GMAT® Quant Confidence - How To Build It, Even If You're Bad At Math

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the G Mat Strategy Podcast. You're here because you believe there's a better way to study for the GMAT, and so do we. We created the GMAT Strategy to maximize your results and minimize your efforts so you can get to the fun parts about business school and life as quickly as possible. My name is Isaac Poolia, and I've been teaching G MAT classes and tutoring privately for the GMAT for over a decade, and I've helped thousands of students get into the business schools of their choice. I'm excited to be a part of your MBA journey since we all at TGS believe that our world can benefit from the best possible business leaders that we can find. If this show is bringing you value, please share it with your friends and family who are studying so that together we can make this process as easy and as painless as it can possibly be. Let's go. Today, let's talk about how to build confidence with GMATQA when you feel like you've always been bad at math. This is a very difficult situation to be in, and I think it's much more common than people realize. I think a lot of people maybe didn't have great math instruction as kids, and so they internalize the belief that they're not good at math. Or maybe you do have a legitimate deficit that just makes learning math harder for you, and you feel like you've never been able to overcome that despite a significant amount of effort. Well, no matter where you are on that spectrum, or maybe it's something else, you can definitely get better. You can for sure improve at GMAT quant. And it's worth noting at the top of this episode that the G Mat is not an intelligence test. And arguably, GMAT quant doesn't even test your math abilities. I always tell people that the GMAT only tests one thing. It tests how good you are at taking the G Mat. And what I mean by that is it's a specific game with a specific set of rules and a specific set of constraints. And if you learn how all of that works better, then you can perform better within that game. And so that's what we're going to work on today, because sometimes it can be a challenge to go from I've never been good at math and I'm really scared of this thing, to okay, I got this. Like that's that's a big leap. That's a big leap. So it's okay if we separate that journey into smaller chunks. And just because we're separating the journey into smaller chunks does not mean that you will not reach the destination. In fact, it makes it even more likely that you are going to reach the destination if you split that journey up strategically. So that's what we're going to do. So I think the the first and maybe most important point to make here at the beginning of this is to just note that most instructors in the GMAT space, like people who teach GMAT classes, GMAT tutors, uh, GMAT influencers, most of them are insanely smart. Like they are just so much smarter than the average person that it kind of boggles the mind. Um and they can they can often feel like geniuses or or just like very unapproachable in their abilities. And I think I think when you're that type of person, there's a major incentive structure from a very young age to like lean into that belief system of like, yeah, I'm a I'm above everybody else kind of thing. Maybe, maybe not so overtly, you know. Like I haven't, I haven't found people in this industry to to be like mean or or off-putting like that. Uh certainly by and large, I would find them to be very kind. But sometimes they just can't relate to people who struggle with the exam. And that can create a lot of friction. And they they can't relate because they've never struggled with anything academic, like not even anything remotely approaching struggle. And so it's not that they're bad people. Again, they're usually good people. That's that's what got them into the education industry in the first place. Like they want to help. It's just that they lack empathy. It's very difficult to imagine what it would be like to be a way that you are not. Like it's just if you grew up rich, it's very difficult to imagine growing up poor. If you grew up poor, it's very difficult to imagine growing up rich. It's not impossible. Obviously, people do it. I'm just saying it's it's rare. So you you come into this situation as someone who lacks confidence with math. And a lot of times your first touch points with people in the industry are very intimidating. And that can decrease your confidence. And we don't want that. We don't want that because wherever you are on your quote unquote math skills ability level right now, you can definitely become a better business leader, you can definitely become a better operator, you can definitely become better at whatever field you want to work in. And if you're considering an MBA, it's highly likely that it's a good fit for you. It's not 100% fit for everybody, obviously. And maybe as you go down this path, you're gonna realize like maybe there's a better way for you to get what you want out of life. But if you're here, you you've probably done a little bit of diligence already, and you you're probably fairly convinced that this is a good bet. And so what we want to do is we want to uh turn down the sort of intimidating voices of people who just seem to magically uh conjure answers to GMAT questions with a flick of the wrist. We want to just turn that volume down and turn the volume up on what you personally need to do to get where you want to go. And the reason I'm bringing that up is sometimes those voices are so loud, those like GMAT influencer voices who are just like insanely brilliant, um, that it it can knock people out of the game or it can just slow down your momentum and prevent you from building confidence. And if we want you to build confidence, then we should