 Today's video is brought to you by PicMotic. Einstein is easily considered to be one of the most brilliant people in human history, with countless contributions to our world, including the theory of relativity, photoelectric effect, the infamous E equals MC's squared equation, a Nobel Prize in physics, and being named Person of the Century in 1999 by Time Magazine. There's no doubt that a dude has a sweet brain underneath all that sweet hair, but how would he use it to master medical school? Let's break it down. So number one, remember the importance of solving hard problems. Einstein hated going to so many of his classes, so much so that some of his professors would flunk him because they thought he was lazy, but in reality he just found that lectures were so boring to the point that he actually had his own classmates take his notes for him while he was actually learning and mastering more complex topics in math and physics. But this nicely breaks down the importance of doing and not just listening. If you're familiar with the learning pyramid, basically says that we tend to remember about 20% of the things that we actually see are here and on the flip side, we tend to actually remember about 75% of the things that we actually practice or teach. And a common struggle that I hear from medical students is, how do I fit in time for all these lectures? You know, it's 60 minutes, three lectures a day, that's three hours in my time, I don't have to go learn it. But the first question I ask them is, do you actually learn anything from your lectures after your 60 minutes? How much do you remember? Most of them say, well, truthfully, not very much. And so the second question is, OK, well, when your tests come around, your quizzes come around, can that material be found elsewhere? Can it be found in your syllabus or your slides? And most students will say yes. And so if you're not required to go to lecture and you can find the same knowledge elsewhere, whether it be your slides or your syllabus, then use those and use that saved bit of time to actually do more valuable tasks like doing practice questions. One of the biggest reasons that Einstein was so brilliant is that he forced himself to spend a majority of his time on hard problems that he would solve and then learn when he didn't actually know how to go from point A to point B. And so in the same way in medical school, you can do so much more of your learning by doing practice questions and being OK with getting questions wrong, because then you can quickly say, OK, like, these are how these two ideas are connected. At least I know that for the future. Now, the next lesson or tactic that Einstein would use in medical school would be to embrace your intrinsic motivation. Einstein loved physics and math so much so that he became obsessed with solving this exact problems that so many people had given up on. But this obsession didn't come from his parents forcing him to become a Nobel Prize winning scientist. He did it because he loved it. And it's estimated he spent 70 plus years of his life learning physics every single day. I remember back to my early college days where I was like, I can't wait till like two years for I finally get to take advanced physiology. Definitely not saying that now. But at that point, I was looking forward to knowledge I would have in a few years. And in the same way, when I was in medical school, I can't wait till I finally get into the rotations and actually learn this stuff or finally learn some cardiology next semester. But I often lost track of the intrinsic motivation I could have built around the topics that I'm learning today. And in all fairness, this can be very hard to do if you're taking a class or taking subjects that you're not quite interested in. And so one of the best ways I found to counteract this is to create a list of the things that I wish I could learn more about. Sometimes they're not even related to the class or material I am, but simply having that increased intrinsic motivation to learn about things in medicine helps me learn other medical topics a little bit more because my learning or curiosity is fulfilled. And then I can go back to learning about advanced physiology. Now, before we get into the rest of the lessons that Einstein could teach us on how to study in medical school, you don't have to be an Einstein to use the sponsor of today's video, which is Picmonic. Now, if you're not familiar with Picmonic, they have an entire library of pretty much any video you would need for medical school or a pre-med class with hundreds and hundreds of videos. It's actually pretty easy to use Picmonic to watch a video related to a topic you'll learn tomorrow. You already have an idea of what's going to be high yield, even before you have your professor talk to you. And in addition to having multiple videos on common diseases and diagnoses, they also have really cool videos on application-based things like reading a chess x-ray. So you could easily watch this video, learn the mnemonics, and go through this interesting story of how to remember to read x-ray going forward and then be able to do their quiz. So if you're struggling on your medical journey and you're looking for a resource that can help people learn the information to help retain it for the long term, definitely consider giving Picmonic a shot. If you use the link down below in the description and also use the code theMDJourney at checkout. Picmonic will nicely give all of our listeners and subscribers an extra 20% off. And so as always, thank you to Picmonic for being a sponsor of today's video. Now lesson number three that Einstein could teach us about how to prep in med school is to remember that sleep is so underrated. One of the craziest facts about Einstein is that he was reported that he would sleep on average 10 hours a day and that didn't include his midday naps. But honestly it's not that surprising that somebody as brilliant as Einstein would need that extra rest to build those long-term connections for those complex problems he was solving. One of my favorite books when it comes to learning about the significance of sleeping is Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. One of the topics that the book nicely breaks down is the significance of learning as we get better and better sleep. And one of the things that we know is as we go through our various sleep phases, the more REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep phases that we have, which happen about 90 to 120 minutes, the more better we get at long-term retention. And as an example, there was a notable study that was done out of Germany where volunteers were trained to play a specific number game. And in the study, they brought back the students eight hours later. The difference was is one group wasn't allowed to sleep in between those eight hours and one wasn't. They found that the students who were allowed to sleep were twice as likely to figure out that little hidden rule that allowed them to actually become better at the game. And yes, I know on a medical journey, it's very hard to have good quality, consistent sleep of six to seven to eight hours, much less 10. But one of the things you could do is to find time when you're scheduled to consider doing midday after new naps or things like power naps. You're not familiar with power naps. I made an entire video about it right here, which you guys can check out, which I'll also link down below the description. And in case you don't believe in the power of a quality power nap, another study that I found that highlighted is the importance of sleep is a study that was done between 44 participants who had gone through two sessions of learning. One was done around 12, one was done