 Today's video is brought to you by Pickmonic. Today I'm going to break down two steps that if you do today, you'll start to see better grades and less time. These are the same steps and techniques that I show my one-on-one coaching students and exactly how students like Tanya went from bombing her very virginetic exam to getting A's on her next two while doing it with less time. Hey friends, welcome to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician, and I'm absolutely a huge geek about making videos on how to make your journey as a student so much better with less stress. That includes tips on studying, productivity, you name it. So if you're new here, definitely consider hitting that like and subscribe button on YouTube. If you're listening to this on an audio version as a podcast, definitely consider hitting that subscribe or follow on your favorite platform. But today I'm going to be jumping straight into my computer, kind of breaking down the strategy of how I teach students to basically become better learners, but really doing less and not necessarily more. And after that episode, if you are interested in learning more about either the one-on-one programs or the group coaching programs and trying to see how some of our students have gotten better grades, some of them in just a few weeks, then go ahead and click the link down below in the description. OK, so we're at my computer, so we're going to get right into the first two tips, as well as a bonus tip if you guys choose to stay to the very end. But it's important to kind of break down with the most optimal situation. And that's that you go from learning to retaining and essentially repeat this process over and over again. A nice analogy that I sometimes like to give my students is think of your learning in the form of like a bucket or a water bottle. In this setting, we would draw a box and the more and more information you learn than the more and more full your bucket essentially gets. But as you're exposed to more and more information, you tend to have a hole in your knowledge base. And this is typically where information you previously knew is no longer a part of your bucket. And so ultimately, you end up with a steady state where the information that comes in is just about as equal as information that goes out. And this is the most frustrating point for any student because you feel like you're putting in the hard work, but the information and the retention is not quite there. So that's why whenever we coach students on how to study better, one, we actually focus on how to minimize some of this. And so the information that we leak out is not as excessive. And then we try to focus on how to quickly go to the process where information tends to come in much quicker or at least stays in the bucket longer. And so when you get to your test, you tend to have a more full bucket and that equals better grades and better confidence. So this sounds like something you want. Then let's go into the first two steps. And remember, you can always look into the coaching programs down below in case you want our individual help to help you do that on your own personal medical journey. But step number one is to really simplify your information pipeline. You think about, again, your learning and this is your bucket. A lot of times we rely on so many different resources, whether it be your syllabus, whether it be lectures, whether it be resource number one that you really are super fond of and your classmates are using. But then you also want to use resource number two. You essentially have a lot of different areas where you're trying to fill this bucket up with. But it makes it stressful, if anything, of how to dedicate equals amount of time to all of these because you're hoping that all of them together is going to actually cumulate your knowledge base. But really what they're doing is getting in each other's way. And so a lot of times when I'm working with a student one on one, I simply ask them, have all these resources you're using, which one gives you the biggest bang for your buck? Which would you use if the test was in an hour? And so they may say, oh, I love using my slides and my syllabus, but things like lectures, not so much. And I haven't really been able to use resource number two. But if I really had to choose, then I'd go ahead and choose my slides and maybe I would choose resource number one because they explain some things better than my own lectures do. And so what that allows you to do is already start picturing your optimal schedule where you can essentially take these extra resources away and take this resource away and this resource. And then you would end up with a system where you're minimizing where your information or the pipeline of where the information is coming from. And so in this scenario, a student would get their information from the class slides and the resources, but they necessarily wouldn't go to lecture because it's not really helping them very much. And the reason this helps is that if you think about your day to day schedule, so this is, let's just say your day starts at 8 a.m. And it ends at 9 p.m. You could easily be scheduling three hours a day in the middle for lectures, but if you take it out, you can now dedicate that time to doing any of these two. You can either be using it for resource number one or slides. And when I do this with a lot of my 101 students, they're like, mind blown. Now I have three hours to spend on a resource or a technique