delete anything that is preventing you from building confidence. Uh it's like that old parable um if if you're in a hole and you want to get out, stop digging first. So I think it's it's an important point because I I don't think it's brought up enough. I don't think it's brought up enough like the effect that we tend to have on people as an industry. And I think that that's worth stepping back and reflecting on. So in regard to those insanely smart people who who may seem very accomplished, whether they are or not, with helping people with their GMAT scores, a lot of times their advice applies to people who are already super smart and probably aren't going to struggle with the exam very much at all in the first place, which is kind of like a weird thing if you think about it, like trying to help people who who need the least amount of help. We could have a debate about whether that's the quote unquote right thing to do or not, but um, I don't think that's gonna help us out here. So instead, why don't we just focus on the fact that that happens and that that's probably not gonna help you? And again, we want to turn down the noise on stuff that's not helping you, turn up the noise on stuff, uh, turn up the volume on stuff that is gonna help you. Um so the another reason to bring this up is you may have gotten some bad advice from the beginning of your GMAT journey, and you might have been living with that advice without even realizing that it was bad advice for like a long time. If you've been studying for this for a while and not seeing success yet. Uh, or if you're just starting out, you might have gotten some bad advice and we want to like nip that in the bud before it hurts you on the path. So, for example, I see a lot of people say, like, oh, you should you should start your prep by learning the basic math fundamentals, which is an excellent piece of advice. But then they follow that advice up with, you should, you should learn how to do all that stuff in your head because it's fast. And I think that's actually really bad advice, but it's it's very harmful advice because it sounds true. Like it sounds very legitimate. It's like, oh yes, time test. If I could get better at mental math in my head, that probably is faster, and that's probably going to help me become more successful. Uh, but that that, as logical as that sounds, that that is definitely not true in a wide variety of cases. But if we go back to, okay, if you've if your whole life you've never struggled with math and you've always been amazing at mental math and very fast at it, what's the natural advice to give people if you have success on the exam? Well, it's not surprising you've had success on the exam. You're a genius. That's not surprising at all. So you've been rewarded for doing that mental math quickly in your head. What's the natural assumption? Everybody should do mental math in their head because I did it and look at me, I'm awesome. So again, I'm not saying they're bad people. I'm just saying let's step back and separate the people from the forces that act on those people, right? There's there's a lot of gravity in that situation. And gravity has a powerful effect on people. Let's just put it that way. There are other forces at play besides like these people's uh whether they're questioning themselves or not. So if you've been given that advice and it hasn't worked for you, feel free to let that go. And I would go as far to say as feel free to let go of any of any advice on this path that's been given to you that has not helped you. If the advice is not helping you get where you want to go, then it's bad GMAT advice for you. It might be great GMAT advice for somebody else, but but we uh we want to get to the truth of the situation because the truth is what gives us agency. The truth, we can build a good strategy around the truth. If we're separated from the truth, the best strategy built on top of that foundation is very likely to crumble. Like, yeah, maybe you get away with it every once in a while, but like it's it's just it's it's just a bad bet, in my experience. So let's try to get to the ground truth of the situation, which is uh a lot of GMAT advice is good for many people, maybe even most people. But that's not the same as it being good advice for you. So we need to give you a system for figuring out what's gonna work. And again, I've I've said that like 10 times. So let's proceed with that. So the first piece of advice is let go of any advice that's obviously not working for you. The second piece of advice is let go of any self-judgment that you might have around that. Self-judgment's extremely natural. In fact, a lot of self-judgment is really helpful. Like if I go into a job interview and bomb it and I'm like, hey man, that was really bad. That's that's a very, very productive way for me to think about that because that that can get me to a solution. The first step in solving a problem is admitting I have a problem. Okay, so some self-judgment we need. But like self-judgment that holds us back is by definition bad. Like that's that's we should delete that. It's just dead weight. It's it's worse than dead weight. Um, so if you have some self-judgment around, like, I've never been good at mental math, everybody else is better at me than mental math, therefore I am not going to do well on the G Mat. You want to delete that last part. Like, maybe you have never been good at mental math. I I mean, I don't know. I've never competed, but like I would I would say I probably wouldn't do so well in those competitions, if I'm honest with myself. I don't know how how bad I would do, which is probably for the best. But I'm just not that person. And that's fine. That's fine. I still had success on this path, and so can you. Um and and also, furthermore, it might be true that you will never be good at