Give me 14 minutes and I’ll SAVE your next exam

Summary

In this empowering video, Penrose shares invaluable tips on effective exam preparation, aiming to transform stress into success. Drawing from personal experiences, he encourages students to identify priority subjects, utilize past papers as a guide, and confront the root causes of procrastination through journaling. Emphasizing the importance of strategic guilt-free rest and focused study sessions, he explains how intentional rest can enhance productivity and alleviate stress. With relatable anecdotes and practical advice, Penrose offers a roadmap to academic success, empowering students to approach exams with confidence and clarity.

Highlights

• Penrose shares a personal journey of exam stress and procrastination.🤔
• Prioritizing subjects based on competency and exam weight is crucial.🎯
• Using past papers from the beginning streamlines exam preparation.🗂️
• Procrastination is linked to fear, which journaling can unveil and address.🔍
• Intentional breaks prevent burnout and promote focus during study sessions.🌟

Key Takeaways

• Identify and prioritize your weakest subjects or those with the most exam weight.📚
• Use past papers as guides to understand what's important for exams.📄
• Procrastination often stems from fear; journaling can help identify and overcome it.📝
• Intentional, guilt-free breaks enhance focus and productivity.🧘‍♂️
• Plan your study time strategically, using techniques like Parkinson's Law.⏰

Overview

Penrose opens up about his struggles with procrastination and exam anxiety, sharing relatable scenarios from his academic journey. He used to find himself overwhelmed with last-minute cramming sessions, often sacrificing social events and personal time to achieve his goals. Despite understanding the need for focus, he realized that procrastination often crept in due to unclear priorities and mental clutter.

In his video, Penrose outlines strategic tips to tackle exam preparation head-on. He emphasizes the importance of prioritizing subjects based on one's strengths and the weight each subject carries in exams. By using past papers as a simulation tool, students can focus on high-impact topics and streamline their study process. Additionally, he talks about the psychological aspect of procrastination, suggesting journaling as a method to confront and overcome these mental barriers.

Penrose underscores the significance of intentional rest, comparing it to an athlete's training regimen. By scheduling guilt-free rest periods, students can rejuvenate their mental muscles, leading to more productive study sessions. He introduces the concept of Parkinson's Law, advocating for concentrated study times rather than extended, unfocused sessions. By implementing these strategies, Penrose promises a more efficient and less stressful exam preparation experience, encouraging viewers to check out further resources for personal development.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Study Challenges The chapter titled "Introduction and Study Challenges" discusses the common issue of procrastination in studying, as experienced by the speaker during IGCSE, IB, and university exams. The speaker aims to instill confidence and excitement in the viewers regarding their upcoming exams by sharing personal experiences of leaving study preparation to the last minute and the challenges associated with it.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Distracting Procrastination In this chapter titled 'Distracting Procrastination', the narrative centers around the struggle of balancing academic responsibilities with social opportunities. The speaker reflects on the pressure to maintain high grades, leading to a constant need to study and make sacrifices, such as missing out on social events. Despite the necessity to stay focused and 'switched on', the speaker admits to frequently distracting themselves and procrastinating, often finding excuses to avoid studying, highlighting the internal conflict between the need for academic success and the human tendency to delay tasks.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Struggles in Starting Study The chapter titled 'Struggles in Starting Study' describes the challenges and procrastination involved in beginning a study session. The narrator mentions how they struggle to get started, often taking 4 to 6 hours in the morning before they actually begin studying after waking up and completing simple routines like going to the toilet. Additionally, they express difficulty in knowing where to begin due to a large amount of material, such as 12 weeks' worth of content per subject. This sets the stage for the chapter, which aims to delve into these challenges and offer solutions.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Importance of Prioritizing Subjects The chapter titled 'Importance of Prioritizing Subjects' emphasizes the significance of knowing your priorities when preparing for exams. It begins with a motivational note from the speaker expressing the aim to boost the confidence of students for upcoming exams. The speaker also invites students to check additional resources for mastering their minds and achieving dream grades. The primary tip highlighted is the necessity of recognizing and setting priorities in study plans, illustrating a journey from the student's current position (Point A) to their desired exam grade (Point B).
• 04:00 - 05:00: Using Past Papers Effectively This chapter discusses the stress and inefficiencies students face during their studies due to an unclear understanding of the next steps to take. Using the metaphor of a journey, it emphasizes the importance of taking one step at a time rather than focusing excessively on the end goals such as passing exams or the difficulty of upcoming tests. This approach is suggested to reduce stress and make the study process more manageable and effective.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Addressing Procrastination The chapter discusses the common issue of procrastination and overthinking, particularly in the context of studying. It highlights how people often worry about future scenarios instead of focusing on the present task at hand. The importance of concentrating on what can be controlled, such as studying, is emphasized. While the logical understanding of this concept is acknowledged, the challenge lies in practically overcoming the distractions and thoughts that the mind creates.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Journaling as a Tool for Clarity The chapter titled 'Journaling as a Tool for Clarity' focuses on the challenges students face when beginning their studies and finding clarity in their academic journey. It emphasizes the importance of identifying priorities among multiple subjects to effectively work towards achieving desired grades without stress. Through a personal example, the narrative highlights how recognizing one's competencies in particular subjects can guide the focus and efforts in a structured manner.
• 11:00 - 15:00: Intentional Rest The chapter titled 'Intentional Rest' discusses the narrator's strategy in managing and prioritizing their study schedule across different subjects. They reflect on their proficiency in subjects like Russian and physics which they could quickly get through, while computing and calculus required more time due to their difficulty. The chapter underscores the importance of setting clear priorities based on the urgency and personal competency in various subjects.
• 15:00 - 15:30: Conclusion and Call to Action The chapter emphasizes the importance of prioritizing subjects and effectively planning study time. It highlights a common mistake students make when preparing for exams: beginning with subjects they find most challenging and starting from the first chapter, which often leads to running out of time for later chapters. This inefficient approach can leave little time to cover all necessary material, suggesting a need for a more strategic planning method.

