If you clicked on this article to learn the secret tips of elite students that allow you to spend less time studying while getting better results, or if you want to get off the treadmill of more minutes equals better grades, or if you just want to actually enjoy your life while acing your tests, then you've come to the right place. Here are the five psychological mindsets that you must master to begin to ace your classes while still enjoying your life.
When I was in high school, then College, then medical school, I had beliefs, beliefs just like you. Beliefs like, "I need to read through this entire curriculum end to end," or "If my friend studies 12 hours a day, then I have to study 15." But that's not good studying. In fact, most conventional studying advice backfires, and it leaves you overwhelmed and burnt out. Instead, what I discovered after finishing over 10 years of schooling and teaching students in our study Quest online program is that mindset is everything. Getting better results often isn't about brute force; it's about shifting how you think about learning itself.
Mindset 1: You Must Break the Belief That You Are Special
The first mindset you must break is this idea that you are special, because you're probably not. Now, why is this important? When you think you're special and you always have this mindset of, "Oh, that's not going to work for me," or "Oh, that's not a great fit for me," then you close your mind off to potential growth. You preemptively decide that a strategy or technique won't be effective for your unique situation, preventing you from even trying it properly.
Most people are not special. You are probably not special. But here's the key: you don't *want* to be special when it comes to self-improvement and learning fundamental skills. Let's try an exercise really quickly. I want you to close your eyes. Now, open them. If you were able to do that, then guess what? You have eyes. You can see, and you can read. You can watch a video. Think about this – some people can't see. Some people can't speak. Some people can't even walk; they can't do something as simple as get out of bed, something that you and I take for granted every day. If they want to get their day started, they need permission from someone else to help them get out of bed.
Consider Stephen Hawking. He was one of the smartest humans in history, and he was paralyzed for most of his life. He spent more days of his life unable to walk, unable to talk, unable to care for himself. Yet, he was learning way faster than any of us. *That's* what I call a special case, an extreme outlier facing monumental challenges. But you and I, we're probably not that special in terms of fundamental learning capacity or the challenges we face compared to someone like Hawking.
I'm not saying that all people are the same. We all have our unique brains and tendencies, different strengths and weaknesses. But what I am saying is that if you come at learning with the mindset of, "This is not going to work for me," then that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You won't commit to the strategy, you won't apply it consistently, and ultimately, it *won't* work, reinforcing your initial belief. To truly improve, you need to approach new methods with an open mind, assuming they *can* work for you, just as they've worked for others.
Mindset 2: Watching a Lecture Doesn't Mean You've Learned
The next tip is crucial: watching a lecture does not mean that you've learned the material. This is a trap many students fall into. They passively consume information and mistake that exposure for genuine understanding. It's the same as how watching a video of someone play the guitar does not mean that you've learned the guitar. You might appreciate the music or understand the technique intellectually, but you can't play it yourself. It's also the same as how reading a book about habits doesn't mean that you've magically incorporated those habits into your life.
Learning requires more than passive reception. Learning requires that we've actually practiced what we've learned and actually applied it to our life. And not just a little bit of practice, but I mean *lots* of practice, like much more practice than the time spent watching or reading. True learning happens through active engagement, struggling with the material, testing yourself, and applying concepts in different contexts.
The general rule of thumb I suggest is a 2:1 ratio: 2 hours of practice for every 1 hour of lecture that you've watched. So, if you've watched a 30-minute video explaining a concept, you should plan to spend at least an hour actively working with that concept – solving problems, summarizing it in your own words, teaching it to someone else, or connecting it to other things you know. And honestly, based on my experience and seeing what works for students in our programs, that 2:1 ratio is often the bare minimum. The ratio is frequently more like 3:1 or even 4:1 for complex material. The bottom line is that you need to practice much, much more than you watch. Shift your focus from time spent *consuming* information to time spent actively *engaging* with it.
Mindset 3: Studying and Learning Are Not the Same Thing
Here's another distinction that trips up many students: studying and learning are not the same thing. People like to use the words "studying" and "learning" interchangeably, but they don't mean the same thing, and understanding the difference is key to becoming more efficient.
Learning is this cognitive thing that happens inside your head. It's the process of acquiring new knowledge or skills, forming connections, and achieving understanding. On the other hand, studying is just the physical actions that you do in an *attempt* to produce that learning. Studying might involve reading a textbook, highlighting notes, re-watching a lecture, or sitting at your desk for hours.
Learning is what we want to happen; learning is the goal. But just because you spend 10 hours studying doesn't mean that you'll gain 10 hours of learning. Why? Because they're not the same thing. The *quality* and *effectiveness* of your study actions determine how much learning actually occurs.
Think about sleeping, because it's the exact same scenario. You may be lying in bed for 10 hours, but that doesn't mean that you got 10 hours of restful sleep. You could have been tossing and turning, worrying about things, or staring at the ceiling. The time spent in bed (the action, like studying) doesn't equate to the quality of sleep achieved (the goal, like learning).
But let me be clear: it's actually a *good* thing that studying is not the same as learning. This distinction opens the door for efficiency. Because a student who studies smart, who uses effective techniques that genuinely promote cognitive understanding, can learn much more in an hour than most students can learn in an entire day of passive or ineffective studying. It all comes down to how good you are at *studying* – meaning, how effective your chosen actions are at producing real learning.