mental math. And maybe that's true of me as well. But who cares about that? That's that's not gonna hold you back on this path. So that's why I'm saying delete the negative self-judgment. Keep the true self-judgment. That's helpful. But going, going and establishing the belief that you're never gonna be good just because you're not good at things that other smart people are naturally good at, that's not necessarily going to hold you back on the exam. You just need a different approach, a different strategy. That's that's why we're here right now. The reason I wanted to go long on that at the beginning is I actually had a client tell me recently that she had an intro session with uh like a fairly well-regarded GMAT and GRE tutor uh before she started working with me. And the the entire tutoring session was going through problems and the tutor was just shaming my client's math abilities, being like, oh, you that that was that was really bad. You definitely shouldn't have done that. And maybe we could have the debate that that certain people respond well to that type of feedback. And if that's you, also maybe you should work with that person. But I think because uh the client in that I'm discussing here had kind of always been a little self-conscious about her math abilities, that just made things worse. It made her like want to stop trying, if that if that makes sense. And uh in reality, she's quite good at math. Uh, her approaches are actually very sensible. It's just that that one tutor had like a really specific view of how math should be done and a long history of doing math that way. And so she kind of uh, yeah, just like shamed my client's approach. Uh, even though my client's approach was totally legitimate for her and got her a bunch of questions right, and uh, she ended up getting a really great score on the exam. So, did she get a 99th percentile quant subscore? No. But did she get a 90th percentile overall G Mat score? Yes. And is she probably gonna get into the school she wants to go to? Yes. So, hey, maybe math isn't gonna be the strength of your GMAT score. But that doesn't mean you can't do well enough to get to the next level. And for most of us, the GMAT score is not a life goal, it's just a means to an end. And so let's treat it like that and let's let's take the next steps beyond deleting false beliefs and deleting self-judgment. I think deleting false beliefs and deleting self-judgment and deleting bad advice, that's not helping you, is the first step to building confidence with GMAT quant. Or the first three steps. There you go. Already making math mistakes. All right. So if that's uh step zero, then step one is start small. So I'd recommend getting a high-level overview of all the basic concepts that are tested in the GMAT quant section. And I'll give you a tool for doing that in a second, before you get into the details of solving actual questions. I think a lot of us are the type of learner where it's it's easier to situate the details of something once we already have the big picture of it. So if you understand like the why behind your learning, the things that you're learning, it's easier for you to learn all the details of those things. Some people are not that way. Some people just dive right into the details and then they kind of build up to the big picture. Um, and that's fine. That's fine. Uh but what I've realized is no matter which type of person you are, um, you you can master the material. And so if you're more that high-level person, we actually have a whole podcast series on all the basics of GMATQA that are tested on the exam. And it's totally free. There's no opt-in or anything like that. And that'll be linked in the description for you. And more more on that in a second. If you're more that, I want to jump in head first and like get buried in the details and then build my way up to the big picture, then you can just start with some practice questions and then you could save that podcast series for later. Or maybe you don't even need that podcast series. Maybe just by solving a lot of questions, you're gonna get where you want to go. But the idea is to think a little bit about like what types of academic environments have you had success with in the past? And did you start with more of a big picture thing and then work your way down to the details? Or did you start by just getting in the weeds and then working your way up to the big picture? And I think just choosing the right path based on where you've had success and learned the most in your past is gonna help you make good decisions going forward. Now, if you want to start with the drills, that's totally cool. Like I said, I'll give you a tool for that in a second. If you want to start with the high-level overview, perhaps obviously I recommend the pod. And that's exactly why we made it. There are some great paid resources out there for learning math basics. So if you're in a paid program and they have a solid portion about math fundamentals, I would say you could safely put your trust in that. Uh most paid providers have something at least decent in that regard. And if you need a totally free plan, but our stuff is not out yet, then most free generative AI tools are actually pretty good at coming up with basic math drills. So if you go to the podcast and just type in the title of each episode and then uh basic math drills for GMAT, pretty much any free AI will give you something good. Now, what you want to be careful with as of today's level of the technology, and maybe it's gonna be a hundred times better five minutes from now, I don't know, but just the way things are going right now, those AIs are not very good at at generating real GMAT questions. So if the AI offers real GMAT questions, don't accept, don't, don't do those. Those are probably gonna make you worse. But for the basic, basic