Hello guys, Dr. Pinesett here again answering one of your questions. Thank you so much for submitting your question, Stuart. The question today is all about high-yield learning. How many of you guys ask yourselves, man, I got to learn what's high yield, but you don't know how to get at it, guys. I get the question all the time and I thank Stuart for leaving me a voicemail answering this question.
So we're going to hit intro we’re going right into it guys! This is a high level lecture. So make sure you guys got your pencil, got your paper. You ready to go to take notes on how you can identify with high- yield for your classes so you can get the grades guys! Hit the intro, let’s get right to it.
Alright guys, like I said, I'm Dr. Andre Pinesett. And this is The Study Doc and this is part of my ask Dr. Pinesett segment. If you are a student or a pre-health student and you are looking to get better grades, you're going to get to graduate school, medical school. I want you to get to my website, click on a link taht says “Ask Dr. Pinesett” I actually put a link straight to it in the description below.
In this video where you can leave me a voicemail message and I will get back to you in excruciating detail like I'm doing today for Stuart and his question is all about high-yield learning. So let's hear Stuart's question and let's answer, guys. Let's get better today. Hi, Dr. Pinesett. My name is Stuart. Stuart Wen, I'm currently in Pennsylvania.
The struggle I have is finding high-yield content from my textbooks, even with the chapter guideline. So the chapter outline, I find myself wasting time on a lot of the nitty gritty details that sometimes don't show up on tests. And that's why I'm still spending a lot of time studying, but at times still underperforming. I get bogged down in the details without a structure, but also I just have a hard time looking at what's testable and what's not.
Alright. Thank you so much for your voicemail, Stuart. It's a great question. Like I said, I get it all the time. How do we get at what's high yield? And I love what Stuart said. It highlights a problem that many of you guys have. You relate to this problem comment on the box. Let Stuart know he's not alone.
Thank him for asking your question out loud, but he says… “Hey, I can’t identify what’s testable. I spend a lot of time studying, but I'm not getting the outcome. I'm underperforming. How many you guys feel like that? You're spending so much time studying, but you aren't getting that outcome. We've got to get away from that guys. You have to separate from that.
If you guys know me, I have my five pillars of studying less and getting better grades. And one of the core things that we have to do if we are truly going to study less and get better grades, is that we have to change our mentality, change our perspective, change how we look at things. And so often many of these were to change.
They always start with our mindset. So what I want to start this lecture with is talking about that mindset aspect. This is going to be part one of a multi-part lecture series because this is such an important high-yield, *pun intended* topic. But I want to talk to you guys first and foremost, I will go through the stages. The very first thing you have to do if you want to build, identify high-yield topics is you've become a high-yield student.
And so the first part of that, guys, is we have to shift our focus from being a do more, learn everything student to be a do less, learn what's important, learn what's high-yield student. And I know what you're saying, like I'm all channeling with high-yield. We say that, but then we fall into the trap of trying to learn everything.
And if you don’t believe me, here's how it happens. You guys ready? You sign up for your classes, right? Oh, you're on there. Oh, my gosh. My professor, you’re checking. Also, you sign up for your class flow. You quickly look at it. Look at my week and OMG. We got lecture this time, whatever.
And you look at it and then what starts to happen? What starts to set it? You start to immediately shift to, oh, snap, I got these four classes I heard these classes is hard. I have all the stuff going on in the classroom I have these extracurriculars to work on and you start to immediately worry about how much stuff you're going to have to learn.
Oh my gosh, you learn all everything from this class. We're all over this class, right? We start to stress about that, right? Then we get the syllabus for the class. We get thick textbooks, multiple textbooks, lab workbooks, so forth. And then that stress becomes overwhelming because now we see right in front of us how much work we have to do, how much we have to learn, and all we can think about… Learn this and learn that. Learn everything!!! Oh my gosh…
And we think to ourselves, either have to learn everything or it's nothing. I'm not good enough if I don't learn everything. How many you guys have experienced that? And the problem with this guys and the web that we weave, right, the trap of this is that if we see our classes as something we have to learn everything for, it becomes a trap.
Because then that is our objective. I have to learn everything. And if we don't learn everything, that means we're a failure. It's a zero sum game. And the problem with that is that when we say, I have to learn everything, if that's the problem, the question we ask ourselves is, How do I learn everything? Have you guys asked that question?
Put in the box right now, guys. Let me know that I'm hitting on the topic the way you're thinking about it. Let me know that I'm in your headspace. I understand what you're going through because I've been there. I know what that is, right? I work with a lot of students. You're telling yourself, wait, how do I learn everything? And then when you once you ask that question, you immediately your face goes pale.