that works so much better than what I'm currently doing. And a lot of times what I find is that when students replace their times with more effective resources, they're actually able to save themselves more time because instead of saving themselves three hours, they can actually use one of those more useful resources, let's just say resource number one. And instead of spending three hours, they may just have to spend like two. And so now they have an extra hour that they can spend on another technique, another strategy, more repetition or more free time for themselves. If you're a student who is finding yourself using a lot of different resources because you don't really want to miss out, to be quite honest, if you're not getting the grades that you want, an extra resource won't be able to fill up that gap. Find the best resource for you at the moment and really hone in on making that the most useful thing. Instead of trying to get a percentage or another point here and there, you're actually able to increase your chances of getting those Bs and As by using the resources that seem to be most congruent with your quizzes and exam based on your prior experience, as well as resources that nicely compliment your own learning style. Now, typically I will challenge and push my students to try to come to just one resource. And the reason is, is that if I can push you to push you to just choose one, then really forces you to ask yourself, okay, do I really need this one? Because sometimes we say things are helpful because we just think that they are. But to be quite honest, somebody could easily say, oh, this is actually not as helpful as just the slides alone. Sometimes I do have students who do actually enjoy using both, and that's fine. If I can push you to the brinks and you still decide these are both needed, then that's okay. But if you do realize that if I just did the slides, I would likely have gotten a majority of the questions on the last exam or quiz correct. Maybe I don't need resource number one. Maybe I could just review the slides and then focus on learning those concepts. If you can do that, you save yourself even more time and then get into step number two. Now, step number two is to automate your review. If we go back to the most optimal form of learning, then it goes from learning to review and then repeat. But the problem that most students have is they don't do this aspect of it consistently. Some students run into a situation where they get behind, so they may not even review a lecture or if they do review it, they review it so much for they're in the future from when the information was presented. And it's almost like if they were learning it for the first time. But if you can create a system where you're like, if I learn something, my rules for most of my students is if you learn it today, review it today. And number two is to have a system for your weekends. And so typically we'll have students do is on Saturdays, they will review Monday through Wednesdays. And then on Sundays, they will review all the lectures from Thursdays to Fridays. And this is a form of an automated review where you know, okay, given the extra bit of time that I saved myself through step number one, I'm going to force myself on that evening before whatever time I want to be done to learn the material. So if you needed to review your lectures or your slides, then you have to do your form of automated review and we'll get into a second of what those kinds of techniques can be. And then the same thing on the weekend. On Saturdays, you would do whatever technique you did here. You just repeat it again, but you would do it for Mondays and Wednesdays lectures. But if you've already done one repetition, so it'll become a little bit quicker and faster to do three days worth. And on Sunday, you would do two days worth and then prepare for your Mondays lectures. But if you already do a system like this, you've already done yourself two repetitions before the quizzes or exams come around. You feel more confident of your approach. And again, your pipeline is simple because you've learned the material, you reviewed it the same day, and you have a schedule of when you'll repeat it. Now, some of the techniques that I like to have students use for the former reviews include things like Anki. So if you guys are interested in my Anki methods that I like to teach a lot of my students, I'll link down below a video, our most popular video that we have on YouTube, which will be down for you. Other techniques that I really enjoy using are things like Excel methods or just essentially using a Word doc or an Excel and being able to put your notes in the form of question to answer, where one column would be the questions that you would learn, and then another column would be the answers or the evidence. And then you would just go ahead and review one side to another and see if you can answer it instead of having a basic note. In a similar fashion, I love using Q&A notes, and there's a video that I'll link below and put a thumbnail on the corner. But basically, Q&A notes are, instead of just taking notes that are just out in complete sentences, you're essentially asking yourself a question, and then everything below it will be bullet points that essentially are evidence or answers to the question. So if you can come back to your notes and say, okay, I'm gonna review my notes, my Q&A notes, and I'm gonna do all of my notes from today and make sure I can answer all these