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Premed Productivity Podcast with Dr. Andre Pinesett
I’m Dr. Andre Pinesett and I’d like to welcome you to the Premed Productivity Podcast, where I'm bringing 15+ years of experience as an award-winning mentor/coach to take the stress out of getting into med school with episodes designed to help you: develop a healthy mindset, study efficiently, premed smarter, dominate the MCAT and make your application stand out!
I was told I wasn’t good enough to get into medical school, but I adopted the “No Excuses, Just Dominate” mindset, learned the secrets of successful students and got into Stanford Medical School.
Now, I'm on a mission to empower 1 million students in 5 years by making sure that every passionate student has the information, inspiration and support they need to make their doctor dreams a reality. This podcast is all about you, the premed. I will be answering real student questions, coaching premeds and breaking down every aspect of premed and getting into med school. Enjoy!
PremedProductivity.com
Premed Productivity Podcast with Dr. Andre Pinesett
How Small Daily Wins Create Massive Academic Growth
Big results are not built in one day. They come from small, consistent steps that compound over time. Adding just 15 minutes to your focus blocks or tackling one extra practice set may not seem like much, but those incremental nudges create exponential growth.
In this video you will learn why small steps matter, how to avoid stagnation, and how to build steady progress that transforms your grades and prepares you for long-term success in medicine.
👉 Drop your questions in the comments and subscribe for more videos on studying smarter, building momentum, and succeeding as a student and future doctor.
Each week, I’m bringing strategies for:
💪 Locking in that bulletproof mindset.
⏰ Cutting the nonsense and getting productive.
🧠 Studying smarter, not harder.
🩺 Streamlining your path to med school.
If you're serious about medicine, this is where you need to be!!
**VISIT MY WEBSITE**
And then, as we start to do this and we start to execute, it's like, yay, I'm having wins, oh my gosh. Once you're consistent for a few weeks, then it's time. We're never satisfied, we never stop. And this is such a let me sidebar here. I consider myself, and I have a whole video about this. You guys want to talk more about perfectionism, so check my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1:But I am a self-proclaimed perfectionist on purpose. Today is the day, guys. You're going to take your future into your own hands. You're going to dominate. You're going to be successful. No excuses, just dominate.
Speaker 1:I am a perfectionist, but I am a productive perfectionist and that my perfectionism doesn't paralyze me, doesn't handicap me, doesn't overwhelm me. It drives me and it excites me. And the fact that I recognize, through growth, both in terms of my knowledge and through my practice attempts and developing skills, I can get better and better and better and better and better. And approach. It's like those line graphs right, I approach, I don't quite hit. It's like those line graphs, right, I approach, I don't quite hit it, but I approach one right, I'm approaching perfection. I don't force myself to be perfection. I don't expect myself to be perfect every day. I don't expect to be a perfect human being, because none of us are perfect. Right, we have to have that level of forgiveness and understanding with ourselves. But at the same time, I recognize that I can strive for perfection. And I can strive to reach that perfection in some distant day by making every single day as perfect as it can be and being my best that day, which is different. I just want to be my best self every single day. And if I show up and I'm my best self, what does that mean? That means giving my best effort. That means being as focused as I can be. That means giving everything I got that day, and it might be less than my best day, but if I can give my best effort that day, then I celebrate that.
Speaker 1:Guys, I applaud myself for striving for perfection, for seeking perfection, and then I never penalize myself for coming up short. I look at it as an opportunity to say wait, why wasn't I my best self today? How can I get better? From that? And I move myself forward with the encouragement and the optimism that you know what? Perfectionism isn't possible, but getting better and being more and more perfect is possible, and that's a big swing. Does that make sense to everybody. It's a big. It seems subtle, but it's a powerful thing because, as many of you guys have experienced, right, that parental pressure to be perfect.
