the LAZY way to get straight As

Let’s imagine that 30 days from now, you have an exam.

But not just any exam.

This is the biggest, most important exam of your life.

This will decide what university you go to, what job you ultimately get.

What do you do?

Maybe your mind has gone straight to “let’s read the textbook!”

“I need to make mind-maps and colour-code my notes!”

Maybe you’re a little bit more based, so you start doing active recall or past exam questions.

Essentially:

“Since this exam is really important, I will revise more than anything, doing all these different study methods, all day, to get as much learning in as possible.”

This is the DUMBEST mistake 99% of students make.

But guess what? It’s not your fault.

I’m not blaming you.

Especially if you come from an immigrant, south asian background like myself, you will have been brought up with this mindset of “study, study, study”.

This is completely the wrong way to go about it.

But the reason so many people fall into this trap is this misconception:

They think hours studied and the grade you achieve have a linear relationship.

Like this:

Makes sense, right?

“If I study for 3 hours a day and get 30%, then I need to study 9 hours a day, and I’ll get 90%!”

Wow! I solved studying!

The problem is, this assumes that you can study for the whole 9 hours at the same 100% intensity.

You might think, “yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad. I think I could do that.”

Something I learned in the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport is that the human brain can only actually carry out a maximum of 4 hours of something called “deliberate practice” per day.

Only 4 hours.

But this isn’t just regular old studying:

“Deliberate practice” is that sweet spot of challenge, just outside of your current capabilities, but not so hard that you could never achieve it.

It’s when you’re stretching your abilities.

It’s when you attempt to answer a difficult question, then you get it wrong, asses why you got it wrong, improve the weak areas, then try again.

It’s hard.

And this is where we need to be as students when we’re studying.

A professional footballer doesn’t go out to the field and practice 5 yard passes for 8 hours.

No - they go out, and play high intensity small-sided games, they practice 1-on-1s or other match-realistic drills, just in that sweet zone of challenge.

Then when they mess up, they figure out why, practice that area specifically, then try again.

You need to be stretching your abilities when you study.

Instead of going over the same flashcards that you already know the answers to, or highlighting the text-book - do something difficult, but also beneficial.

Do past-paper exam questions, under time pressure (without the mark scheme or the textbook to help you).

Try summarise all the key points you know about the topic in bullet-point form, completely from memory.

Attempt the difficult questions at the back of the book that you’ve been too scared to touch.

Because whilst everyone else is busy wasting their time doing useless sh*t for 8 hours a day,

You’ll be finished before lunch-time, and will have probably learnt more than them.

And then you have the rest of the day to be as lazy as you want.

Peace out,

-Yvan