218. Hare And Tortoise: The Magic In Consistency

Small can be mighty when it comes to setting the right study goals, especially at first! Learn why consistency is queen, and how a "do-able come rain or shine" study routine is the key to building and maintaining momentum in your learning, and maximising your progress in the long-run.

*

Hosted by William Wadsworth, memory psychologist, independent researcher and study skills coach. I help ambitious students to study smarter, not harder, so they can ace their exams with less work and less stress.

BOOK 1:1 COACHING to supercharge your exam success: https://examstudyexpert.com/workwithme/

Get a copy of Outsmart Your Exams, my award-winning exam technique book, at https://geni.us/exams

*

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases on suggested books.

Transcript

Rethinking Progress Goals

Question The Source Of Targets

Quality Over Quantity

The Burnout Trap Of Stretch Goals

Start Small And Build Consistency

Become The Accelerating Tortoise

Coaching Invitation And Next Week Tease

William Wadsworth 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Expert Podcast. I'm your host, psychologist, and study strategy coach, William Wadsworth, and I'd like to welcome you to today's mini episode slash pep talk on setting your study goals. And today I don't so much mean what you're aiming for in terms of your goals for your final grade or whatever, but really your goals about how you're going to get there. What's your daily or your weekly goal for how much you study, or maybe in terms of what you cover each day. Getting these kinds of goals right is really helpful for maintaining sustainable motivation, keeping our productivity high without losing momentum, avoiding getting overwhelmed or even burning ourselves out. In my private coaching work, most students and professionals that I coach in the run-up to their big exams are aiming to do well. They want to do well, they're ambitious, kind of almost by definition, because they've brought me on as an exam coach to help them study effectively and maximize their performance. So of course they want to do well. But there's often a trap we can fall into when it comes to setting our uh our progress goals, particularly if we're ambitious, and we end up setting goals that end up being too much of a stretch. Um, these are often based on some kind of vague notion of what we kind of feel we should be doing per day, uh, and and sometimes that's can be a little bit disconnected from the reality of what's actually achievable for us. So to give a kind of extreme example, and everybody's case is a little bit different, but but to kind of put some specific numbers on this, I'm not saying these are the right goals for you, everybody's a little bit different, but but let me kind of give some illustrative numbers to just kind of make the point. Um so I'd rather see a more conservative goal of say 30 minutes a day revising after school or for a professional studying for your exam when you get back from work, rather than kind of a lofty goal of three hours per day, for example, if in practice you're rarely likely to actually do the three hours, particularly at first, particularly if that's quite a new thing. You know, if you're used to doing three hours and you've been doing that for months, then absolutely fine. But if this is a new thing or a major change, it may well be that that's perhaps a little bit too much of a change, a little bit too much of a leap for us to make all in one go. Now, the first thing I'd say here is just always question where those kinds of aspirations have come from. Let's say you do have that kind of aspiration to do three hours a day or whatever it is. Where has that come from? Where's that idea come from? Perhaps it's a peer that's doing something similar. And maybe an advisor or has mentioned it. Think carefully about how valid that is as a source. If it's like a peer or or maybe an advisor who, you know, perhaps doesn't know too much about how much people are actually studying in practice. You know, maybe they teach the content, but they don't have a kind of deep understanding of actually how people are studying in their own time, you know, that then we've got to be quite careful in terms of thinking about how valid that is as a source. Maybe someone's basing it on their own personal experience, um, but they're kind of lacking that wide experience of generally what people are doing to succeed. So just think carefully about where that's come from. Because often these numbers, kind of these targets take root in our mind. Um, and and and often uh, you know, quite quite often that there might not be too much justification for that as being a good and appropriate target for us. So think critically about those numbers, where they came from, if you've got those kinds of targets. And and then the other thing I'd always say is remember, one of the big messages we talk about on the podcast regularly, that's the power of studying smarter, not necessarily harder. So we can often often make way more progress in a relatively short span of time if we're using the right techniques for you and your course, as compared to someone who's spending perhaps longer each day, but with a much less effective or less appropriate uh method of doing the studying. It's this idea of quality over quantity of study hours. And it's one of our central philosophies here on the ExamStay Expert Podcast, as our, as our