The Unique Behaviours of Top 0.1% Students

okay I have got this Theory and that is that top students have been top students long before they ever got a top result so I have known for a very long time that you can teach two different people the exact same technique and they can have wildly different results what is it that makes a top student at the top and just for some context I think I've managed to be reasonably academically successful in my own life but the version of me like 18 years old trying to plaw my way into medical school is very different

from the version of me that graduated medical school and then after working with so many students trying to help them to become academically successful as well I've learned a lot of things because yes there are tips and tricks that you could see on like a 30-second Tik Tok but at the end of the day a lot of those really quick tips and tricks are not impactful enough to produce a sustainable long-term impact and when you work with so many students oneon-one for so many years there are certain patterns that you see in terms of what

works and what doesn't now when it comes to being a top learner most people can train themselves to use a method of studying where it feels more engaging and more enjoyable where they are good enough at it that they actually find the process to be enjoyable because most humans really love to learn but most people really do not like to study because the way they study is not actually helping them learn effectively and I talk about this topic literally all the time in all my other videos however I also know that only a very small

percentage of the people that watch my videos will be able to achieve those really top results and as an educator what's really important for me is that I'm producing as much of an impact as widely as possible because obviously just watching a video on learning is not really enough otherwise everyone will be a super efficient learner it's different between knowing how to be good and actually being good so I think the first part is to understand that the reason most people don't get bitter in the first place is because they have barriers to Improvement rather

than not knowing the next best Technique No one is really good when they first start learning something and everyone is going to have some kind of challenge as they're trying to improve so the people that are the most successful are the ones that are able to systematically remove those barriers progressively so that one day they actually get to being good everyone is capable of improving but no one can improve if the barriers are not removed and this is why I think these prerequisites of Excellence are actually more important than techniques themselves and one of the

biggest barriers that I see especially with students that are in high school and University becomes really clear when I think about working with students versus working with like entrepreneurs and CEOs one of the biggest differences is that often when I work with like an entrepreneur they haven't necessarily done amazing in school and they haven't been in school for like potentially decades so when I teach them to learn more efficiently it's a little bit more of a blank slate they don't have such strong habits of learning and they're not so fixed and also their belief about

what they can do and how they can succeed is a little bit wider it's a little bit more holistic there isn't a preconceived notion that I have to do this in order to be successful whereas often when I work with students they have very very fixed habits partially like cultural and from their own previous history as well as what like teachers and the education system around them tells them this is how you need to learn this is what you need to study this is how many hours you need to study and they're comparing themselves with

their friends and you know their family friends you know like distant cousin or whatever whereas when I work with these high power really successful entrepreneurs they know that they don't have to do the same thing as everyone else like they're free to explore and experiment and understand themselves and then build something that works for them and here's a really really good reason why you should not really place that much value and important on your existing habits of learning they are probably not that good and I'm not saying that in like a way like I'm not

like indirectly dissing you the point is that most of the habits that we form on learning are based on just our prior experiences like you learn a certain way going you know through early childhood and then entering into like primary school and secondary school and our habits of learning are often not really based on someone teaching us a right method they're just things that we tried and then the people around us did and then teachers told us that we should do and it's just kind of a mix of all of these things if you asked

me like 20 years ago what's the best way to study there just really wasn't a lot of research to know and the research that was there was honestly like not very good and so the techniques that have become mainstream are really like outdated and we know a lot more about how the brain works and how learning should be now than we did a decade ago and then now when we add in the idea of like competition and insecurity and anxiety we really lean into the status quo bias which is this cognitive bias that means that

we don't like to change we like to keep things the same and stable and when we introducing change if there's an exam coming up around the corner that creates insecurity and anxiety and then we're not willing to experiment and that means that our habits just get with a top top learner one of the things that I very consistently find is that they are much more critical about what works and what doesn't and they are much less attached to their methods and they are more attached to the process they use to refine their methods when I

talk with people that are like really struggling with learning and they haven't had great experiences and they're not achieving great results there's a lot of dependency and like insecurity attached with their learning there are certain methods that they've been told work that they have used and they know it doesn't really work that well for them however they just continue to attach themselves to it because the idea of moving on to something else creates a lot of that anxiety really top Learners they are much more focused on just producing the result like if they're using a

method and it's not quite producing the outcome that they want they are much faster and more aggressive and more open to changing it up and experimenting on it to figure out the combin that does work for them and they don't care so much about what other people are doing they are in a way I suppose more like leaders rather than followers and so in a way it's kind of like a poetic irony because a lot of lower Achievers you know people that are like really really struggling they're just trying to get the pass or they're

like putting in like 100 hours a week studying and they're still not getting the results as that other like top learner their main method of trying to improve is to just copy success they see a top learner doing something and they just straight away copy that not realizing that you can't do that because you're not the same and so finding what works for your brain and your level of processing experience is really important because if you don't you're going to be continually trying to copy this other person using their techniques and wondering why you're not