math stuff of like foundation building and confidence building, you can feel free to tell the AI I've never been confident with math, like be gentle on me, go easy on me. That helps really quite a bit. So if you want to just jump into some drills, you can AI them, no problem. If you want the high-level overview first, then you can go through the podcast and then use the AI to build up some drills. And a couple tips on that. A couple tips on starting small. Uh the key with this stage is no time pressure and again, no self-judgment. If you just suck at these, if you are just so bad at these and you're relearning math from negative 1 million and you're trying to just get to zero, that's totally fine. Many, many people have started there and didn't give up and got the score. So it might not be fun, it might not be the most awesome thing you've ever done, uh, but it's very doable. And odds are, again, if you're here, you've already done the ROI math and you're like, okay, this is gonna pay off. I might as well just sit down and get this done. And every every thousand-mile journey begins with one step. I think that's the appropriate proverb for that. Now, if you have a human tutor, that's awesome. And for sure, like the most helpful possible thing you could have uh at this stage in the game. And so definitely tap into their knowledge and abilities to help you. Uh, but if you do not have access that to that, um then I would recommend using an AI, either free or paid, to help you understand things that you're struggling with. And what I'd recommend there is just tell it some of your passions and ask for analogies for difficult math concepts that are related to those passions of yours. And there's some interesting research that shows that those kinds of analogies to things that you're already passionate about can help you learn faster and better things that have been difficult for you to learn historically. Uh so it could be a little hokey or cheesy, like that's totally fine. There's no style points on this path. You're either getting it done or you're not getting it done. So just think about it that way. Usually that'll make the learning process a little more fun. It'll make make it a little more approachable, a little bit more relevant. And it's a really good way to start small. So what just to clarify again what I mean by start small is number one, like you don't even have to jump into any problems if you're intimidated right now. Just listen to the podcast series. There's very few problems in there. I'm just gonna walk you through all the basics in a very gentle way. I'm gonna build up from zero. And then there's plenty of time later to worry about the super hardcore nasty GMAT quant questions. But don't start there. Don't start big, start small. If you want to just jump in, you can start with some drills. I gave you some tools for that. And then if you have a tutor, awesome. If you do not have a tutor, then thank goodness for all these free AI tools that everybody's uh kind of shoving down our throats and our social media feeds these days, because they actually are helpful for some things, as long as you know when to use them and what they are good at and what they are bad at. Uh so probably not going to use it to um build your whole entire court case for a critical uh thing in life, but pretty helpful for some uh very basic math drill and skill building and analogy making. So, step zero, delete bad advice, delete self-judgment. Step one, start small with a broad overview, or just dive right in if you're that kind of learner. Now, step two. Once you've been through the math basics series andor enough drills to feel solid, and just feel free to do a hundred basic inequality drills or a thousand basic inequality drills if you need to. Eventually it'll click. Now it's time to move on to some easy level GMAT questions. And I'd recommend using what's called the official guide for GMAT review for these. I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment, but just to head that conversation off, the official guide is something you purchase from MBA.com. MBA.com is GMAC's website. Those are the people who make the GMAT. And the official guide is basically like a book full of questions that have appeared on past GMAT exams. And all standardized tests, well, almost all standardized tests are designed to change very slowly over time. So those past questions are very representative of the kinds of questions you will see on your official GMAT. Now there's also a free tool if you need a free resource called the official starter kit from MBA.com. You don't have to buy it. Uh but it comes with about 70 problems, and it's a good place to start if you need something free. And then after that, you can you can go off and uh use a basic web search to find easy level official GMAC questions. They may not be as high quality as the stuff you're gonna get in the OG, but they're free. So that's the trade that we sometimes make, depending on our financial situations. So let's talk about how to execute well on this step of just doing easy official guide problems, which I'll just use as a shorthand going forward, easy official problems. So no time pressure here at this stage. Again, I think people introduce time pressure way too early in the process, especially if they if they're not confident. And I think that advice of like introducing time pressure or like thinking about time pressure is just it's just a little overdone at the beginning. So the official guide online question bank is awesome because it'll help you track your data. But if you need a free resource, there's many, many tools these days that can help you track data. And it's no problem to just track your data manually. And what you're doing there is just basic accuracy count and questions that uh you got wrong and why you got those questions