You slump because it becomes hopeless. Because you recognize that, that is an unachievable goal. You recognize that's hopeless, there's no way I can learn all of this. There's no way I can learn everything. It's a hopeless, unachievable goal. And what we have to recognize, guys, that unachievable goals leave us hopeless and without hope. There is no purpose in doing something and therefore we don't do it and therefore we do what we procrastinate.
So for all of you guys who procrastinate incessantly, recognize this because your goals don't match up with your perceived abilities. And so you don't have that belief in yourself, right? We talk with this whole metacognition, right? Understanding what our abilities are, perceiving what we can do. You don't have that self-proficiency. You don't have that esteem to say, oh, I can handle all this.
And so it leads to disaster, so we can't go down that road. Does that make sense everybody? Once we become hopeless, here's where it really kicks off and gets bad. We feel hopeless and we equate hopelessness with an inability to achieve our goals. Therefore, our goals mean so much to us. We feel worthless and we feel worthless. We feel less than our self esteem takes a hit but then we’re stressed out, we’re doubting ourselves.
We're in a negative headspace. Since we have something that's hopeless, there's no plan going to get us there. We fail to plan right and without failing to plan is planning to fail, we don't put a plan together and we just put our head down and we go to that head down, grind mode. It's a switch we flip.
Oh, man, there's no plan. It's gonna help me get this done. So I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to grind it out. I'm going to grind it out. Right? And that's a brute force approach. How are you guys are on that grind, that constant? I'm going to get through and I read everything.
How bad does it feel? Feels terrible. But also how ineffective is it you find yourself like Stuart was talking about putting in long hours and not doing the results. Wait a minute. I studied all day. I think all week I put everything I had into this. Why didn't I get the grade? You didn't get the grade because you were focused on learning everything.
You were overwhelmed by it. So it became hopeless. Therefore, we didn't devise strategy, a high-yield strategy to get at it. And instead of grinding the material down, you ground yourself down. Now you're burnt out and you haven't learned anything because you were trying to learn everything. Yes, yes? If you understand what I'm saying right now, like this video, guys, this is your first time joining me.
I'm Dr. Andre Pinesett. Subscribe to this channel, guys. This is one single take. We're filming this straight through. I might flop, I might do drink some of this water right now. Because we are live action. It's okay. The important thing is that we are learning that you are getting better because I'm here to coach you guys. So do we understand the problem with that and how we lead to a brute force approach is going to weigh us out.
And so we're spending an inordinate amount of time studying and get very little productivity from that setting. Instead, what I want you guys to do, I want you guys to shift. And before I actually even shift, I bring this up, guys. I work with students at all levels elementary school, middle school, high school, college, medical school. I specialize in students who are in higher education, high school transition in college, college into medical school.
And one of those big things why students find me if they have that fear of that new transition in front of them, how do you guys transition to college? And it's like, oh, this is difficult. How do you transition to graduate school or health professional school or medical school? And you realize, oh, this is difficult. A big part of those transitions being difficult is that we reached that phase where before we could brute force something, but now the complexity or the amount of material that we have to learn exceeds our a brute force strength.
So you. Oh, yeah, I can lift these bags. No problem. But then what if the bags double in size? Can I still lift them? Or do I have to get smarter about my approach, have to elicit help? What do I have to do to do to get better and so this is what happens to transitions and one of things that makes medical school so frustrating.
People talk about how stressful medical school is. I love medical school, but one of the reasons that it's so stressful for everyone else is because they get to medical school and it's the first time in their career where they aren't able. For some, you guys already hit this and that's okay because we all hit at some point of our careers. But for medical students in particular, they get into medical school and for their whole career they've been able to brute force.
What they've done just works for them, right? Even you're studying all day, it works for them and they get the grades, then they get to the medical school and it's the first real time that they aren't able to learn everything. And so they sit and they stew in insecurity for the first time ever because they've never before, not been able to learn everything.
Maybe they'll just get through before, but now they can't. And so they struggle with that. Oh, my gosh, what is this is just position of. I used to learn everything and now I'm trying to learn everything, but I can't learn everything and they can't come to grips with it. They transition into MS2. And they've had now a year experience where they can finally come to grips with the fact that, Oh, it turns out I can't learn everything.
That's not the right way to go. I need to be high-yield. So as you're getting more high-yield with the resources, with their approach, with their time, everything that they need to do. So I want you guys to figure this out early in your career. Even if you’re getting through, there's going to come a point where you recognize that your brute force is not going to work.
We had to be smarter than that. So we're going to shift ourselves and we are going to put ourselves in a position where we don't struggle to transition. We're prepare for it ahead of time. So we must recognize that if we want to shift from this brute force, I'm going to learn everything to an approach. And this is the approach we want to get you to write this down.
