
to say.
Seriously, it means the world to me and I can't thank you enough
Much love to you all, and I wish you nothing but the best.