wrong. And I'd recommend just having two lists. A list of questions you got wrong that you actually knew how to do, because you did like five plus five equals 11 or misread the question. Um, and then a list of questions that you genuinely didn't know how to do and that you need to improve at getting right, like build a new strategy or get faster, that kind of thing. So just all your incorrect questions should go into one of those two lists. And as you work through those lists, you will eventually either get to the point where you're feeling confident with those easy questions. And I think a good metric there is like at least 80% accuracy on a regular basis. That's a good metric if you need one, but also it's okay to go with how you feel. And then at that point, you can start adding time in if you want. But I would recommend a count up timer, not a countdown timer yet. But that's at your discretion. Because what I would recommend doing next might sound a little counterintuitive, but after you've gotten solid with those easy level questions, you should go back and redo all the easy level questions that you've already done. And that's part of the reason you want to track your data. And there are two ways to do this. You can redo all of them just to feel super rock solid, or you can just redo the ones that are in those two lists I was telling you about. Again, very counterintuitive step, but think about how you've gotten really confident and really fast with anything you've gotten really confident and fast with in your life. It probably wasn't from doing new things over and over and over again. It's probably from doing the same stuff over and over and over again. And so that's what redoing questions give you, gives you. It's a great confidence builder, it's a great speed builder, and it's a great pattern recognition builder. And because the questions on your official GMAT will not be identical to these questions you're doing in this phase, but they will be extremely similar and incorporate a lot of the same elements as those questions you're doing in this phase, that pattern recognition is gonna serve you extremely well long term. So redoing those questions at least once will help you lock in that pattern recognition. And that's gonna help you accelerate through the medium and the hard level questions. Okay, so step zero, delete bad advice, delete uh self-judgment. Step one, start small with a high-level overview and some simple drills. And then step two, do some easy official questions, whether those be free or paid, and then redo all those easy questions at least one time each. And then at that point, you should be ready to move on to medium level official questions. And uh you'll just do the same thing there. So you'll do the medium questions until you're feeling good or until you can get about 80%, whichever comes first. And then you can start adding the count up timer. And then at this point, if you want, you can start adding a countdown timer and start to try to get up to the speed where you're able to hit 80% or better accuracy within uh official time constraints. And if you have regular allotted time, that's going to be about two minutes and eight seconds on average for each math question. And if you have extended time, it'll either be 50 or 100% more than that. Okay, so if your paid provider has good easy and medium uh materials, that's probably helpful. I'd still recommend sprinkling in at least a few of the official questions on top of that. And a lot of providers are going that route now uh because they're either copying us or realizing that we've been right all these years. Um either way, I think they're doing the right thing. So I guess the why behind that doesn't really matter that much. And um, or maybe maybe they've just come to that um come to that conclusion on their own, or maybe they have come to that conclusion after copying a bunch of our other stuff. You never know. Uh so if your paid provider has that, that's great. You can trust that. And if not, again, a simple web search can help you find official materials on whatever you are working on in whatever kind of program you are using to structure this. And yeah, they may not be as up to date, they may not be as high quality, it may not be as good of data tracking or or interfacing. Uh, but yeah, we all have different budgets and willingness to pay for different things at different points, and that's cool. Okay, so a good tip at this phase when you're working on these medium questions, is rather than redoing every single question, uh just redoing the second type of question I was telling you about. So the first type of question I was telling you about is like the knew how to do it but got it wrong. And at this stage, you don't have to resolve those. Uh you can more make like notes to yourself around new habits to keep you from making those kinds of mistakes. But I think the thing that's always good to resolve is the second type of question, which is the I didn't have a good strategy for this, or I wasn't fast enough at this, or that kind of thing. Um and again, I think that's very counterintuitive. And I just think that the the default assumption for most people is like just keep doing new stuff and that's where all the value is and do and redoing stuff is like a waste of time. Um, but I think it's actually the opposite. And I think if you engage with that practice, I think you'll you'll find that to be very true. And a lot of people in the industry are adopting this, uh, which again is interesting. And and you know, I was only being half serious about earlier about people copying us. I mean, you never know, maybe, maybe people uh independently arrived at this stuff, um, even though we've been talking about it publicly for a really, really long time. Um and I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, which