Give me 14 minutes and I’ll SAVE your next exam Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Okay, so my goal for this video is to leave you feeling confident and excited for one of your upcoming exams or all of them because here's a scenario that used to happen to me a lot in IGCSEs back in high school IB um and even in university a lot of the time sometimes I would get into this scenario scenario. So the exams would be like a week or two away, 3 weeks away sometimes even and I had left pretty much all my study to the last moment. I had to be constantly
• 00:30 - 01:00 switched on, you know, if my friends asked me, "Hey, do you want to go do this thing? Do you want to do this thing?" I had to say no because I had to always be constantly studying. Like I remember I would I would miss parties. I would miss such fun events because I had to use every moment I could cuz I only had like a week or two and I always wanted to get straight A's. So I really had to be focused during this period. Even though I knew I had to be switched on all the time, I would still distract myself a lot of the day. I would still procrastinate coming up with excuses
• 01:00 - 01:30 like oh you know today I woke up bad let's just study tomorrow um let's just study later at night time a big thing it would take me like 4 hours in the morning just to get started studying I would wake up I would go to the toilet and somehow 4 hours would disappear till I actually begin studying or 5 hours 6 hours but then if I even could start studying I wouldn't even know where to begin I had like 12 weeks of material per subject okay so I'm going to go through all these things that I mentioned here in this video and
• 01:30 - 02:00 hopefully in as little time as possible, I'm going to leave you feeling confident for your upcoming exam. And by the way, if my videos have helped you a lot and you trust me, check out the first link in the description where I can help you master your mind and get your dream grades. So the first tip I want to give you here when it comes to preparing for your exams is know your priority. So I'm going to go into this. So right now where you are right now point A and point B whatever grade you want to get on your final exam this is a journey
• 02:00 - 02:30 right this is a journey but the thing is in a journey you can only take one step at a time now what is this metaphor that I'm giving here I'm going to explain exactly so right now a lot of the stress that's being caused in you a lot of the time that you're wasting in your studies is simply because you don't know the next step that you need to Right now you're focused on the end. Maybe you're like, "Oh, I'm going to fail this exam. Oh, I should have studied earlier. Oh, this is going to be so hard. What's going to be on the exam?
• 02:30 - 03:00 I don't know what topic to study. What do I do?" You know, you're considering every possible scenario. Your mind's going into the future worrying about what's going to happen. And I'm sure we logically understand that right now, all we should do is focus on what we can control. And what we can control right now is sitting down and studying on the most important task right now. Now I know this sounds obvious like logically we understand this makes sense but how do we practically get out of our mind because our mind is constantly making us
• 03:00 - 03:30 scared. It's it's constantly we don't know where to begin with our studies. So here is the thing I can tell you basically how do you find that next step so you can begin the journey onto your dream grades stressfree. Okay. Okay. So the first thing to understand is right now you've probably got like let's say four subjects. One of these subjects right now is going to be your priority. So let me give you an example. First semester, first year of university I had four subjects. One of them I was pretty compet competent in. It was
• 03:30 - 04:00 Russian. Another one was um physics. I was relatively competent in. I knew I could I could do the subject in like 3 days. Then there was computing which I knew would take me about a week to study. And then there was calculus which I knew would take me like a week to study. So I had a list of priorities here. So I had four subjects. Two of them were urgent. Two of them took a long time cuz I was so bad in them. And two of them I was pretty competent in. So right now you need to decide which
• 04:00 - 04:30 subjects are your priorities. Which are the ones that you're the worst at. So, how do we because here's the problem that students do when they come when they come to study for their exams. They might pick a priority subject. They might realize, okay, calculus is the one I'm furthest behind in. Let's start with calculus. But then they start on lecture 1, chapter 1. That takes them a couple days. Then chapter 2 takes them a couple days. Chapter 3 takes them a couple days. Then they've only got like two days left to do like eight chapters because they focused on the first few chapters. This is the wrong way to do
• 04:30 - 05:00 it. The correct way to do it is to jump straight away into the chapter that either one you're worst at or two is going to be the heaviest weighted on the exam because the reality about about most subjects is some topics are going to be weighted more highly on the exam than others. So how do you find the highest impact topics? Basically through past papers. Past papers are like the Bible. They are literally a simulation of what you're
