 It's late at night You're exhausted You got a huge exam coming up tomorrow and you're not ready Maybe it's finals week. Maybe you've been studying for other exams. Maybe you just procrastinated Maybe you had a personal or family situation happen and you just didn't have time to study and now it feels hopeless You got two choices You can give up go to bed. Don't study Because you're too tired to be productive now anyway, so what's the point? You'll probably fail the exam and suffer whatever consequences you have to suffer or You can decide to accept a little discomfort a little sleep deprivation and Find out what it feels like to unlock another layer another capability You haven't experienced before but I promise you do have deep inside your brain Let me tell you a quick story It's the last day of finals week my first semester in post-bac To say that getting good grades is important to me right now would be a massive understatement. This is my last chance My whole future Everything is riding on my GPA these two semesters My applied human anatomy final is tomorrow. I've been burning the candle at both ends the whole semester But I really took a flamethrower to the entire candle during finals week And slept less than five hours a night for two solid weeks trying to cram for biochemistry endocrinology Some other classes. I can't remember but I haven't even touched anatomy If you're a pre-medical student who cares about your GPA you should be getting a cold heavy palpable shiver down your spine right now as you see your future career slipping away No white coat No practicing medicine. No nice house. No beautiful family. It's all gone So the anatomy final is tomorrow 9 a.m. And I've got two choices Either I get a pint of ice cream lay in bed except that I'm gonna fail this final or I Take the few things that I've learned about studying during the semester through sheer trial and error and I get to work I Can focus on the most common topics first only focusing on the basics and not getting into the weeds Thinking like the professor and basically trying to ask and answer my own questions while I'm reviewing the material also Budgeting my energy and my attention span using the Pomodoro technique Studying no more than 15 minutes at a time with a five to ten minute break in between each 15 minute Pomodoro session But being very strict and setting a timer on my phone to end my breaks after five to ten minutes every single time In just going and going until I feel like I'm gonna pass out because I'm so tired Then when I feel too tired to go on I stop everything Chug a glass of cold water And take a brisk walk outside and breathe the cool refreshing life-bringing air for a few minutes and then going again and again and again until I can't To be honest with you while I'm doing this. I feel like nothing is sticking. I Just keep reading the same PowerPoint slide over and over and over again, and it keeps feeling like new material every time It's like throwing a basketball against an icy wall and just watching it bounce off and slide right off and nothing's sticking Nothing is in my brain. It's just hopeless It's midnight already and the terror is welling up in my stomach as I realize I'm gonna fail this exam Despite my best efforts. I've studied harder than I've ever ever studied before and I'm still gonna fail My gpa is going to be totally trashed all that hard work in the last four months of the semester. It's all worthless Not going to get into pa school. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life anymore I'm catastrophizing But I also have no alternative So I just keep studying and hoping that maybe something's going to stick And that might be enough to at least pass this damn exam with like a C or a D Long story short, I keep pushing like this until about four in the morning I sleep like a rock for four hours I drive the 40 minutes to campus and start my pretest ritual I get a large Utica coffee company which is brew coffee with some half and half and a bagel from the dairy bar I walk to the classroom where the finals gonna be I take out my lucky pencils my water bottle Put in my headphones and I listen to relaxing music for about five minutes and I hope and pray for the best The exam begins first question easy Second question nailed it like no second guessing at all There's an obvious choice on the multiple choice and all the other choices aren't even close like the answer is obvious Matching nailed it short answer questions easy The knowledge is coming out of my head, but I have no idea that it's there I honestly don't remember studying any of this stuff, but there it is. It's in my brain I got a 92 on that exam And ended up with an a-minus in the class And the rest is history The point is No matter how hopeless things feel right now If you focus on putting one foot in front of the other trusting the process and being at peace with the possibility of failure But giving everything you have to the present moment doing everything you can to avoid that failure You will eventually succeed Even if it doesn't feel like there's any chance that you will I'll see you in the next video