is why I'm not naming any names here. Um so so yeah, I just want to be real with you about that. It's not like everybody in the industry is evil or something like that. I don't want you to take that away from this episode. Like there's a lot of really well-meaning people in this industry. And um, yeah, if you're doing business with them, you'll you'll probably know fairly quickly if they're like able to help you or not. Like that's gonna be fairly obvious fairly, fairly quickly. Um so just wanted to clear that up because I know that um like being sarcastic is is uh it doesn't always translate well to to these kinds of environments. Um but yeah, there are there are definitely people out there copying us, and I don't know if that's that's good or bad. I think that's just how it goes. Um honestly, I think it just is what it is. So um that's that's maybe beside the point, but just want to clear that up in in case it wasn't. So again, resolving this list of questions, this is something you'll hear me talk about a lot if if you find our content helpful and you continue to engage with it. Uh, because again, I think it's really counterintuitive, but it really accelerates your your gains. And uh what I'd recommend there is just doing it on a regular basis. I think the big mistake people have is they'll be like, oh, I'll resolve those questions later. Right now I got to do only new stuff. I haven't seen that work super well. I I think the thing that works the best is maybe taking 10 or 20% of each study session and resolving some of those questions that you didn't do a great job on the first time. And that'll that'll really add up over time and and and end up accelerating your progress quite a bit. But I know it can be a big leap of face to do that. So yeah, it's um just just know that it's uh very data backed, about 10,000 data points at this point, that that makes things faster for people. Uh, but obviously I'm not not gonna twist your arm because that's not even possible right now. So um, yeah, you you can take responsibility for your decisions. You're an adult. But that's my tip. That's my tip in that medium level phase is uh hit those redo questions on a regular basis. Don't just save them all to the end. Once you've got good speed and um good accuracy with your medium questions, then you can just repeat that process with the hard questions, and then you're pretty much good to go at that point. And you should be very confident. Um, and if you're struggling with anything at any point, our contact information is in the description below, and you can reach out to us anytime, and we're always happy to connect with all of you and help out as much as we can. So I'm gonna just give some final parting tips, but the basic structure is pretty simple and it's what we just talked through. And I rehashed it a bunch of times, so I won't rehash it again. But some additional tips that you might find helpful. Um, number one, I really would recommend not asking other people about their journey or their prep for the GAT. Um, I think it it tends to be discouraging. Uh yeah, I I mean, for sure you might find some people who you can commiserate with who will make you feel less alone, and I think that's a great thing. Uh, but I think by and large, when I talk to folks who are studying or I talk to clients I'm I'm working with directly or I've worked with directly in the past, I found that the majority of the conversations around like, oh, how did you study? What did you do? How did it go for you? They just tend to be discouraging in the sense that it seems like other people just are having an easier time with it. And I don't know why that is. Um maybe it's hindsight bias. There's probably some selection bias because people probably aren't reaching out to our company or me directly unless they're struggling with the exam. So, like if you're listening here and uh you do or do not take my advice and then you get an amazing score within two weeks, like you're probably not reaching out to be like, hey, I'm kind of struggling with this thing. So there's definitely some selection bias there. Um, but if you're here and you've self-selected into the, hey, I want to build my quant confidence thing and I'm not feeling super confident, then I would advise you as a group to just don't talk to other people about their prep. You can listen politely if they volunteer it, uh, but I wouldn't go around asking other people to commiserate. I I think you just want to put the blinders on. Whatever they went through is probably highly irrelevant to your personal journey. And I've heard those conversations go really badly in the sense that a lot of people get a lot of bad advice. Again, it it's tempting to be like, oh, my coworker got a, you know, 755 after two weeks. She must really know this thing and like really be able to help me out. But actually the opposite might be true. And that's why I led off with what I led off with on the episode, which is we need to examine those those beliefs that just because someone got a good result means they're good at helping us get that result. That might be true. But more often than not, with this exam, it is not true, unfortunately. So um, if someone has a great track record of being an incredible teacher and helping lots and lots of other people succeed on the exam, well, that's a whole different data set. But if they just did well on the exam one time and have never like even tried to help other people, or they're just talking heads on the internet or something, then I'd be a little skeptical of that, or maybe a lot skeptical. So that's that's my first piece of kind of like additional advice. Now, I think within that, we could lump certain types of forums in there because we're all influenced by what we consume online. It's it's just kind of inevitable. And if you can find some great