Can you please give some advice about how to be consistent on how to maintain consistency? You've clicked on the right video because by the end you will know exactly how to stay consistent catapulting your progress exponentially. First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.
Consistency is hard to build. Every time I meditate, I feel so much better. And I know I should do it more, but do I meditate consistently?
No, it's very frustrating. However, I realized that there are certain patterns that helped me be able to consistently study efficiently so I could sleep an average of 8 hours a night to become valedictorian even as a varsity athlete. I wasn't sure how to explain the magic behind this consistency until last year. I discovered that the secret is atomic habits.
This is one of my favorite books, Consistency Builds Habits and Habits Make It Easier to Stay Consistent. It's important that you understand how to build habits as soon as possible because by using those concepts, I got another 4.0 GPA in college, I work out consistently, and overall I continue to grow sustainably. If that hasn't convinced you enough, well, habits can change your life and that's exactly why James Clear's book is a number one New York Times bestseller and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.
Now those millions of readers have cracked the code to consistency because they know something you don't, but that changes today. Today's agenda will be what are atomic habits and then how to build them with the habit loop. I will also reveal James Clear's four laws of building a successful habit loop and at the end the golden mindset mastery requires patience so start by putting this video in full screen and being patient to absorb till the end let's go what are habits and why are they atomic a habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously for example you don't need to remind yourself to brush your teeth every night right If you had to consciously do every little thing in your day-to-day life, that would be exhausting.
When was the last time you got home from school and were super motivated to start studying, but you can't keep that up for more than a few days? That's why you want to create a system of habits that puts your desired actions on autopilot. Now, this is why patience is really important and to understand why these habits are atomic. Consistent actions are so powerful packed into this little thing like an atom because one tiny change may seem insignificant in the moment.
When you don't see results immediately, it's really easy to lose hope and drop off. Like you can't even detect if you are one percent better. But that's the atomic power of 1%. If you have a habit that makes you 1% better each day, well, mathematically speaking, that's me calculating, that makes you 38 times better by the end of the year.
I am proof that you must believe in atomic habits because I was the most lost student in sixth grade math class. All I did was study for an extra about 20 minutes per day. Just 20 minutes.
The length of a single Avatar the Last Airbender episode. However, by the time I got to 8th grade, I consistently scored A+. Then further down the line, I became a top student in both AP Calc BC and AP Stats sophomore year.
People thought I was an overnight success or just naturally smart. But huge successes don't happen overnight. Imagine there's an ice cube in front of you and your goal is to melt it. So you heat up the room one degree by one degree at a time, but even as you're putting in that work, heating up the room, nothing seems to happen to that ice cube. However, once you hit 32 degrees, the ice cube begins to melt.
Now, is it just that one degree that made it melt finally? No, it's not just that last single one degree increase. It's all the heating before getting closer and closer to 32 degrees that matter. Now that you believe in the atomic habit...
No. Now that you believe the atomic power of habits, let's learn how to build them with the habit loop. There are four stages. Cue, craving, response, and reward.
The cue is the trigger that initiates the habit. It can be the clock hitting 4 pm. feeling sad, or seeing your gym clothes on the floor. Basically anything. After the cue, you have a craving.
This is driven by your desire to get the reward associated with the habit. Next, the response is the habit itself that comes as a result of the cue and craving. Finally, the reward is the positive result you get from completing the response, which reinforces the habit loop. and encourages you to do it all over again. A reward can be enjoying a nice pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream or something more subtle like your internal satisfaction.
Okay, quiz. This is an interactive session today. A team, comment your example of the habit loop. What is one habit, good or bad, that you do right now where you can pick out all four stages?
The cue, craving, response, and result. If you can't think of one right now, here are some examples. You get to your desk, which triggers you to want to play video games stress-free.
So you finish your homework, and then you get to play video games as the reward. Example 2, I see my gym clothes on the floor after waking up, which triggers me to want a strong start to the day. So my response is I go to the gym, which rewards me by feeling accomplished and happier.
Great job! It seems like a lot of information to take in, but you don't need to memorize it all. just have a basic understanding before we move on to the four laws of how to create a successful habit loop.
Law number one, make it obvious. It's easier to make your response repeat when there's an obvious signal to do so. One of the best ways that I've talked about in my newsletter is to create a visual. Above your desk, tape a picture of your goals. Maybe it's a university, maybe it's you photoshopped into a doctor's coat.