questions and be okay with all the evidence or all the bullet points, then you've done. And then you come back on the weekends and you do it again. These are just three techniques that I love using. We share a lot of other techniques with our one-on-one students, depending on their personal learning style. So again, if you're interested, the links will be down below. We have both the group and the one-on-one, depending on what level of help you may need. So those links will always be available for you. But I would recommend, in addition to just keeping your system of how you learn simple, to also just go ahead and choose just one technique. So I have some students who love Anki. I have some students who love using Q&A notes. But then when they ask me, could I switch to something else? I say, no, just that's working, like stick to that. Because now you have a system where you're like, I love doing slides and resource number one. I love doing Q&A notes. And now I have a system of when I should study, how I should study, what type of things I definitely need to do today and on the weekend. And then you already have something so much better than what you had before. And again, this is not me telling you, this is how you study. This is just saying, this is the approach. You fit in the techniques and the resources that really fit for you. But things just become a little bit more natural. Now remember, I promised a bonus step for all of you guys that made it to this part of the video. Before we get into the bonus step, it's a great place to go ahead and introduce today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. In case you're not familiar with Picmonic, it is a great all-in-one resource for anyone on the medical journey because they essentially have videos for any topic that you may want, whether it be anatomy, cardiology, hematology, and also nicely go ahead and lines up with very important exams like step one and step two. So you can go ahead and find your favorite resource, see the exact page, and then relevant videos that come to it. And then you can come to any type of video. So here we have a chess x-ray video. I can watch their very entertaining and memorable videos because they essentially use visual mnemonics and pictures and images to be able to make things stick to you. And then I can essentially review and do quizzes to make sure that information truly did stick. So if you're on your medical journey and you haven't just quite found that resource, it just clicks and makes things so much easier, definitely consider giving Picmonic a try because there was likely a video for whatever topic you're learning for right now on your medical journey. And if you go ahead and use the link down below and use the code MDJourney, you also get a really sweet 20% discount thanks to our friends at Picmonic. So thanks to Picmonic for being the sponsor of today's video. Now onto the bonus step, which I tend to keep for a lot of my coaching students, but I will share it for you guys in case you're interested. Now one of the biggest issues from this is that you can imagine if we go back to our analogy with a bucket is that there is going to be times with a review that as I do more and more review, there is going to be certain topics that I tend to just have weaker topics about. And so those tend to be where I have my kind of holes in my knowledge. And those are going to be the same weaknesses that I just don't actually get. And they may make the difference of whether I get a C to a B or a B to an A. And so often what I'll have a lot of our students do is to create a weakness list. Now remember the main goal that we're trying to do is essentially plug in all of these holes or as many of them as possible. And so what a weakness list is, and this can be really any form or format of something like this, is having a Word doc or an Excel sheet of all those topics that you just aren't quite mastering. So imagine every time you do one of these repetitions or reviews right here, you're realizing, oh, I'm not getting HIV or I'm not getting a technique in cardiology. I'm not understanding a rhythm or hypertension. You'd essentially add this to your Excel sheet or a Word doc. And then on your weekends, when you're here on Saturdays and Sundays, you may dedicate an hour or two specifically from topics in that weakness list because really what you're doing is not trying to learn more information, but you're trying to increase your chances that those holes are as plugged up as much as possible. And so then you increase your chances that your bucket or your bottle or whatever has an opportunity of being as full as possible. If you have this growing list of topics that you never really come to and you always feel kind of uneasy about and if it shows up on a test, you're like, pimp. Like I just wish it wasn't on there and I could easily have spent some time watching YouTube videos or like looking back on my slides to truly understand it. Having a list of that that you can come back to not on like the weekdays where you're busy but on the weekends where you're just saying, during my Saturdays, this hour chunk is my weakness time. And then you can go down that list. If something has gone from hard to master, take it off the list. Something is gone from hard to still hard then you can go ahead and do it in the future or maybe a great opportunity to ask your classmates or your professors of like, okay, how do you truly understand this? Because it's still not making sense