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How to ACTUALLY Achieve Your Goals in 2024

Hi everyone, Happy New Year! I hope that this year has been kind to you, and that 2024 brings happiness and success to you all. For me, the end of the year has always been a time for introspection. I like to reflect on the progress I’ve made and plan ahead for the year to come. The holiday season usually has a nice mix of free time and sentimentality that allows for reflection to flow smoothly. That being said, it’s very easy for us to make well intentioned, actionable plans for the year to...

Hey everyone, I just finished my third year of medical school and I’ve realised that so many of my studying mistakes could have been prevented. Over the last three years I’ve discovered several strategies that would have saved me hours of time, effort and more importantly, my sanity. Today, I’ll try to share as many of these game-changers with you as possible. So, let’s discuss: The strategies that you can apply before class that will save you hours of time How you can consolidate learning...

Hi everyone! A couple of days ago I was sitting at my desk, starting at my calendar and seeing it completely full with commitments that had seemingly piled up out of nowhere. When I’m faced with situations like this, time spent studying is usually the first to disappear from my calendar. Inevitably, I want to compensate for this loss, and I find myself thinking that I need to “try a bit harder” to stay on track. I’m sure that every student has wondered what would happen if they spent more...

Hey everyone, You may have noticed that I haven’t published on my YouTube channel in almost 2 months, and the reason for this is that I’m leaving my channel behind. Before you start uncontrollably weeping and telling your parents, don’t worry - I’m not done with making YouTube videos. In fact, I’ve decided to start a new channel! Now you might be confused - my old channel has just hit 10,000 subscribers (insane!!) and has been going strong for a while, but there are a few reasons for my...

Hi everyone! One of the most effective studying improvements that students can make is implementing a solid revision schedule. Many students are familiar with the concept of revising, but often don’t have a proper system that allows them to remember content. In this newsletter we’ll discuss: Why a revision system is the key to strong exam performance. The three pillars of a revision system How to implement a simple revision system to your studying 1. Why should I care about revision anyway?...

Hey everyone! A short and simple message today - only worry about things within the sphere of your control With commitments from my life piling up, it has been easy to feel stressed by the volume of tasks that I have to complete. When I find myself getting overwhelmed, I’ve been trying to pause and ask myself a series of questions: What is the problem? - Sometimes just trying to define the problem makes me realise that it might not exist. Is it something I can control/influence? - If not,...

Hey everyone! I recently read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and I found it to be very insightful. Despite it’s title, the book is more a lesson in empathy and understanding human nature rather than trying to manipulate people to your needs. A lesson that stuck out to me was the idea that we should never criticise others. “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures...

Hey everyone! I’m ashamed to say it, but I had gone a LONG time without reading a book. I struggled to find time to read, and books took months to finish. When it came to the last 1 hour of the day, I found myself consistently choosing to watch a YouTube video over reading a book. However, in the last 2 weeks I’ve managed to read 7 books, and it’s all come down to one thing - text to speech! Around 2 weeks ago, I started using my phone’s ‘spoken content’ function alongside the Kindle app to...

Hey everyone! Positive and negative feedback loops can have enormous impacts on our lives. Today I was sitting at my desk, feeling sluggish, demotivated and procrastinating on all of the work I had to do. I found that I was falling into a negative feedback spiral. This morning, I had slept in, spent the morning watching YouTube videos and had ignored all of the tasks I needed to do. The lack of progress fed into my feeling of laziness and made me want to procrastinate more. I watched more...

Hey everyone! One of the most useful productivity concepts I’ve come across this year is the idea of desirable difficulty. Desirable difficulty is the idea that tasks need to have a level of difficulty to be enjoyable. A task is considered to be at a level of desirable difficulty when it is difficult enough that it poses a challenge, but not so difficult that it is overwhelming. So Emil, why is this so useful? First, issues with procrastination and motivation are often issues with desirable...