It’s a matter of pleasing yourself. It has nothing to do with doing your best.
Doing your best is pushing yourself to your limits. It’s stressful. It’s difficult. It’s the kind of thing that, if you do every minute of every day, you’ll end up with a worse and worse best as time goes on. The stress will just build up and you’ll end up with mediocre being the best you can do on a daily basis.
You don’t need to “do your best” to be successful in school. If you do a sufficient job and are of average intelligence then you’ll end up with an above average grade.
Quite frankly, most of the people that say they’re doing their best are just making excuses for themselves.
“Well… I did my best,” they’ll tell you.
Then you might ask them, “so you studied a lot for the test?”
“Well… Yea… the night before I pulled an all-nighter.”
Then, of course, you find out that the all-nighter was the complete amount of time they spend studying. They now feel comfortable saying that they “did their best” while ignoring the weeks or months before that they could have spent actually doing something that would dramatically improved their grade.
Doing your best on the night before the test shouldn’t excuse you from your failures. Heck, if you “do your best” on your test but didn’t put 10 seconds into preparing for the test then you shouldn’t go on excusing your bad results. If you’re going to claim you’re “doing you best” you should at least put a few weeks of perspective on the situation.
Doing your best isn’t necessary if you’re doing it right. For more information on this you might want to read Why Bad Students (Sometimes) Make The Best Students.
If you study a few minutes a night then you’ll usually end up well ahead of the “do their best” last minute crowd. You don’t even have to be consistently doing your best. If you show up and are able to muster the minimum amount of focus then you’ll still be crushing them.
Don’t think that you need a massive effort to get massive grades. More important, don’t use “doing your best” to forgive yourself for being too short-sighted to prepare.
Do you want to know how to study in less than 15 minutes a night? That’s what this blog is all about. Be sure to check out the archives and follow along. Also, be sure to read the books in the sidebar to learn more.
Leave Procrastination In The Dust! Never EVER let it stop you again.
Doing stuff is easy – sometimes, right?
You only procrastinate the stuff that sucks. You don’t say, “Ahhh… I’ll read that text from my crush later.” Nope. Now… Any pause is intentional and coordinated to respond better.
Here is the problem with academics:
You probably think most academic stuff sucks – at least a little. (Especially compared to other things you could be doing.)
And the thing is:
FORCING YOURSELF TO STUDY JUST MAKES IT WORSE!
You’re slowly hardening your association of school and being miserable.
You need to create positive associations with academics. You want your brain to be getting hyped up and positive when you’re thinking about studying and giving into this internal oligarchical instinct to force yourself to studying – ain’t helpin’.
Chill the internal dictator for a moment…
A big secret: You need to STOP forcing yourself to study so much.
But, if you’re not forcing yourself then how are you going to see those killer straight-a’s that you’re always pining over?
It’s not difficult but it can sound weird to unfamiliar eyes.
Get your copy of my book about How To Get Happier Straight A’s.
It only costs $4.99 (and if these strategies don’t work like magic like it has for thousands of other students then you can get a full refund.)
Smart work is more important than hard work. That’s what I believe. I know many students who pull an all-nighter and end up with spoiling their exams. Sleep is the most important thing you need to get before an exam. The better you sleep, the better you tend to remember. Your brain will function more. 🙂
You really have to ask yourself sometimes, am I doing my best? It can be a big wake-up call. Thinking back over my school days, doing the extra 15 minutes a night suggested study probably would have made a huge difference in my grades. Who has a time machine? haha