So, get that idea out of your head that getting top marks or a high GPA requires countless hours of grind in the library. It doesn't. You can achieve much more in less time if you focus on the *quality* of your learning process, not just the quantity of hours you clock in studying.
Mindset 4: Your Grades Aren't Going to Magically Change Next Week
The fourth belief you must understand is that your grades are not going to change next week. Contrary to what you might think or hope for, there is no quick fix when it comes to genuine learning and academic improvement. Just like how there's no such thing as getting rich quick, there's also no such thing as getting smart quick.
Why is this important to accept? Because quick changes in life are usually not sustainable changes. Think about common examples. If you're trying to lose weight, then those diet hacks and juice cleanses might help you lose a few pounds here and there, perhaps quickly. But if your underlying mindset about food and exercise, and your daily systems and habits, don't change, then you're going to gain those pounds right back eventually.
It's the exact same thing with studying. If you have an exam coming up and you just cram for it last minute, pulling an all-nighter and trying to force information into your brain, you might temporarily retain enough to pass. But if you don't learn it properly, if you don't engage in the deeper processing required for long-term retention, your brain is going to quickly forget it shortly after the test. That's not real learning, and it won't help you build a foundation for future courses or real-world application.
Let me just tell you the single truth that every student knows deep down, yet no student wants to hear: getting better at anything takes time and effort. Period. If it were easy and fast, everyone would be the top student, and we'd all get the best high-paying jobs and positions in society, right? The reality is that building robust knowledge and skills requires consistent effort over time.
It takes time to get smart. And by time, I'm not talking about weeks. For significant, sustainable improvement in your learning abilities and academic performance, I'm talking about months. This isn't Amazon where you can just one-click purchase and the package arrives at your doorstep tomorrow. Learning takes time because building new neural pathways – neuroplasticity – takes time and repetition. So, embrace the process and focus on consistent, small steps forward rather than searching for an overnight miracle.
Mindset 5: Forget the 10,000 Hour Rule (For Now)
Finally, the last belief to break here is the famous 10,000-hour rule. You may have heard about the 10,000-hour rule, perhaps popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers." The rule states, roughly, that it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve true expertise or mastery of a complex skill. It takes the concert pianist 10,000 hours of practice to make it to the big stage, or it takes the Olympic swimmer 10,000 hours of practice to win the medal.
Well, hold on. Before you get discouraged thinking you need to dedicate that kind of time to studying, we need to take a closer look at what this rule really means and, more importantly, why it doesn't necessarily apply to us as students aiming for academic success.
We don't need to practice *studying* for 10,000 hours. Why? Because we're not trying to become world-renowned study gurus or researchers in the science of learning. Our goal isn't mastery of studying itself for its own sake. The goal is simply to learn how to learn *well enough* for us to reach our specific academic goals – like acing tests, getting a good GPA, understanding the material deeply, and actually enjoying the process.
According to research by Josh Kaufman, author of "The First 20 Hours," it takes only about 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice for you to get good enough at most skills for that skill to be useful and for you to start enjoying it. Think about that – 20 hours to cross the initial threshold from frustrating incompetence to reasonable competence.
That's the goal we should aim for with our study skills. We want to be *good enough* at studying to the point where we're consistently hitting our academic goals and we're actually engaged in and enjoying the learning process, rather than feeling constantly overwhelmed or bored.
Let's do some quick napkin math here. If it really takes about 20 hours to get decently good at the skill of studying effectively, how long would that take to achieve? Let's say you set aside just 15 minutes a day to deliberately practice and improve your study skills, perhaps using strategies from a program like my Study Quest course. That's 20 hours, which is 1200 minutes. Dividing 1200 minutes by 15 minutes per day gives you 80 days. That's less than 3 months!
If you can commit yourself to staying consistent at learning *how* to learn, dedicating just a small amount of time each day, in the span of less than 3 months – roughly the length of one trimester or semester in college – you'll likely learn the majority of what is needed to succeed academically. Most skills follow a curve where you get a lot of results and improvement early on with focused effort. For most people, reaching this "good enough" point is sufficient to do well in school and have the necessary tools and strategies to continue learning effectively for the rest of their life.
But consider the leverage here. If you take the time *right now* and work hard for just one semester to build those foundational learning skills, you get a chance to implement these skills for the rest of your high school, college, or graduate school years. And then, after you graduate, these powerful learning skills will translate directly into your career, allowing you to adapt, grow, and excel. They will continue compounding for the rest of your life.
Mastering these mindsets is the first step towards studying like the elite students – efficiently, effectively, and enjoyably. It's about working smarter, not just harder.
Now, if you want to see where you're currently at with your learning skill set and mindset, then take our Study IQ assessment. It's an evidence-based assessment that we've designed to help you pinpoint where on the scale of 'study hard' versus 'study smart' you currently stand. It's like taking a snapshot of your current study system. Based on how you do, we'll give you personalized recommendations on what to do next to start leveling up your learning skills. You'll find a link in the description below if you're interested.
All right, see you next time.
