How to DESTROY your exam like it owes you money (by a straight A engineering student)

Right here, guys. How to clutch your exams like they owe you money. So, what does this mean?

What does clutch your exams mean? I'm going to teach you how to significantly reduce the workload that you need to do during your exam season with these three weirdass tips here. So, I'm going to basically teach you how to get better grades in less time.

So, I don't have too much time. I think I'm going to get kicked out of the classroom soon. Hopefully not.

Um, so who am I? Who am I to talk about exams? So, I'm 26 years old.

I've been doing exams for like 15 years. I did the IGCSE program in high school, the IB program in high school, and I did electrical engineering for university. And for all of them, I averaged A's.

And so, I'm not flexing or anything. I'm just saying I've done a couple exams in my life. So, today I've summarized three super valuable things that are going to help you pop off this exam season.

So, let's get into But I don't want to waste too much time. Uh before I start though, link in the description is my online school. Join it and you can get more personal help from me.

It's popping. So go check it out if you're interested. All right.

So first tip I want to go through here. This seems weird as hell, but basically the first tip that you need to know is about study techniques. And it's how to use effective study techniques to use your brain to its best ability and learn as fast as possible.

So this study technique is testing. Now you might know what testing means. You know doing past papers, testing yourself, but this goes way deeper than you might think.

So I'm going to explain it in full detail here. So first I want to mention a study. Really, really, really interesting study.

I think you're going to like it. So basically this study, they tested three groups of people on some material. So they had them learn some material and then they were going to test them on the material.

The first group they allowed them to look at the material four times. So excuse me. So maybe over the course of a week, I can't remember the exact time, but they allowed the group to look at the material four times.

The second group, they allowed them to look at the material three times and then they allowed themselves to test themselves on the material once. So in this case testing themselves meant they simply thought over the material. So they were like okay so this guy did this what happened at this date what happened here what happened here.

Basically they tested themselves on the material. The final group of students they allowed them to look at the material once and they allowed them to test themselves three times. So here is the mind-blowing result from this study.

This group who only saw the material once outperformed the other groups every single time. So this is the crazy thing because this is how most students study. They spend the majority of the exam season reviewing their notes, watching lectures, looking over lecture slides, highlighting, rereading everything.

And maybe towards the end they'll do a bit of testing just to see if they've learned the material. They'll do some past papers. They'll test themselves.

They'll do some quizzes. But actually, this is the wrong way to do it. Actually, the best way to do it is this testing.

Testing has scientifically been proven to be the most effective strategy for learning. And I'm going to tell you in detail how to actually test yourself. It's not just past papers.

But first, I'll tell you my approach. My approach is when I'm learning material, first of all, first rule that I use, I get into past papers as soon as possible. So when I was in IB, when I was in IGSSE, when I had literally decades of past papers to work with, I started from the beginning.

Like literally day one of studying, I was using past papers. Now, okay, the first time I did past papers, I was getting everything wrong. I wasn't doing amazing, but I would learn a little bit of the material, just enough to be able to do a couple questions and then I would go back and forth, back and forth until I felt more confident.

Then I would stick with past papers. Of course, I would go back to the material every now and then to learn. I would keep reviewing.

But the learning actually happened during the testing. We think that testing is just to see if we understand the material. But actually testing is used to learn the material in the first place.

And here is the mind-blowing thing. Even if you get the question wrong, you look at the question, you try your best, and it's a disaster. You get it completely wrong, you are still learning.

Even if you're making mistakes, you are still learning. Because here's why. There's a general rule when it comes to studying coming to come that when it comes to learning, learning takes effort.

Learning is supposed to be an effortful process because basically when you learn, you're basically telling your brain, okay, neurons, rearrange yourselves so that we can learn this And to tell your neurons to rearrange themselves, you need to put in effort. Because when you use effort, you're basically telling your brain, "Okay, look, this is important. We need to know this.

" So, when you're opening the textbook and you're just highlighting, you know, you're just copying and pasting your notes, you're just rereading the same paragraph over and over. Your brain is chill. He's not thinking like, "Okay, this is important.

We need to learn this. " So, testing is painful because it's supposed to be because that's where the learning happens. Even if you get it completely wrong, you completely get the question wrong, you are still learning because we all know that we learn through failures.

This is exactly what it means. So, and and this is the funny thing as well. They asked each of these groups how confident they felt going into the exam.

This group who looked at the material over and over was the most confident. And this group that only saw the material once was the least confident. So testing it take we take a hit to our ego to our self-esteem because we're getting questions wrong.

So it feels like we're not learning. It feels like we suck. But basically you need to realize that this feeling like you suck is a part of the learning process.

It's called it's humility. Humility is understanding that you don't know everything. So, what that means is testing will wreck your confidence maybe, but hopefully you'll remember this video and you realize that you're still learning.

It doesn't mean you're dumb. Looking at the material over and over again is a false sense of confidence. Okay, so that's that.

If you don't have past papers, what I like to do as well, because in university, I was lucky if I got a pass paper. So, what I would do is I would just test myself. So, I'd read over the material and literally I was like I was a psycho.