around 6 p.m. Half of the group members were allowed to nap between the sessions and the other groups basically kind of went around with their day and they were brought back to do the learning session again. The difference was that the people who had done naps had no difference in how they learned between the 12 p.m. and the 6 p.m. But the participants who did come back and had a nap found a significant decrease in how well they learned. So if you're not trying an effective power nap, you may want to watch this video to see how you can make it work on a busy medical schedule. Now, next thing that Einstein can teach us about how to study medical school is to remember that connection requires commitment to deep work. Now, the concept of deep work was definitely brought into the limelight by one of my favorite authors in Cal Newport, but it was definitely a skill that Einstein used in his day-to-day life to really make those long-term connections. Often it's believed that his role at a Patent Office was purposely so boring for him so he could spend an extra bit of time thinking about his later discoveries. And on the flip side, here we are on a medical journey frustrated to often know why we really can't understand the things that we learn in lecture. But then we truly ask ourselves, how much time did I give myself to truly learn this bit of information? Often it's not that much. And sometimes this comes from the issue that our learning style is too passive and sometimes we just don't give enough time to truly devote and understand that information. Even today, often as a resident, there are times where my students will request, like, can you do a talk on hypercalcemia? And I'm like, how about tomorrow? Like, I haven't seen that topic in quite some time. I haven't thought about it at night sometimes. I'm pretty sure I'd feel pretty uncomfortable even as a third-year physician, explaining that step-by-step and feeling that I was okay with every step of the way. And so then when I actually have to do a deep work session and come to our computer, write down notes as if I know I'm gonna have to teach it the next day, I learn and focus on it and it's so much differently compared to if I just had to read about it on up to date. And so while time may be limited on our medical journey, if you truly wanna learn things for the long run, sometimes you may just have to have these deep learning sessions, whether it be on the weekends and you just create a list of all the things you truly wanna master for an upcoming quiz or test and saying, you know what, I'm going to sit down and learn about antibiotics. I'm gonna sit down and learn about COPD. My next test is going to be about arrhythmias and I really just need to be able to look at a few EKGs so I know what AFib looks like versus AFletter. And then look at examples for 30 minutes at a time, but that is the core purpose of your learning or put things on the whiteboard and can sing how well you can explain it. Those deep work sessions are truly going to be the foundation of how much you know, not just like a week from now, but years and years from now. Next lesson is to embrace the indoor front rush. Now, Einstein was a big proponent of a midday walk. Often he would bring one of his colleagues or close friends and you basically talk about the problems where you'd found himself at a dead end or just didn't really know how to approach the problem. And often he would find a solution the next day from these individual walks. And I know from personal experiences, I'm currently training for a marathon. So my best idea is whether it's for residency or for these videos comes from one of my runs. And so if you're finding yourself in a rut where you're like, I'm not learning anything and I've literally sat here for like two hours. Sometimes the best thing you can do is literally go out and think about the things that you're learning, whether it's go for a walk, take your phone with you and read your notes and then just think about the concepts because sometimes letting your mind wander or having that physical activity and then being in a different environment altogether, all of those can be really big proponents of having that long-term connection. As another personal example, when I was in medical school, often I would study in Pomodoro chunks. I would study in 50 minutes and then take a 10 minute break. During those 10 minute breaks, I would often go walk around the med school campus, usually when it was fresh air, mainly just to get some exercise. But I did find myself thinking about the last things that I learned and that there were hard topics. Sometimes the connections became a little bit easier or more natural to jump back into when it was time to get to studying again. And finally, one of the things that Einstein would definitely beg you to stop doing in medical school is say no to the fluff. Einstein didn't grow up in a time where social media and modern technology was around, so neither helped him nor hurt him. In fact, the simple use of simple tools like a pen, a paper, books, and ever so often taking violin breaks were all that he really needed to be able to develop his genius. And on the flip side, here we are in the 21st century asking ourselves, how can we fit more resources and more uses of online resources and technology to try to help our learning? But the truth of the matter is, majority of us, including myself, are not getting 99% on our quizzes and tests. And that means we don't need a 1% advantage by using another resource that's only gonna flip that whole. Really, what we need is commitment to one good resource and just draining out the rest of the noise, saying, that resource may help me too, but this is good enough. I'll actually do better by keeping the process simple and focusing on just using one thing at a time and then keeping my study system as simple as possible. And if you feel like your study system is not simple and there's two free courses down below, one's called a study rehab course, one's the eight-step study process that I use in medical school. Both will break down examples of what type of things you can do in medical school or on your medical journey to study faster and not have to put more time in. So if you're not getting the grades you want, you're definitely putting in the hours you don't want, go ahead and check out that course down below. But those guys are some of the biggest lessons that I took from Einstein's life and his experience in learning math and physics on how he would go ahead and use that to learn modern medicine. If you did get some value out of this video and you want me to make more videos on how non-medical people, but are still prominent, would study and prepare for life in medical school, then go ahead and hit that like button to support the video and the channel, but also go ahead and drop your comments down below to let me know your thoughts. What other figures would you like me to cover in future videos? Just give me some ideas. And if you're not part of the community yet, consider hitting that subscribe button and notification bell to get more videos like this on a weekly basis. If you're listening to this on an audio version, because yes, we do have a podcast, consider clicking that subscribe and follow on your favorite podcast listing platform as well as leaving an honest review on iTunes. But as always, my friends, if you did enjoy this video, I have two videos that you're gonna absolutely love. Check out this video right here on how Squid Game is exactly like medical school and how this video right here on how Elon Musk would study in medical school compared to Albert Einstein. But as always, my friends, thank you 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.