We want to have a hopeful. We want to have a positive. We want to have an efficient high-yield approach to studying, meaning we are trying to attack everything in the most positive, most productive, most efficient, most effective way that we can study as little as possible and get as good a grades as possible. And this is a mindset shift that I need you guys to see and recognize.
It starts up here with changing what our goal is, changing how we're trying to solve a problem, that we're generating a problem by problem, and then our approach to that, we have to see it differently. The beauty's in the eye of the beholder. We have to change how we're viewing things. And in this case, we must recognize that, hey, trying to learn everything is a futile goal.
If a non-functional goal is a goal, that's going to set me up for failure, maybe not today, but down this road. So I'm always on position to be lifetime successful. I want to never have the doubt in my brain. So we have to change that thinking. So the way we do this is we separate ourselves, say, listen, that's unrealistic.
I can't do that. So now, what I need to do is focus on what's the real problem that I can actually solve, which is and this is the question. So write this down. How can I learn what is going to be on the test and what is useful to me in my future career aspirations, meaning the stuff I'm learning in this class.
One of this will be on the MCAT. There's one in this class that will be useful to me in nursing school. The stuff in the test will be useful for me in PT school and so forth. Those are the topics that we want to learn and we want to learn well and focus. That's what's high-yield. So the definition of a high-yield topic or concept or fact is that we will need it on test day, so it will be tested.
The second part of that is that it will be useful for us in our future career, whether it's a standardized test, an entrance exam, or in our actual practice or going ons in our future education. So it's a building block for future classes that we take. We take Chemistry future building block is Organic Chemistry. Does that make sense?
Chemistry is a building block, to Organic Chemistry. We took algebra. We really liked geometry and so forth. Now that problem actually is solvable. That is a manageable amount of information to learn. That is a targeted goal that we can get at. So then what we can do, but that's all to solve the problem is that we can turn our attention, our focus there, and we can devise strategies that actually are because it's realistic.
We actually have a plan to get at these things. Does this make sense, guys? I know this is a long video right now. I'm setting up the problem for you guys and I'm taking the time to do it. And I hope you guys will be patient with me because guys, good things and those who wait, they say that, right?
Or things that are worthwhile. Take a while to develop. I'm trying to walk you through the fact that in order for you to take action on anything in life, guys, we know what we should be doing. We know how to get somewhere, but we don't get there. We don't fall on the action. We have to walk the walk because we don't believe in that walk.
And so it's so important as I want you to take action, I have to take the time to show you why that action is, the way you should be taking it. And I have to change your frame of reference so that way you don't bump up against a wall of saying, wait, that doesn't make sense to me. That cognitive dissonance where I'm presenting something to you and it counters what you're used to hearing, it counts with your core beliefs about studying, and so you ignore it.
In order to be an efficient studier, you have to change your perspective of how you perceive the world, yourself, your studying, and how all those things come together. You have to change that perception if you're going to change your actions, because before an action is a thought, we had to have a thought together before we can carry out the action.
So this is what this video has been about, is about the thought process of it. I'm going to now we're going to end this video again. This is just the primer for this lecture series. We've now set up our foundation for us, having this perspective say, Oh, you know what, I want to be an efficient student. So I got to have an efficient mindset.
I'm goint o stop trying to learn everything and I'm going to start now focusing in on how do I learn what is testable. What’s on the tests and what will serve me in my career? So let's break this down, guys. Systematically. Before we go, I'm gonna add this in here before we get to part two where this comes from guys, this focus on what's high yield and a way to quantify this is “The Pareto Principle” the 80% 20% rule as we call it. We have that
80% of our outcomes come from 20% of our work. The point is, is that a small amount of what we do yields the biggest results for us. So if we could focus our energy on that small part there that allows us to do less work and get more utility and have less waste. So that's our ideal approach to studying an extreme of the 80% 20% is to do another 80% 20% so 80% of 20 is 4%.
So it's a four and 6%. So now we're doing a four and 96%. From my math people out there. So instead of saying I'm going to focus on 20% gives me the biggest yield, I'm going to focus on the 4%. That gives me the biggest yield. And when it comes to studying, if we can have our mindset and our perspective there of the average we're studying saying, listen, what is the 4% that gets me the A?
What is the 4% that advances my career? We will find ourselves identifying the most high-yield because even the most high-yield, there is a hierarchy. The most high-yield topics. But then in those topics we will find ourselves getting to them faster. So we are studying less and truly getting better grades. That’s 80% - 20% principle. And as part of that, guys, I mentioned this overwhelm that comes over us as an extension of that.