I would look over the material and I would literally just like stand up and just start walking around the room, pacing around the room, just thinking about the material in my head. I would often talk out loud as well. I did this at home, by the way.

So, I would literally like walk around the room thinking about the material like, "Okay, so the integral goes here. Okay, this is the control loop. Okay, what about this?

Should this do this? This do this? " Basically, you just test yourself in your own mind.

you test yourself out loud and you learn way better than just reading the material over and over again. So, give this a try today. It'll destroy your confidence.

Stick with it, though. It's very effective. All right, I might get kicked out soon, so I'm going to keep going.

Second tip here. This is an interesting one. What the hell is this?

Looks cute. It's not cute. This is a lion.

A lion. And um I don't need to write lion here. Uh okay.

So, what what's the tip here? The tip here is focus. This is a tip on how to focus.

By the way, focus like a lion. I'm going to go deep into this. What this means, this is a mindset.

When you sit down, how to learn effectively. So, to learn effectively, you need to tell your brain, look, what we're about to learn here is important. Keep it in our memory because it's important.

Because you can't just say like, "Hey brain, we've got an exam tomorrow. Please memorize this entire book. " Your brain doesn't work like that.

You need to give a signal to your brain to learn to tell it that what you're about to learn is very important. So, how do you do this? You do this with, like we said earlier, active recall.

Basically, um it should take effort to learn. It's like if you're taking information out of your head. But the other way to tell your brain that what you're learning is important is to give it all your attention.

So when you give something all your attention, when you're like fully giving all your attention to this past paper, what is that? That is focus. So this is why focus is so important because when you focus on something, you're telling your brain, look man, this is important.

I'm giving all my energy here, man. This is important. We need to learn this.

Okay. Okay, so this tip is on how to focus better. Basically focus like a lion.

So how does a lion focus? By the way, work like a lion. It's a quote from this guy Naval Ravi Kant.

He's a entrepreneur. Um I like that quote. So a lion, how do they hunt?

They chill all day until they see a deer. By the way, um no offense to any of the lions in the audience. I'm sorry if I'm seriously disrespecting your work.

I don't understand fully how a lion hunts. So, this is going to be an extreme simplification, but they see a deer run across the savannah and they chase, they run, they attack the deer and it's over in about 1 minute. They eat the deer.

Boom. So, they work really, really hard, really, really intensely and then they rest for the rest of the day. They sleep.

They eat their massive meal. That's it. So, how do you focus like a lion?

You sit down and you give your work all your attention. You glue your eyes onto the screen, onto the past paper. You turn off your phone.

You put all distractions away. They did some studies on what were the top habits of top medical students. All of them locked themselves away for a period of time in the day to focus intensely with no distractions.

So this is the habit. Take some time in your day to hunt to focus really, really intensely because look, 2 hours focusing like a lion will get you more work done than 10 hours of focusing like how most students focus. Because most students focus like a sloth.

A sloth, how does a sloth hunt, if we can even call it hunting? Okay, so a sloth, how do they eat? They see a leaf over there that that they want to eat.

They literally, they're so slow. They just walk over to the leaf and then they grab the leaf. Takes them like 10 minutes to eat one leaf.

Then they look around for another leaf, then they go to the next leaf. They're very, very slow. So the point I'm trying to make is most students study like a sloth.

They sit in the library. As soon as the work starts to get a little bit difficult, they pull out their phone and they start scrolling on Instagram. The work starts to get a little bit difficult.

Oh I completely forgot I got to I got to do laundry, boys. They're like they get a little bit bored in the lecture. A little bit of boredom.

The feeling of boredom rises in them. They're like, "Okay, now is the best time to mow the grass. " They'll literally they they get pulled to every distraction.

And they don't focus intensely because they don't know the importance of focusing intensely. That's the best way to do it is to set aside the same period of time every single day as this lion block of work that you're going to do. It's also known as deep work.

So pick like a 2hour period in your day where you know you can focus very intensely and every single day during your exam season make it your goal to focus like a lion and you will get more done in that 2hour period than you will in like 6 hours of working like a sloth. And um the other thing lions do is they rest hard. So, you might feel guilty resting in the middle of the day because you're like, "Oh, bro, I can't watch Netflix cuz I got an exam coming up.

" But if you work like a lion, then you have to rest like a lion as well because you've pushed yourself to your limits. Your brain literally is so fatigued that you can't focus anymore. You have to give it a break.

So, that's it's actually a good thing that you're resting because you're replenishing to work again like a lion. Okay. Now, the final tip that I want to give you here when it comes to studying, this one's pretty big.

Basically, okay, what's going on here? Basically, why do we struggle with focus? Why do we struggle with procrastination?

And how do we beat it? So, this tip will, by the way, I know this video is getting long, but literally it's worth it because watching this video, you're going to save hours of your life. So, pay attention.

Okay? Basically, the reason you can't focus, the reason you procrastinate is because your brain wants two things. So, your brain wants good grades, right?

Your brain wants good grades. It's pretty obvious. You want to get good grades.