• 05:00 - 05:30 going to encounter in the final exam. So if you're lucky enough to have a bunch of pass papers in your access, then you can look at them and you can see which topics consistently will turn up on exams cuz what I found was often there would be like one topic which was huge on the exam. It would be worth like a third of the exam and it would always be there every single year because the teachers like to milk just like one topic and sometimes there would be a topic usually like topic one or topic the final topic which would be
• 05:30 - 06:00 on like every second paper and when it was on the paper it would be worth very very little. So literally this is the mistake students make. They think that the final the past papers are something that they do to practice for the exams. Now, that's 100% correct, but you should be using them from the beginning because pass papers are literally a guide. They're literally a simulation of what you're going to encounter in that final exam. Would you train for tennis without ever playing on a tennis court, without
• 06:00 - 06:30 ever holding a tennis racket, without ever hitting a tennis ball? You wouldn't, right? To practice for tennis, if you were going to go into a tennis competition, you would practice by playing tennis. You wouldn't practice by watching YouTube on tennis. you would like be out there on the court training. That's what a pass paper is. A pass paper is literally you out there on the court training for your final exam. The lectures are not a 100% representation of what's going to be on the final exam most of the time. So, you
• 06:30 - 07:00 need to be using your past papers as like a guide. When you become clear on what your next step is, a lot of your stress goes away because it's clear. It's like, okay, now I need to do this topic. Okay, so that's the first tip. The second tip is kind of related though. Just because you know what you need to do. Like maybe you know you need to do this essay. Maybe you know you need to study this one topic for this test, it doesn't mean you're going to feel calm and you're going to be able to sit down and do it. You're probably still going to procrastinate. You're still going to do random So the
• 07:00 - 07:30 second tip I can give you is how do we clear our mind from these fears and focus on what we can control. Okay. Okay. So, what you need to realize is it's possible that this task that you've got may still feel daunting in your mind and you might be procrastinating. So, here's what you need to understand about procrastination. Procrastination is your mind playing tricks on you to get you to avoid some kind of negative emotion. Often fear. Could be fear, could be
• 07:30 - 08:00 boredom, any of these things. For example, you think you're going to fail on the exam. So your brain tells you, "Ah, bro, let's just do it tomorrow." Cuz it doesn't want you to study. Because if you study for the exam, if you study hard for the exam and you fail, then your fears came true. You realize you're a failure because you studied hard and you still did terribly. So what your brain does, it makes you not study. So at least if you failed, it's justified. It's like, "Oh, bro, yeah, I failed the exam cuz I didn't
• 08:00 - 08:30 study much, bro. I didn't study much." compared to if you studied a lot and you failed, you would feel worse. So procrastination is saving you from that pain of feeling bad about failing because it thinks you're going to fail. So you've got a fear of failure. That's one possible source of procrastination. But the point is you've got some fear, some negative emotion you're avoiding with your work. That's why you're procrastinating. So we can brute force through this. We can get you sitting down. We can get you studying. But why not get to the depths of your mind and
• 08:30 - 09:00 understand what this fear is? Because if you can understand what the fear is at the root, you can destroy it. Because somebody who is fearless, somebody who has zero fears, someone who's mentally calm, they don't struggle with procrastination, they don't struggle with focus, they can just sit down and do it because there's nothing stopping them. So here's what you can do. Now, ideally, you would get more of a mental health habit in place. So you would actually like work on your mind a lot more. And I'm really going to help you
• 09:00 - 09:30 with that a lot in my school. So check out the first link in the description. But for now, I can give you this one massive tip to help you. So journaling is literally a 10 out of 10 habit that you can use to help you understand your mind. Cuz right now, there's probably one dominating thought that's playing in your mind when you try to procra when you procrastinate. You might not be aware of this thought, but there is something that's looping in your mind. if you can find what that is and you can get it down onto paper cuz when you get get it down on paper, you essentially
• 09:30 - 10:00 see yourself as a different person. So, you know, when your friend is going through like a tough situation, right? And they explain the situation to you. You like you can deal with their situation pretty calmly cuz you see it from an outside perspective. You can like coach them without getting involved with their pain if that makes sense. So, when you journal, it's kind of like this. You write down your thoughts and you get your fears onto paper and you get really clear in what it is that's holding you back. So journaling, it might seem like a lame habit like why
