 Now, I want you to listen up because in this episode, we'll talk about a few mistakes that you may be making that'll be costing you grades, time, and performance. Let's get into it. All right, guys, welcome to the channel on the empty journey. My name is Lux. In this video, we're gonna talk about common mistakes that medical students make. And these are mistakes that I myself made when I was in medical school. Mistakes that I have found in coaching students, that I work with, students that hit me up on Instagram, comments, whatever. But I promise you that if you work on improving these and are really boiled down to five mistakes that truly will cost you both time, performance, and really hear sanity, that last one's the most important. So let's get into number one, which is assuming that everything you're doing is wrong. It's very natural for us in medical school to be an input and output-driven kind of machine. For example, the materials covered on the test may have been too detailed, even for the material that was covered in the syllabus and the lectures, and everyone in your class missed them. Or while your study strategy typically helps you get really good grades, in this test or quiz particularly, they're just a lot more detailed that you typically don't focus on and it costs you some points. Now, it's very easy for medical students to study in a specific way and then look at their grades as a performance of like, do I need to fix everything now or can everything kind of stay the same? Before you change anything, it's truly important to ask yourself, was it truly how I did things? Was it truly how I studied or how I managed my time? That cost me that score? Often the answer is yes, and then it forces you to ask yourself how you can study better, what resources could you use more and less of? We talk about a lot of those in other videos as well as some of the programs that I'll link down below. The biggest mistake that you can make is that everything, like every single thing you're doing is absolutely wrong. I know when I was a medical student, it's very natural for me to get a good grade and keep going. I'm like, this is great. This is the strategy I'm going to always use. And the next quiz happens and I just bomb it. And I was like, well, maybe I shouldn't be using this resource. Maybe I shouldn't be using the study strategy. I should be spending more hours, okay. How can I spend more time on the weekends? I can make sure I can study the details. And you just go in through this bad cycle of always asking yourself is everything I'm doing really the right thing? And so while it's easier said than done, always ask yourself if the result that you've gotten truly needs to cause an absolute rehaul of everything you're doing. Typically it involves studying, but this also includes things like your productivity, your stress manager, your motivations, and you usually answer no. You can truly point to a user one or two things that you have to change. Often you don't have to change anything because again, the output may not have been completely in your control. And you realize how I'm studying is actually pretty good. It's worked out in the past. This happened just to be a quiz. It just didn't go the right way. I'm not really going to change very much and that's okay. Mistake number two is that we make absolutely no time for ourselves. I know when I was a first year medical student I barely had time to talk to my then girlfriend, fiance and now wife. I would try my best to keep up with my family because I wasn't living in the same city and that's pretty much all I had time for. I was sacrificing how much time I was exercising, how much time I was sleeping because I thought that the more hours that I spent in medical school the more successful I'd be. But if you're watching this, you probably already know that when you spend an hour or two extra every day, that doesn't suddenly lead to an hour or two of extra performance on the exam. In fact, I realized that when I used less time but I used that extra free time to spend on things that are most valuable to me relationships with my now wife, people that I really cared about like my family, also doing things like hobbies, like exercising. I suddenly felt more whole, more complete in medical school and then I was able to use that time remaining to be more efficient and just kind of be ready to work. So if you're thinking that the solution to your better performance in the school is more hours likely, that's not true. Most of us will probably study anywhere from five, eight to 10 hours a day and simply more than enough to do however you want to. Really the question you should ask is how you should be using those hours that you're already studying and then ask how you can start cutting those times out, increasing the time you have for yourself, at least a minimum of an hour and a day so you can focus on the things that are most important to you. I mentioned this in every episode. If you're watching this and saying that's a good idea, I'm gonna do this, but later on, I promise you it never happens. As you go later in your medical journey, you only become busier and the good habits like making time for yourself never truly come in. So if you're initially starting as a medical student, this is super important to make time for, a minimum of an hour is my kind of goal that I teach all my coaching students, but finding even two hours a day it could be like the ultimate cream of the crop. Mistake number three, tell me if you've had this in the comments section. You feel guilty when you're not studying. I know I had this where I was like, okay, I'm gonna take time for playing that Xbox or going for a workout, going for a walk, listening to some YouTube videos and suddenly I feel guilty for not studying, which again makes no sense. Let's just say for example, and let's keep the math simple that you're studying 50 hours a week and because you're not getting the grades you want, you decide it's gonna be a good idea to study two more hours, five days of the week. Now you've increased your overall studying by 20% or 10 hours. Now the