The Unique Behaviours of Top 0.1% Students

Well, I have this theory and it's that the best

students

have been the best

students

long before they got a great result, so I've known for a long time that you can teach two different people the exact same technique and they can have wildly different results. results, what makes a good student at the top? And just for some context, I think I've managed to have reasonable academic success in my own life, but the 18-year-old version of me trying to make my way through medical school is very different from the version of me who graduated from medical school. medicine and then after working with so many students trying to help them succeed academically, I also learned a lot of things because yeah, there are tips and tricks that you can see in like. a 30-second Tik Tok, but at the end of the day, a lot of those really quick tips and tricks aren't impactful enough to make a long-term sustainable impact and when you work with so many students one-on-one for so many years there are certain patterns.

Seen in terms of what works and what doesn't, when it comes to being an excellent student, most people can train themselves to use a study method that they find most interesting and enjoyable, in which they are sufficiently good. It's that they really find the process enjoyable because most humans really love to learn, but most people don't really like to study because the way they study doesn't help them learn effectively and I'm talking about This topic literally all the time. However, in my other videos I also know that only a very small percentage of the people who watch my videos will be able to achieve those really great results, and as an educator, what's really important to me is that I'm making the biggest impact possible. as much as possible because obviously just watching a video about learning is not enough, otherwise everyone will be super efficient learners.

It's different between knowing how to be good and being really good, so I think the first part is understanding 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 start learning something and everyone will have some kind of challenge while trying to do it. improve so that the people who are most successful are those who are able to systematically eliminate those barriers progressively so that one day they become good, everyone is capable of improving, but no one can improve if the barriers are not eliminated and this is why I believe these prerequisites of excellence are actually more important than the techniques themselves and one of the biggest barriers I see, especially with high school and college students, becomes very clear when I think about working with students versus work with entrepreneurs and CEOs.

One of the biggest differences is that often when I work as an entrepreneur, they haven't necessarily done very well in school and they haven't been in school for decades, so when I teach them how to learn more efficiently, it's a little bit more of a blank slate, they don't have as strong learning habits and they're not as fixed and also their belief about what they can do and how they can be successful is a little broader, it's a little more holistic, there isn't. a preconceived notion that I have to do this to be successful, whereas often when I work with students they have very fixed habits, partly cultural and from their own prior history, as well as what teachers and the system tell them. education that surrounds 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 compare themselves to their friends and you know their family friends, you know them like distant cousins ​​or whatever, whereas when I work with these entrepreneurs High powered and really successful people know that they don't have to do the same thing as everyone else, like they are free to explore, experiment and understand themselves and then build something that works for them and here is a very, very good reason why which You really shouldn't put that much value and importance on your existing learning habits, they probably aren't that good and I don't mean that in a way like I'm not indirectly putting you down, the point is that most of the habits we form around learning They are based only on our previous experiences, like learning a certain way, you know, during early childhood and then entering elementary and secondary school, and our learning habits are often not really based on someone teaching us a right. method, it's just things that we tried and then the people around us did it and then the teachers told us what we should do and it's just a combination of all these things if you asked me like 20 years ago what's the best way to really a lot of research to know and the research that was out there honestly wasn't very good, so the techniques that have become common are really outdated and we know a lot more about how the brain works and how it works.

Learning should be now than it was a decade ago and now, when we add the idea of ​​competition, insecurity and anxiety, we really lean towards the status quo bias, which is this cognitive bias that means we don't like to change. We like to keep things the same and stable and when we introduce changes, if there is an exam around the corner, that creates insecurity and anxiety and then we are not willing to experiment and that means that our habits just become one of the best. students. One of the things that I 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 more attached to the process that they use to refine their methods when I talk to There are people who really struggle with learning and have not had great experiences and are not achieving great results.

There is a lot of dependency and insecurity associated with their learning. There are certain methods that you have been told work. used and they know that it doesn't really work very well for them, yet they just continue to stick with it because the thought of moving on to something else creates a lot of anxiety. Actually the best students are much more focused on simply producing the result. It seems like they are using a method and it is not producing the result they want, they are much quicker and more aggressive and more open to changing it and experimenting with it to find out the combination that works for them and they don't care much about what others do. people, I guess in some ways they are more leaders than followers and in some ways it's like a poetic irony because a lot of the lower Achievers know people who are like really, really. struggling, they are just trying to get the pass or they are spending about 100 hours a week studying and still not getting the results, as others, like top students, their main method of trying to improve is to simply copy success.