to me. But when you close those holes, it gives you a nice kind of boost of confidence as you're going into tests. But keep in mind that the key difference between what other students do, which is they kind of hyper focus on these small bits of details, is that here we're actually dedicating a separate amount of time but only of two of the seven days that you might be studying. Instead of making yourself do it every day, you're going to do your typical reviews but you'll have this weakness list that's growing but also dedicated time to make sure you're kind of knocking things out. So again, you're closing your bottle and keeping it as full as possible. So to review, the first thing you need to do is to really simplify your information pipeline. Really break it down to just one resource they can truly kind of rely on and imagine if the quiz or the test was like an hour from now. Like what would you go to? Like what would be your technique that you would go to? Once you find that, see if you can take away all the other resources. Again, you can always add those things back in when you become more refined but right now, things are likely a mess if you're watching this video. So that's probably step number one. Step number two is to now automate your reviews and the schedule that I gave is what I tend to give a lot of my coaching students. But again, feel free to use whatever you want as long as you know this lecture is going to preview you on this day. I really am a big proponent on reviewing things the day that you learn it or at the very least the next morning. So if I learned something on a late Monday, I may review it Tuesday morning if I don't really have that time but I want to make sure within a 24 to 48 hour window that I'm covering that material so I can still use whatever I did to learn it as like onto my advantage. And then finally come back to it on the weekend. And then step number three is a bonus step is to have a weakness list that you can constantly add to and reflect every time you're doing your Anki or your Q&A method or Excel method or however you want to learn a whiteboard session, a group setting and have a growing list and then coming on back to it on a structured interval on the weekends and then nipping those in a button essentially filling up your bucket one step at a time. Hopefully guys, you guys can see how this method can make your setting feel a little bit more natural. It's still personalized. You are doing all the things that matter to you and I'm not telling you this is how you should study but those techniques and this approach is essentially what we make all of our coaching students do in the MediConnect program. So if you're interested again in learning anything about it we have tons and tons of reviews and testimonials from our students within just a week of working with us. So those will be linked down below. If the one-on-one approach may just not be right now what you're looking for then maybe consider out the Med Elite Academy which includes group coaching calls with me for life for the existence of the program and I'll go ahead and jump on calls with our students twice a month and answer really any question you have. So if you want some coaching and guidance and mentorship throughout your medical journey and don't just want it for a few weeks at a time but essentially for the duration that you're on the journey for the Med Elite Academy is a great opportunity for. Both of the links will be down below as well as reviews from our past and current students. So if you got interested those will be linked down below. If you like the approach of videos like this then definitely consider checking out the study rehab course it's absolutely free but I get into more kind of techniques on things like how to increase the amount of free time and guarantee that you'll be done by a certain time every single day. Then that will be in those videos again those are absolutely free that will be linked down below. If you are interested in learning how I study the medical school there's a free aid step course that I made step by step back when I was in medical school and exactly what I did every step of the way and every single day. I know again that's absolutely free and they'll be linked down below. But my friends if you guys have any questions either drop it in the comments section down below or DM me on Instagram with your specific question I'll do my best to try to help you out answer on a timely basis. If you are watching this on YouTube and you have found some value from this episode definitely consider hitting that like button to one tell me like you should make more videos like that like please do so and if you aren't part of the community just quite yet go ahead and consider hitting that subscribe and notification bell to get more videos like this on a weekly basis. If you are listening to this as an audio version on a podcast and yes we do have a podcast of the TMJ show then definitely consider hitting that follow and subscribe button on your favorite platform and consider leaving a five star review on iTunes. But with that my friends thank you so much for making it to the very end of this video if you did enjoy this video then check out this video right here on how to use Anki like a pro step by step as well as this video on how Squid Game is exactly like medical school sure you'll like that but as always thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys and yours I'll see you guys in the next one peace