Speaker 1:How many guys, as pre-meds, feel this peer pressure to be perfect where everyone around you tells you that if you're not perfect grades, perfect extracurriculars, perfect personal statement that you're not getting to medical school right, got you running around doing this and doing that and doing this and doing this and doing this, and constantly overwhelmed, constantly stressed out, constantly feeling inferior because you're chasing some perfect pre-med shadow that doesn't exist. So we must change that right. Even in medical training, I'll have students that I work with right Medical students, residents and I go out and do these talks and I have to talk to them and say hey guys, medicine is about lifelong learning. You should be struggling, you should be learning, you should be growing, you should feel confused. The day you show up to the hospital and you don't have you don't have anything to learn is the day you should retire from medicine, because then you don't have the mindset to be the best doctor possible Every single day, even now.
Speaker 1:I'm a fantastic anesthesiologist. I'm the best of the best. I'm a great anesthesiologist. I'm the best of the best. I'm a great anesthesiologist, but every single day I'm constantly assessing and looking for ways that I can get better, that I can learn from things that happen, that I can tweak and then I can improve myself. That's what you guys want.
Speaker 1:So don't get down on yourselves. Don't force yourselves to always know what to do, to always have the right thing to say on rounds. Just go in there and say I'm going to learn as much as I gosh darn can today to be my best self today, to be even gosh darn better tomorrow. Yes, so as we go, we are never satisfied. We're always improving, and so we want to have incremental changes, very small changes and nudges.
Speaker 1:So, after a couple weeks consistency, add a small amount to your thing to continue to level up and grow so you don't stagnate. Oh, you cannot stagnate y'all. We have to be getting better at all times. And so, after those first couple of weeks, add 15 minutes on your focus block. So if you are a student right now, right, where are my ADD, adhd students at right now? Right now, right, I teach my students. We're all in the ADHD spectrum because we all have inattention, we all have distracted attention, attention that's hyper-focused where it shouldn't be on the TikTok, right. If you right now can only study for 25 minutes at a time, 30 minutes at a time, there's no shame in that. But just because that's what your maximum is today doesn't mean that has to be your maximum tomorrow or next week or next year.
Speaker 1:For myself, as a student, I knew I was highly distracted. As a student, I realized my brain wasn't the sharpest brain and so it took a lot of work for me to study. It was hard gosh darn work to read and try to remember and to process things, and so I started small 30 minutes. Then, when I was able to consistently knock out 30 minutes, I then started adding on 15 minutes. I'm at 45 minutes and then I'm at an hour and then I maxed out at two hours. But those two hours y'all were so high level, so high focus, and I would have never got there if I didn't make incremental changes. And as you make these incremental changes, make them winnable changes. Don't go from 30 minutes to two hours. It's ridiculous. Small incremental changes to get better, maybe with your MCAT prep, as it gets more fluid and you get used to the flow of it and you get used to breaking down questions.
Speaker 1:Don't stagnate and say I'm going to do the same amount of practice blocks every week. Add a practice block, challenge yourself, push yourself so you can peak to your exam. Mcat Ted's saying and this is something that students don't think about with the MCAT but we want to be peaking to the exam. We don't want to be. We want to be peaking to that exam. That exponential growth to get there as you increment up. You're not going to be perfect. Again, it's not about perfection. So if you miss consistently, if you miss a couple times in a row, don't get down on yourself. Instead, go back to that last effort level or pick a smaller increment and make yourself successful, recognizing that we'd rather move up one stair, a baby stair, than try to jump up five stairs and bust our lip and our face and go tumbling all the way down.
Speaker 1:I was watching Kung Fu Panda with my kids. In Kung Fu Panda you guys have never seen it Poe tries to go up and sell his noodles at the top of the thing and he goes up the stairs and then he comes down and his whole cart comes crashing down. Don't be Poe. Y'all Baby steps. One step at a time, one step at a time and you'll get there, okay. Small, sustainable steps, that's what wins. That's it for another episode of the Pre-Med Productivity Podcast. Show your love by smashing the like button and commenting in the box below.
Speaker 1:Today is the day, guys. No more excuses, no more complaining. You're going to take your future into your own hands. You're going to dominate. You're going to be successful. I challenge you. What are you going to do today to make your life better? Get to my website, premedproductivitycom, grab a free ebook, sign up for a free webinar and, if you're really ready to transform, enroll in one of my life-changing courses or coaching programs. You have greatness inside you. Let me show you how to unlock it so you can dominate and make your dreams a reality. No excuses, just dominate.