They see a great student doing something and they immediately copy it without realizing that you can't do that because you're not the same and therefore finding what works for your brain and your level of processing experience is really important because Yes Aren't you going to continually try to copy this other person using their techniques and wondering why you don't get the same results? It's like trying to learn how to drive a car for the first time by watching Formula 1. In racing, a lot of what they're doing simply won't apply to you because you don't have the vehicle or you're not operating in that kind of context, so What one of the most important pieces of advice I would give you is don't try to copy success don't use it as your milestone the goal of any student trying to become more effective and more efficient is to challenge your methods and try to do more with less it's not about Having more techniques is not about having more hours, it 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 are using four different techniques to study and you are already studying between 50 and 60 hours up to date. week doing more will not make a difference, you need to do less and get the same or better result, this is how you will increase your effectiveness because you will always be able to study more once you figure out how to get more value. part of the time you're spending, so here's what I want to do now to make it clear in terms of what a normal student does versus how an excellent student

unique

ly 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 compared to what I've seen these top students do, so the first scenario is to get repeatedly bad results on an exam, one of the things I would always like to see. What the average student does is that as soon as he gets a bad test, he just hopes that the next test will be better and this will be a recurring theme. You will see that for most students many of their answers and strategies depend on luck.

While the best students are much more critical and methodical over time, the average student will inevitably not change much unless they are lucky, while the best students over time will inevitably get better and better and the gap between them and everyone else will increase. . it just continues to expand, so the typical student when they repeatedly do poorly on a test will just get stressed, hope the next test will be better, certain questions won't be answered, uh, and then they'll just try to study harder they think I shouldn't have studied as much. enough for this exam next time I will study more or in some cases they may try to copy the success, they will look at what someone else who is doing well in their class is doing and I will just try to add that to what they are already doing with their studies and in fact I will just give them more work to do which will stress them out even more and if they are lucky the method they copied will help them. and if they are unlucky then that method won't help them, in fact it will be worse because now they are just doing more things that aren't effective, on the other hand a top student will see why.

They got that bad result and tried to understand what's not working. They will focus on a cause and effect relationship. The cause is the processes and methods they are using and the effect is the result they are getting. So what is wrong with your processes and methods that is not leading to the result you want? Are they redundant with some of the strategies they are using? Are they missing a certain type of strategy? Don't they approach the topic from a certain angle? is not enough, they are going to be thinking about the variables and trying to figure out why they are getting this bad result, what the bad result means for their process and then they will change the process and many times this means learning more about learning to make those informed decisions. and for those of you who are interested, I have a step-by-step program where I distill the last decade of my life by looking at these patterns and packaging what works in a step-by-step guided way. program that looks at your note taking skills and what you need to think and do in class and lectures and how you should study after them how you should review how you should use your inter reading a start to finish study system that is evidence based and has been tried and tested, you also have the opportunity to receive feedback so you can submit your work and then one of our coaches can take a look at it and tell you on an individualized level what you need to do with If you are studying to make it more efficient, you can check it out at I insite.com.

The link is in the description. Scenario number two is that if you don't have confidence before taking a test, the typical student who doesn't have confidence before taking the test will do so. She responds the same way she will. I hope that certain questions will not arise and you will simply study more. Ask more questions. Do more past work. Make more flashcards. More hours at the best level. The student understands that doing more is not. This doesn't necessarily translate into a better result, so they will be much more focused and focused with their time, they will try to do more with less, they will think about where my gaps are, why don't I feel confident about what angle to put myself in?

The proof is that I haven't looked before at what's really missing, so that the time they spend studying is really focused on those weaknesses that prevent them from being confident instead of just attacking over and over again in the same way. the same method in the hope that with repetition it will improve, which usually does not happen in scenario 3, when you feel overwhelmed in lectures or just overwhelmed in general while studying, like there is too much content, like you don't remember anything and As you know, things are just going wrong in this scenario, a typical student is going to respond and I think you'll see the pattern here: they'll either stop because they're too overwhelmed or they'll go back to overcompensating. simply doing more of the same you see the trend here, while aoutstanding student will think about why they are overwhelmed, what are the things that contribute to their overwhelm and will make adjustments to their methods to see if that improves their overwhelm and based on those scenarios you can see that an excellent student is not born an excellent student necessarily had the characteristics, attributes and behaviors of someone who will one day be in the top 1% even before they are in the top 1% and that is a point of reflection for you on how to take 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 great or are these the habits of someone who will remain stagnant or trapped and when we recognize that we may not have the prerequisites to be a The best student, that's when the journey can really begin.

Thanks for watching and see you next time.