getting the same results it's kind of like trying to learn how to drive a car for the first time by watching Formula 1 races a lot of what they're doing is just not going to be applicable to you because you either do not have the vehicle or you're not operating in that kind of context so one of the biggest pieces of advice that I would give is don't try to copy success don't use that as your Milestone the goal for any learner trying to become more effective and more efficient is to challenge their methods and

to try to do more with less it's not about having more techniques it's not about having more hours it is is about using the same number of hours and the same number of techniques but trying to get more value out of it if you're using like four different techniques for studying and you're already studying like 50 60 hours a week doing more is not going to make a difference you need to do less and get the same result or greater that's the way that you're going to increase your Effectiveness because you can always study more

once you figured out how to get more value out of the time that you are spending so here's what I want to do now so that it drives the point home in terms of what a normal student does versus how a top student uniquely behaves I'm going to give you three different scenarios common scenarios that most students will find themselves in I'll tell you what a normal student tends to do versus what I've seen these top students doing instead so first scenario is getting repeatedly bad results in an exam one of the things that I

would like always see that the average student do is as soon as they get a bad exam they just hope that the next exam will be better and this is going to be a recurring theme you'll see that most students a lot of their responses and strategies rely on luck whereas the top students are much more critical and methodical over time the normal student inevitably is not going to change much unless they get lucky whereas a top student over time they will inevitably get better and better and better and the gap between them and everyone

else will just continue to widen so typical student when they repeatedly get bad results in an exam they will just get stressed they will hope that the next exam is better that certain questions are not going to be answered uh and then they're just going to try to study more they think I must not have studied enough for this exam next time I'm going to study more or in some cases they may try to copy success they'll look at what someone else that's doing well in their class is doing and they'll just try to add

that on to what they're already doing with their studying and actually just giving themselves more work to do which kind of makes them even more stressed and if they're lucky the method they copied is going to help them and if they're not lucky then that method is not going to help them in fact it's going to be worse because now they're just doing more stuff that isn't effective on the other hand a top student is going to look at why they got that bad result and try to understand what is not working they're going to

be focused on a cause and effect relationship the the cause is the processes and the methods they're using and the effect is the result that they're getting so what about their processes and methods is not leading them to get the result that they want are they redundant with some of the strategies that they're using are they missing a certain type of strategy are they not hitting the topic from a certain angle or not enough they're going to be thinking about the variables and trying to figure out why they're getting this bad result what the bad

result means for their process and then changing the process and a lot of the time this means learning learning more about learning in order to make those informed decisions and for those of you that are interested I do have a step-by-step program where I distill the last decade of me looking at these patterns and packaging what works in a guided step-by-step program going through your note-taking skills and what you need to be thinking about and doing in class and lectures and how you should be studying after them how you should be revising how you should

be using your inter leing a start to finish study system that is evidence-based and tried and tested you also have the opportunity for feedback so you can actually send through your work and then one of our coaches can have a look at it and actually tell you at an individualized level what you need to be doing with your studying to make it more efficient you can check that out at I insite.com the link is in the description scenario number two is if you're not confident before entering into an exam the typical student that's not confident

before entering exam is going to respond in much the same way they're going to Hope certain questions don't come up and they're going to just study more do more questions do more past papers do more flash cards more hours at top learner understands that doing more doesn't necessarily translate into a better result so they're going to be much more focused and targeted with their time they're going to try to do more with less they'll think where are my gaps why am I not feeling confident what is the angle on testing myself that I have not

looked at before what is actually missing so that the time that they do spend studying is really focused on those weaknesses that are preventing them from being confident rather than just hitting it again and again from the same way with the same method hoping that with repetition it getss better which normally it doesn't in scenario 3 when you're feeling overwhelmed in lectures or just overwhelmed in general while you're studying like there's too much content like you're not remembering anything and like you know things are just slipping in this scenario a typical student is going to

respond and I think you're going to see the pattern here they're either going to stop because they're too overwhelmed or they're going to overcompensate again just by doing more of the same you see the trend here whereas a top learner is going to think about why they are overwhelmed what are the things that are contributing to their overwhelm and they're going to make adjustments to their methods to see if that improves their overwhelm and So based on those scenarios you can see that a top student is not born a top student necessarily they had the

characteristics and the attributes and the behaviors of someone who will one day be at the top 1% even before they were at the top 1% and so that is a point of reflection for you how have a look at your habits your reactions your responses your behaviors and your Tendencies and think are these the habits of someone who will one day be excellent or are these the habits of someone who will stay stuck or trapped and when we recognize that we may not have the prerequisites for being a top learner that's when the journey can

really start thanks for watching and I'll see you next [Music] time