Maybe it's a cute little dog that you would love to own in the future. When you're supposed to be studying or working on something good for you, you can easily notice these visuals and be triggered to act in alignment with your aspirations. For me, I think it's even more important to leverage the opposite to stop our bad habits.
James Clear calls this, Make the bad habits cue invisible. So, during the school day, I would have my phone tucked away deep into my backpack on airplane mode. At the same time, for each class, I would make my homework readily accessible. That way, the bad habit of my phone is invisible and it's a more obvious choice to pull out my homework and start doing it.
My phone will no longer be an obstacle to studying when I get downtime. Number two, make it attractive. Even though I studied consistently to get A's, no, I did not like studying.
But I had to find ways to make it attractive. I reframed myself studying in class as being hard-working and admirable, much cooler than if I just played Candy Crush. This second law is exactly why there is the trend of romanticizing studying and all those study videos that are super aesthetic and colorful, like literally making it attractive.
Well, if you're part of the A-team, hint, You already know by now that I don't really care for band-aids like studying aesthetically. That's why I'm so excited to share with you this free new study tool called Thea, which makes studying fun. Like, say you need to memorize something. Ew, memorizing is so gross. But it's ten times more fun when you can play the matching game.
This is me trying it out earlier like boom boom boom. I still got it. And Thea has a Guess the Term game which is inspired by the popular board game Guess Who. This is the second time I'm partnering with Thea so I'm checking out their new features and I just have to say I am so jealous of you like this is actually so fun. Just like with all tools I recommend to you I try it myself first to make sure it's actually valuable and look this is me getting so excited because when I play this I guess the right term with just three questions.
That could be you getting so excited about studying. Thea helps you get The A. That's when you know they have the right way of thinking, when their name is literally a pun. There are so many fun ways to study any subject you need, including math. Like right here, I'm typing in psychology. You can get more specific to prepare for a certain test or quiz, like how is Freud important in psychology?
Tests are stressful, right? That's why it's harder to score well on them. But Thea can help you ease test anxiety. You can use features like TESS or Smart Study which uses AI to feed you new questions that get harder and harder.
You can get even deeper into the concepts by clicking learn more, read about additional topics, get more color on the concepts, and you can click question history to review past questions. Law three, make it easy. When I had to write essays or study long chapters, I procrastinated because the tasks just seemed so huge and daunting. So to make it easier, I break assignments into smaller, more doable steps.
For example, writing an outline, reading the summary pages, doing just two problems. Your environment and the tools you use are also super crucial. If you try to study in your living room with the TV on and your sister playing in the corner and your dog chewing on your shoes, of course it's gonna be hard. To make it easier, that's why I locked myself in the basement to study for most of my high school years.
As far as tools, I'll say it again, I'll say it louder, you are so lucky to have AI because it's a huge advantage that I didn't have. Tools like Thea make learning easier because you don't have to upload anything to get started. You just do- type in what you want and Thea just makes all the materials for you.
Instead of spending hours like I did compiling my notes, searching terms, flipping through the textbook to find questions, you can start learning in seconds. Everything is prepared for you. Thea gives you terms which you can also modify and it will even prepare entire study guides for you.
Practice tests are convenient because you can adjust them to how much time you have. You can set exactly the length, and the difficulty of those exams. I truly appreciate what Thea is doing for students. They specifically say that their mission is to be on the light side of AI, which means make technology work for us and not against us.
I'm so sad I couldn't meet all of you, but actually, recently I hosted an in-person event with Thea in New York City. Some of you came out to meet Gohar, the Thea team, and me. We played games, raffled off prizes, and had a Q&A panel which we also live streamed.
It was so heartwarming to meet some of you and help you feel reassured before back to school. This event would not have been possible without Thea and without your support, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please keep engaging with my videos so I can do more special things like this and meet more of you in the future. Thanks Thea for sponsoring that event and this video. You can study with Thea for free with the link in my description.
Law number four, make it satisfying. Whenever you're trying to build a good habit, make sure your reward is strong and immediate. For example, if your reward for writing each essay is to eat ice cream, make sure you eat ice cream within like five minutes of completing the essay. After I work out, I drink my boba flavored protein which is so delicious and that makes me even more excited to work out the next time because I know I'll be able to eat that drink that delicious drink again.
A great way that James Clear recommends to make it satisfying is to use a habit tracker. This means on a calendar or some other system, each time you do the good habit you write a little check box and it's satisfying and a good visual to see those little checks line up. Keep in mind that consistency doesn't mean 100% of the time.