But the reason you can't focus is because deep down in your brain, you want something else. And because you want something else, you feel a pull away from your study. But here's the thing.

You don't know what it is that you want. Okay? So, what does this mean?

Basically, what this means is focus and procrastination, they're not problems. They're actually symptoms of a deeper problem. And this deeper problem is some kind of unmet need that exists inside you.

And the thing is, it's unconscious. Okay? So, I'm going to tell you exactly how to quickly overcome this.

But basically what this means is you don't have a problem with focus. You don't have a problem with procrastination. You're not lazy.

You have a problem with mental health. That's it. And mental health might sound lame, but I'm going to explain it here.

Cuz I know a lot of people going to click off as soon as they hear this. They're going to think like, "Okay, video is done, bro. You've given me all the quick tips.

Now I'm out of here. " But literally, this is what's holding you back. The reason that you always procrastinate, the reason that you can't focus, it feels like a tugofwar.

It feels like maybe for a couple days you're focused, you're motivated, but you always snap back in to your bad habits. You always snap back to your bad patterns. It's because unconsciously there is some desire within you that's pulling you away.

So, there's a quote from Carl Jung that I really like. um until you make the unconscious conscious it will run your life and you will call it fate. So okay how do we find this unmet desire?

I'm going to tell you exactly the tactic but let me give you an example. So for example let's say that you have a fear of failure but you're not aware of it. As soon as you sit down to do maths, let's say for example, you remember in the past sometime when you studied maths and you failed.

So your brain remembers this and it's like, "Oh I remember this, bro. Last time we sat down to do maths or when when we were 10 years old and we sat down to do maths, we failed our exam, bro. It was so painful.

We were humiliated. My teacher said, "I sucked at maths. " And so the reason you procrastinate now doing maths is because your unconscious mind is pulling you and it's saying, "No, no, no, bro.

Last time we were in so much pain when we studied maths. Don't do it. Don't do it.

" And so what does it do? It plays tricks on you to make you not study. It says like, "Oh, bro, we can study tomorrow.

Oh, we're so tired, man. Let's not study. Oh, let's start it at 900 PM.

Right now, it's 8:15. We have to start on the hour. So, your brain uses these fancy tricks to pull you away.

So, the tactic is we want to get rid of this unconscious need. We want to meet this unconscious need so that it doesn't feel like a tugof-war. So, focusing and studying feels like you're flowing downstream.

It actually feels good. It feels stress free. It's enjoyable.

There's no war going on. The only desire in our mind is to work hard and get those grades. So, I go really deep on this in my online community.

By the way, we've got a mental health coach in here. So, it's insanely valuable. It'll help you a lot.

We go to the depths of the matter. But here, I'm going to give you a habit that will help you make some progress in this area right now. So, it's a habit called morning pages.

So basically what morning pages is is it's a very simple habit for about 5 to 10 minutes every single morning. You set a timer and you simply write. You have to use a pen uh because you write slower and so your thoughts can actually process.

But basically you sit down and with a pen you just write whatever is on your mind. It's called stream of consciousness. You just write whatever's on your mind for 5 to 10 minutes.

And I guarantee after you do this, you will feel a lot better because a lot of those unconscious fears that are running you will leave your mind partially and they'll be written down on paper and you'll be able to actually see a little bit of your unconscious mind and you'll be able to actually get a glimpse of it. You'll be able to focus a lot better. So what I can tell you is try this habit.

It doesn't have to be in the morning. It can literally be, you know, right before you work. But 5 to 10 minutes, literally just write all your thoughts down.

Whatever. Don't write for your stuff to be read. Write just for the sake of writing.

Don't judge anything you write. Throw away the paper after so no one has to look at your embarrassing thoughts. When I started this a couple years ago, my biggest fear was that someone would look at my journal.

So, don't be afraid to throw away your paper, but literally just write like a madman. And I promise, try this. You will see a significant change in your ability to focus and overcome procrastination.

So, don't judge what you're writing. Literally, write for the sake of writing. And the other thing, it's a skill.

Journaling is a skill. So, you might not be amazing at it first, but stick with it. And I promise you will start to see results.

So, hope this video helped. Good luck with your exams. Again, link in the description.

Join my online school. I will literally give you more personal help. We've got a ton of material coming out where we literally go in depth on mental health, on mastering your mind, on top study techniques, past paper guides, literally everything.

Because most advice out there is very surface level because they don't fix this tugofwar that's going on in your mind. They help you a little bit start to win the tugof-war, but they don't help you eliminate this enemy. All the tactics out there are very surface level because it wasn't until about a couple years ago when I started working on my mind and I started working on my mental health that I actually started to see significant improvements to my productivity.

Not only my productivity, but my social anxiety. Literally everything in my life started changing when I started fixing the foundation which was my mind. So we go into that and a lot more on study techniques.

Literally I'm in there every single day. Come join. Check out the first link in the description.

I've got a founding member discount on right now. If you're going into summer holiday as well, it's going to help you a lot because I'm guessing you've got goals that you want to work on during your summer holiday. I'll literally help you with all that.

So at least check it out if you're interested. Otherwise, see you later.