And what happens when we try to learn everything, when we are overwhelmed, when we have no plan, is that we are trying to brute force our way through it and we are rushing through the process. And for so many students, their mindset, their goal is about getting through material. They pride themselves on how much they read every day.
They pride themselves on how fast they watch lectures. We've got to change that. And instead we want to look at ourselves to say, Wait a minute, it's about how fast I get through things. It's not about how much I get through the day. It's about how much I learn today. We want our actual learning to be high-yield because to say I sat at a desk all day working part time, I was in a library all day is not the right objective, is not the things I pride in what is take pride and say, listen, I left the library today better than when I got there.
When I left the library, I was more informed, I was more enlightened. I was more prepared for my upcoming exam. If you are not more prepared after your study session, you are failing no matter how much time you spent there. And that's the frustrating thing. You should matter all time. Where is my result? We got to change our frame of reference and say, forget that. It’s not about everything.
It’s not about rushing through. I don't want to do everything. I want to get through what matters. I want to learn it, man. I want to have it with me. It was only one chapter today. It's one of the things… it’s funny. Look at my five pillars of studying less and get better grades. And any time you learn something that's new and that is difficult.
What I'm doing is that this tool, it takes longer. So we get my five pillars system. And at first, like Dr. P, it is taking me all these hours to read one chapter, I'm like, it's okay, trust the process. Then a couple of weeks go by like. Dr. P I'm reading this type of fast. We keep going, keep going.
And then you fast forward a month like, Holy smokes. Dr. P not only am I learning more, but I'm doing it in a faster way, this is incredible. I'm glad I stuck with it. It's that approach of understanding. Listen, it's not about getting through, but doing things right, doing things well. We want to focus on not getting through, but on learning.
Alright! You're right with me? Like this video right now. We're going on 20 minutes. I’m going to get to this real quick. But I want you guys to have understanding of this. We have to walk through it. We want to be asking ourselves key questions so we can be effective when it comes to our time and how we're spending time.
It's not about getting through. It's about learning. Remembering this 4% to 96% principle, meaning so many students spend such long hours in the library because they're trying to brute force, trying to learn everything, trying to do everything, trying to leave no stone unturned. But instead, I want you guys to do say, listen, of all these hours of my study, I spent 6 hours studying.
I want you to look at that studying and say wait. How much of that was highly focused? How much of that time was productive? How much of that time did I spend out here in space looking around on my social meter on how was the time that I was actually focused? So this is all where I identify high-yield topics that didn't start with, “oh, how we read..” it starts with a mindset shift and it starts as an allocation of our study and our timing and how we're doing it and understanding, it’s not about getting through, it’s about learning.
When we go in… We have this focus, this perspective, this intention to actually learn the material. And if we can just do that, guys, if we just shift that, it changes our studying dramatically, guys. So I want you guys to internalize this today. Say no more in the comment box below, I want you guys comment.
Say no more. If you were going to make a commitment to say I will no longer be led blindly by my hopelessness. I will no longer try to learn everything no more, no more, no more. That way I can actually know more. We want to know more and we want to stop doing all of this, holding us back, making us inefficient, guys.
So this is part one. We're going to do four or five part of this, but I want to make sure that we're giving each part its justified time. So you guys have time understanding this. Have I convinced you now about how your perspective was wrong or how many of us have a skewed off, altered, failing mindset, failing perspective as it comes to what is high-yield and how we approach our studying.
It's not about trying to learn everything because that's overwhelming, that's hopelessness, that's despair, that's leading us to a pathway where we try to brute force, try to produce more to get less. We've got to flip it and we've got to say no, not to learn everything. I'm trying to learn what is testable, what is useful to me in my career.
And by honing now down on these things, I want to have that perspective like that I want to do. And I put all my strategies towards that and I want to allocate my time such that I'm using my time wisely to get at those things and not everything else. And when that frame set up, we are now ready to dive into the meat of the how to get at this in the following videos.
So I want you guys to make sure you tune of the series. If you enjoyed this, if you shifted like this video right now, I want you to tune in. I'll put the links below to the other videos in the series so check the description box below. And let's get at it guys! I'll see you over in part two of this series on how to identify what's high-yield, what to study, and how to become a better student, get better grades in less time guys.
Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Dr. Andre Pinesett, and as always, if you have a question, get to my website, ask Dr. Pinesett. Leave me a voicemail like Stuart just done. Stuart, there's always good stuff coming for your answer. Get at me ya’ll. Everyone have a great day. How do we always end? It on this shirt! No excuses, just dominate guys!
I'll see you next time.