regular listeners will, I'm sure know. Um so the other thing I'd always want to point out with this kind of conversation is that if we leap out of the starting gates and take on that massive stretch goal on day one, our initial momentum might well carry us through a couple of days and we do a couple of good days where we do our three hours a day or whatever target it is, but then the third day comes and we have a long, stressful, tiring day. Maybe we're getting a bit ill, or you know, maybe something's happened, we're a bit distracted, whatever it is. We get home and we just find that three-hour target or whatever it is just feels like a mountain. We we just can't climb today. So we end up not studying at all. Our momentum falters before it's ever really got going, and we start to feel a bit discouraged that we can never set stick to goals that we've set. So my general advice is that it's generally better to set a more doable goal to start with, a bit more conservative. Maybe it's that half an hour a day, maybe it's less, maybe it's more. Again, it's a personal thing. The key to ask yourself is what are you confident that you can deliver even on a bad day? When you're stressed and tired, what could you comfortably tackle even on those kinds of days? So that way we get that magic consistency going. A bit happens every day, like clockwork. We feel good about our ability to stick with our goals, uh, our confidence grows, the momentum builds, and the practice becomes a deeply rooted habit. And remember, if you're thinking that, well, you know, how can I ever succeed based on just that small amount of time each day, remember we can always outperform our goal. So if you feel like doing more than you'd planned, great, go for it. You know, if you feel like you've half got half an hour in and you want to tackle an hour, an hour and a half, brilliant, carry on. Nothing's stopping you. And if that's happening regularly, we can then start to lift up our daily target. So perhaps we start to build up over time back to that initial stretch goal that we'd set for ourselves. Maybe, maybe ultimately three hours a day is the right goal for us. Perhaps, you know, perhaps that is where we want to eventually be. But I'd suggest maybe we build up to that slowly and gradually over time, particularly if that's something that's quite new for us. So we start on the more conservative side, start sure, and aim for that magic consistency and build from there. So it's that classic hair and tortoise fable. Don't shoot off so fast you can't keep up the pace, slow and steady wins the race. Only if I was going to stretch that metaphor a little, what we're really saying is you start off like a tortoise, steady, sure, consistent, but you're a kind of a magical accelerating tortoise. Uh, as with each mile, you gradually pick up the pace so that by the time you hit the kind of the midpoint of the brace, um, you're going just as fast, if not faster, than the hair ever was going. So aim to be like the magical accelerating tortoise in your study schedule. Keep those goals realistic, particularly at first, build that consistency gradually. Patience is key. And remember, as always, if it would be helpful for you to talk through the right plan for you in your exam prep, whether you're facing your GCSE exams this summer or your veterinary dermatology boards this fall, I work with the full spectrum of students and scholars. And give me a call. I'd be glad to help you point you in the right direction and support you in maximizing your performance, uh, as I've done for over 300 other ambitious scholars just like you over the past seven years in the time that this has been my profession. Simply head to examstudy experts.com forward slash coaching to learn more, and you can schedule a consultation call with me by following the links from that page. That's at no charge, and it's just an opportunity for us to have a have a bit of a chat about how things are going for you and how I might be able to help. It'll be my pleasure to support that's examstudyxpert.com forward slash coaching. For now, I just wanted to take a second, as always, to thank you for tuning in today, and I will look forward to seeing you again next week when we're going to be featuring a student story, uh, part of which is a really nice uh lesson in daily consistency and the power of consistency. Uh, a really interesting case study where a student, uh actually from uh from Australia, uh, who performed really, really well in his his recent exams, um, I think top 1% in the state. Uh, so it's a really, really high performance. Uh, and part of his success story is that consistency. And and in his case, that looked like a 300-day Anki streak, uh, which was quite a quite a cool achievement. So uh massive well done to him, and uh I look forward to uh sharing a little bit more about his story and some of his top tips and tricks uh that helped him uh achieve really well in his recent exams. So do tune in again next week for that. In the meantime, I just want to take a second, as always, to wish you every success in your studies. Thanks for listening today, and I'll see you again soon.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

If you've got exams coming up, you can now get all of William's favourite tips and tricks to save you time and get you higher grades, all in one handy cheat sheet. Grab your coffee at examstudiexpert.com slash free tips. Thanks again for listening and see you soon.