people, like a study group or study teammates on those forums, I think that's super, super positive. But just recognize that a lot of forum posts might bring you down. And just pay attention to that. If you if you end up feeling bad after going on forums more often than you feel good after going on the forums, then it's probably time to just pause that and you can have that back when you're done with your studies. But again, you want to delete things that are making this harder for you, and you want to adopt things that are making it easier for you. I know that sounds just like comically obvious, but it's just good to be reminded of those things as a person because part of the human condition is doing things that we know we shouldn't do, and then only later realizing, like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Like it's it's there's there's uh millennia of poetry and and uh and uh written about that. Uh so it's just it's just part of the deal of being a person. So just learning how to manage that well will help you become a better business person and a better, better human and get more of what you want. So it's just good to start with that skill right now. So again, just focus on what you personally need to do to level up. It doesn't matter what other people needed to do. You probably know what you need to do, and it's better to just focus on doing that rather than focusing on what other people did. That might not be true in a thousand percent of cases, but it's by and large true, like a lot more than you would expect on this path. That's tip number one. Related to that, tip number two is follow positive social media accounts. Follow motivational accounts, follow accounts that give you good advice, follow people who you resonate with who when after you engage with their content, you're like, dang, like that was really helpful. That that really helped me out. I feel really good about this. I feel like I'm gonna make this happen. Like fuel yourself with that positive energy. Uh, because yes, the only thing that matters at the end of the day is disciplined effort and putting putting yourself in the chair and doing the work. Like at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you feel bad while you're doing that, as long as you're doing that, you'll get the result ultimately. But let's be real, it helps a lot if you feel good about it. It's way, way easier to do that stuff if you feel good about it and not feel bad. So you can kind of use the whole social media thing effect thing to your advantage rather than to your disadvantage by just choosing who you're engaging with on different platforms. Again, we're all influenced by what we consume. So the question is not how do I not get influenced. The question is how do I influence myself positively? How do I become intentional about the influence I adopt? So that's additional tip one and additional tip two. Try not to have too many conversations with people about what they did in their prep. Usually that goes badly, unfortunately. And then try to follow a lot of positive people online who help you out. And then tip three is block out your study time like you would like gym time or exercise time, like a part of your regular routine on a regular basis and commit to it for the long term. Hopefully it's going to be really short term. Hopefully you're going to knock this thing out super fast. But having that long-term mindset when it comes to planning and resource management and time management, I've found that to be really, really helpful because much like physical exercise, consistency is very key here. If you can get consistency and high volume, that works extremely well. If you can sustain it, like for sure, do that. But a lot of people can't get high volume, and so they end up sacrificing consistency as well. That's that's not good. Definitely even a little bit of consistent, uh, sorry, a little bit of volume done consistently will vastly outweigh like uh zero, obviously, but also like inconsistent studying. Now, if inconsistent is all you can get, make make the most of what you can there. And you don't need perfection on this path. You can still make progress with inconsistent study. It's just that it won't be as fast. So I'm saying like if you have the option of creating consistency in your schedule, do that. Put it in the calendar, block it off, have it physically in your calendar with a reminder every single day. And if it becomes a part of your daily routine, it'll be a lot easier to build momentum and stay consistent over time, and that'll just help everything. That'll help everything. Okay, that is all you need to build confidence with GMATQAM, irrespective of how you're feeling now or how you have felt in the past. And again, if you're struggling with any of this or if any of this is not working as well as you want it to, just touch base with us and we will be happy to help. In the meantime, if you want more tips and advice for improving your performance on the exam, then I highly recommend going to our website, thegmatstrategy.com, which is linked in the description of this content, and checking out our free video on how you can reach your dream GMAT score in half the normal time. There's a bunch of high-level strategy that is much better done over video rather than in audio form. And it really deserves its own long form presentation. And if we tried to put that into every single episode that we do here, it would just muddle the message and just be kind of a mess. So that's why we've separated it out and put it on the website for you. And if I didn't mention that it's free, it is free. In the meantime, if you find this helpful, this is a regular show. So I'd recommend subscribing. And if not, it's all good. At least please stay positive and stay consistent with your studies, everybody. Talk to you all soon.