• 10:00 - 10:30 would I write down on paper, I just need to study, bro. But it will help you overcome your mental blockages and make it literally smooth, make it literally make you feel good to actually sit down and study because if you don't destroy your fears now, they're going to keep coming back to you next semester, next exam, in your job, in your future life. So you will have to deal with them eventually. So why not now? So literally here's the habit. Just have a journal. Literally, it doesn't have to be some fancy notebook. It can literally just be like this this thin ass book. And
• 10:30 - 11:00 literally for 5 minutes before you start studying, just write your thoughts down. Dump your thoughts onto paper and see if you can find some kind of pattern. See if you can find the fear that's blocking you from sitting down and studying. Okay. So the final tip I want to give you here, video is getting a bit long. I want you to I don't want to take you up too much of your time. Here is how you proper properly rest during your exam season. So, I'm sure we all know uh rest is essential. We need to rest and focus.
• 11:00 - 11:30 Your brain is a muscle. So, to use your muscle to its best ability, you need to rest it to its best ability. Just like an athlete trains hard, they also rest hard. So, you might be you might be in a situation where you think you're resting too much. You know, you're procrastinating all day. You don't need any more rest, right? You need more study. But here's the thing. When you watch Netflix, when in the back of your mind, you know you should be studying. This is not proper rest. You are
• 11:30 - 12:00 stressed. What we need is you need a proper rest period where you can actually decompress guilt-free. And here's the thing. If you put in this intentional rest period, so this is the tip by the way, intentional rest. If you put in this intentional rest period where you actually take a rest guilt-free, then you're less likely to mess around throughout the rest of the day. Throughout the rest of the day, it's kind of like a pressure valve where you can release that pressure that you're building up throughout the day. If you're just constantly switched on all day, you don't have that pressure valve. So, you're going to be tempted to
• 12:00 - 12:30 procrastinate all day long. You're going to you're going to do these micro rests where you're micro distracting yourself, but you're still stressed. So, here's the tip. Literally in the middle of your day, somewhere in your day, put a block intentionally where you are not going to study during that period. So, for example, I like to plan a session with my friends or I like to plan like, okay, I'm going to go exercise at this time. I'm going to go for a walk at this time, cook. Um, you can even like watch Netflix, do whatever you want. Ideally,
• 12:30 - 13:00 like if you cook to exercise, that would help you for your future focus sessions. But the point is, you have to do it guilt-free. you have to literally decompress and actually use that rest period. Two reasons why it'll help you. The first thing is you are resting your focus muscles. You're letting your stress leave your system. And so when you come back to your next session, it's going to be way stronger, way better. That's the first reason it's so effective. The second reason it's so effective is because of this thing called Parkinson's law.
• 13:00 - 13:30 Basically, if you give yourself less time in the day to study, you are going to study in that time way more effectively. So, like I said in the beginning of the video, I would wake up and I would mess around for like 4 hours. This is Parkinson's law in action because I gave myself the whole day to study. Therefore, I would study really really thinly. But if I instead gave myself like less time to study, I would study way more intensely because I had less time. So, that's what you do. You
• 13:30 - 14:00 literally put a block in the middle of the day where you say, "Okay, I'm not going to study here." So that period before the block is way more pressured, way more intense. So when you're in this block before your rest, you're more urgently going to work because you know, oh, the rest is coming. I got to do something. I got to do something. It feels so good. You're literally like cooking. You're literally going for a walk completely guilt-free because you know you worked hard earlier in the day and you know you're going to work hard later. But go good luck with your exam. And first thing in the description,
• 14:00 - 14:30 that's my school where I will literally help you give you more personal help on not only your mental health and overcoming your and helping you strengthen your mind, but help you be more productive as well. So, even if you're going into summer holidays, it can still help you if you've got goals that you're working on. So, check it out first in the description if my videos have helped you and you want more personal help from me. Um, and there's going to be a discount for the first few people that join because I want to keep the community nice and tight, not too many people. So, if that sounds like
• 14:30 - 15:00 something you're interested in, just check it out. Otherwise, see you later.