You can miss one day, but just try not to miss two days in a row. Also, punish your bad habits immediately. Technically, we already do this when we feel guilty by being on our phones too much, but yet we still do it.
That's why we have to take that guilt, that punishment, more seriously. We have to understand that the real punishment is not our guilt, but it's that we wasted time in our life. The golden mindset.
You ready? You know that a star student studies diligently and is super organized. So if you do those actions, you are that star student.
The key is that if you want to be an academic weapon, you already have to act like one. You should align your habits with your identity and already identify with that identity. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
One of my quotes is, you don't have to be smart, but you can make smart decisions. This mindset is also why you should think I am going to stay consistent instead of I want to be consistent. Notice how I use that language in the beginning of the video. Saying this subconsciously builds the attitude that you are already consistent and thus will make it easier for you to maintain consistency.
Because being a consistent person is your identity. Ayy, see what I did there? Atomic habits definitely covered a lot more than I just did. For example, having an accountability partner.
That's why I always encourage you on the A team to help each other in the comments. Having a sense of community that you're all getting better together will make it easier and more attractive to continue working hard. remember to try thea for free with the link in my description.
great job a team, i'm so proud of you. continue making us the best team. On Monday, I had a meeting with one of my awesome recommenders. I think it's super important to have an in-person meeting just because it's more efficient for them to ask you whatever questions they have, to talk through your motivations for applying to this program, why you think you're a good fit, and anything you really want your recommenders to know about what to write about.
For example, in this program I'm applying to, if you haven't worked at a blue chip company, then it's really important for your recommender if they have experience at a blue chip company to say you are the best at blah blah blah compared to people they've worked at before basically it's really important to say superlatives as braggy or cringe as that sounds the meeting went really well and right now i'm actually a buzz from wedding dress shopping that's kind of a tangent from the usual mini vlog updates But here are some sneak peeks on this side of the beautiful dresses. Holy crap. It makes me so happy.
It makes me feel like it's coming. It's becoming real. It's so insane trying on these beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous dresses that make me feel like a princess. Anyway, I need to get myself back into the work zen mode focus mode because right now I really need to polish my resume and finally get my letters of recommendation requests sent out. The goal is to get the first one sent out.
by today before I leave for a birthday party. Um so about finishing the letter of recommendation request before the party last night, that did not happen because I actually went to karaoke right after. That was way too ambitious, I should never expect to do more work after going out on a Friday night. I think I used to do that at Caltech actually, which is crazy, but I actually did finalize the version of my resume that I'm going to send with the letter of recommendation request, which means it's also pretty close to being finalized for the actual application.
Yay! Sean reviewed it for me, he left some great comments and I revised it. Right now it's 10 50 p.m. I've been cranking out the letter of recommendation request for my first recommender still for like the past 30 to 40 minutes.
I worked on it for like another hour today, I think. I'm spending honestly way too much time on just a letter of recommendation request or to some people I'm not spending enough but I think that's the thing with me is like when I do do something I just spend all my energy like this has to be the best thing ever when maybe I should split my time where it's most effective but I just don't really know where it's going to be most effective I don't know necessarily how much weight the letter of recommendation has you Some people say it's a checkbox. Some people say it's a strong data point that can help you get in the door.
So we're just out here trying our best. The thing is that I did hear from my friends who applied that they did not put in nearly as much effort as I did with getting so many documents together, compiling all this information. But again, you just never really know, right?
So I think the best thing to do is just do what you think is best for the ROI. that you expect to get. yeah okay i'm gonna try and crank this out in the next 20 minutes so i don't sleep too late tonight and i also don't think i should be spending that much more time on this.
i should really simplify it. okay catch me outside how about that catch me when i'm done so yes as Angel said surprise surprise it is actually 12 30 a.m. I spent three to four times longer than I said I wanted to that's because I ran into a bunch of hiccups that I won't bore you with I wrote the email and I'm gonna full send it right now. Ready? I'm gonna click.
Wait, actually, let me prove read it one more time. Okay. Sent. just one more to write but it'll be so much easier now that i have written one and i can just adapt this document to my second recommender oh my gosh i'm so excited to sleep now this is a huge thing lifted off my chest because i've just been grinding on this for a while man i can't imagine how much i'll be putting into the actual essays that i submit good night on a funny note angel was just asking me why did it take so long and i the only answer i had was i'ma try hard