real question you should ask yourself is, is your grade truly gonna improve by 20 points? More often than not, the answer is absolutely not. But for some reason in medical school we think more is better. Really the answer is asking yourself how you can use your current hours to become more efficient and that becomes a huge practice of asking yourself, what am I doing that's actually helping? What am I doing that's totally garbage, but I'm just doing it because I think I need to. And if you want my help to understand exactly what you should be doing as well as what you shouldn't be doing, check out the rapid study accelerator program which I'll link down below. It's basically a step-by-step system that'll help you understand how to improve your study efficiency and create a system that improves over time. So if you guys are interested, download the link down below. Now mistake number four is to delay the important habits. As we talked about earlier in the episode, there are things that you know you should be doing. Maybe you should be working out more. Maybe you should be watching your diet. Maybe you should be spending more time with the people that are most important to you. And you say, well, let me figure this out and I will eventually get to that. People understand medical school is busy, right? Maybe I'll just compromise and sacrifice some of that and eventually I'll have free time. When I'm a resident, when I'm attending, the answer is no. Because one, those priorities don't always stay a priority. And two, you just wish you always had time for those now. So if you're a pre-med, while you think you're busy, you're gonna be busier as a first-year med student. When you're a first-year med student, you'll be busier. When you're second, third, and fourth-year med student, well, maybe not the fourth one, but you guys get the gist. And when you're a residency, your free time and availability just go ahead and plummet. But using myself an example, even though I'm in residency, I can still find time to record these videos because I made those important habits way back in when I was a first-year medical student and how do I make time for my priorities in keeping those good habits from the very get-go? And so a good way to do this and a good exercise for medical students is we're used to people asking us, where do you see yourself in five to 10 years? Well, ask yourself, what happens to you wanna have in five to 10 years? Most of us will say, I wanna be fit. I wanna be healthy. I want to be very knowledgeable of things outside of medicine. I want to be able to read. I wanna be able to spend time with my family. Do those now. Start with one thing in that list that's most important and start with that now. Because I promise you, if you think later, it is eventually going to come, you're only going to kick the can down the road, never get to it. Now, before we get into that last mistake that you likely may be making, if you're watching this on YouTube, go ahead and help me out by hitting that like button if you enjoyed this episode so far. Now, mistake number five is that you are focusing way too much time on other people. As notorious as we are as medical students and medical professionals for having Shining Object Syndrome where we see a new resource or a new study strategy and we just wanna try that immediately, we also have Shining Person Syndrome where we see somebody who's doing something very well and there is a part of us that has a wow moment but then immediately we start reflecting on how that's different from what we're doing. So-and-so is very smart. And so then you start to ask yourself how, why you're not as smart as them? Someone is doing very well in their exams and you start asking yourself, what is different between your intelligence and their intelligence? Somebody is getting really good rotation evaluations and getting along with their patients and attending love them. And you start to ask yourself like why you're not good enough and becomes a self evaluation every phase of the way and is so disastrous. I promise you that if you have a medical school class of 100 people, 200 people, comparing yourself to the best of the best and forgetting that you're also one of the best is so demoralizing. And just like we talked about previously of how important it is to keep track of your important habits, it's all so important to understand that the most detrimental habit that you can have is comparing yourself to other people on your medical journey. You will always find people who are smarter than you are more talented into you, that work harder than you, but that doesn't reflect on you, that just reflects on them. And so use them as motivation, not as a kind of a ruler or comparison of what you need to be. Those guys after my four years of medical school and working with hundreds and thousands of medical students over the last six plus years are the biggest mistakes that medical students make. And like I mentioned earlier in the episode, if you do want more of my help on step-by-step strategies on how to be more successful, such as how to study better, how to be more productive, check out some of the programs that we have down below including the rapid study accelerator as well as the med school domination model. If some of these have resonated with you, let me know in the comments section down below. If you found this episode helpful and you're watching this on YouTube, consider hitting that like button and also that subscribe button to get two videos just like this on a weekly basis. If you listen to this on a podcast form, then consider hitting subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platform. But with that being said guys, thank you so much for checking out this episode and the videos to the very end. If you did enjoy this episode and you're watching this on YouTube, consider hitting this video here to see a step-by-step blueprint of how to use Anki like a pro in medical school. As always, my friends, thank you for being a part of my journey. Hopefully, I was a little help to you guys on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.