I sat A-level exams in the summer of last year. Being from the first cohort of students to have GCSEs cancelled because of Covid-19, I had no experience of the kind of pressure that end-of-course exams can bring. Despite this I achieved the grades that took me to my firm choice university, the University of Sheffield. Throughout revising for and sitting these exams I learned a lot about mindset and strategies that made the process of achieving my desired grades easier. Here I share four lessons that I learned from the experience that I believe can be applied to pursuing success, academic or not.
1. Have a clear goal
This was the most important, yet the most simple, factor of my success in my A-levels, and is something that still guides what I do every day. When you have a burning desire to achieve, regardless of field, and you can picture clearly what this achievement looks like, it becomes easy to achieve the smaller tasks that you know will bring you closer to this success. I used my dream career of being a wildlife filmmaker to inspire commitment during sessions of answering flashcards and completing past papers. I now use goals to motivate myself in many areas of life. I picture succeeding — for example, I picture the dream physique and I picture the financial freedom. This vision allows me to live more intensely and with more purpose.
2. Use the power of prioritization
One lie they tried to feed me at sixth form was that you shouldn’t need to prioritise one area of revision over another. Instead you should give each subject equal attention, so that you were prepared to perform equally as well on all the exams.
The reality of my experience in A-levels told a different story.
I always had an affinity for biology — the aforementioned wildlife filmmaker dream made sure that I had taken an interest in the natural world. This meant that I found learning easier in this subject than in others. In maths however, I somewhat struggled to wrap my mind around the different areas of study, from calculus to mechanics. Instead of following the standard advice, and assigning an equal amount of time to revising each topic, I decided to prioritise. Through recording the hours spent studying, I know that I spent two and a half times the hours mastering the maths course as I did for biology.
Surely this inequality earned me a higher grade in the subject I’d spent over twice the time revising? Nope. Not even the same grade. My interest in the subject carried me to an A* in biology, whereas in maths I toiled for hours a day with only a grade A to show for my effort. Imagine I’d followed the generic advice that the teachers were so confident in. The results wouldn’t have been nearly as equal as the time that I carefully delegated to each topic.
Using this advice outside of education works too. The Pareto Principle suggests that you can achieve 80% output with only 20% effort input — provided you know where to direct the effort. This is where taking note of your feedback that you receive can be crucial. During my course this took the form of the difference in grades achieved between maths and biology in the mock exam series earlier in the year. Pay attention to the data, the responses, the comments and all the other feedback you receive, so that you know where best to direct your focus, allowing you to improve as effectively as possible.
3. Work smarter, not harder
This lesson is, in a way, similar to the previous one. Hopefully my story convinced you there are more effective ways to work, but this tip more so relates to optimising your work environment than it does the actual content of your work. Of course, aspects of our physical environment can affect the way we feel, and our productivity, but I have found that optimising our digital environment for work has a larger return on investment than any physical changes.
One popular cliché is the idea that at the moment the world is more connected than it’s ever been. By extension this increases sources of stimulation, and therefore distraction. Early in my revision, I realised that distraction, especially in the form of the internet and social media, was creating unnecessary friction and reducing how effectively I was working. I removed the apps responsible from my phone, and installed a distraction blocker on to my phone and my laptop. These were configured so that I had zero access to these services, and before long I felt an increase in concentration, and felt more comfortable with longer working sessions.
Importantly, I had zero access to the distractions. I think that many would agree that, despite having the best intentions, it’s all too easy to find yourself scrolling instead of concentrating. I was no different, and I found that removing distraction completely gave me no choice but to work, as there was nothing interesting that could divert my focus.
It’s not hard to see why removing digital distractions is the productive choice for your goals. In most instances it is not necessary for going cold turkey in the way I did, but you should aim to be spending as little time as possible consuming media that isn’t likely to help you improve yourself or your work in any way. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport is a title I recommend for a better insight into methods we can use to improve our relationships with technology.
4. Recover instead of relax
This relates to another classic piece of advice — to make sure that you take time to relax when you aren’t working. The teachers at sixth form were especially fond of this one, and whilst I don’t disagree with this, many of the activities that people might consider ‘relaxation’ have negative consequences for your productivity. Think Netflix shows, swiping on TikTok, video games, eating a takeaway. These things are easy to do in the moment, but you feel the negative consequences sooner or later, whether that’s lack of motivation, brain fog, or a decreased attention span.
Instead, choose relaxation activities that are active recovery for the next block of work that you have scheduled. My recommendations in this category include sleep (at the right time of day), meditation, reading, and exercise. There are a range of benefits from these activities, including more mindfulness, better memory and decreased stress, so you can positively impact your work whilst at the same time doing something relaxing and enjoyable.
Initially it is hard to make these choices — and this is the purpose of our goals. The overpowering desire for achievement that you’ve built inside is what changes your behaviour for the better. Persist, and when results start to appear you will realise the effect that your previous decisions had. It’s at this point you can appreciate your past self for having the strength to do what’s best for you.
Reject instant gratification so you can build the future that you want.
To conclude…
I spent two years at sixth form, and across these years I was exposed to all the academic content I’d need to know to take the next step, into university. In truth I only started revising two months or so before the exams began, and I think I learned as much content in that time period as I did for the rest of the course. But the content I memorised was near to irrelevant when considering what I learned in this two months about myself, about productivity and effective work, about focus and motivation. Being exposed to a scenario that had very real consequences elevated my self-development beyond what I could have imagined beforehand. This is my last piece of advice to everyone who has gotten this far: go out into the world and put yourself under pressure, work hard, and you’ll surprise yourself with your own resilience.