in high school i've really struggled with procrastination i couldn't focus for more than 30 minutes of studying without getting distracted and as a result i graduated with a d plus equivalent to a 1. 3 gpa i left high school and i was depressed i didn't know what i wanted to do with my life i fell into a dead-end job stacking shelves at a supermarket doing night shifts from nine at night until four in the morning but honestly i didn't enjoy my job i didn't enjoy my life i knew that i was capable of achieving so much more than what i was doing and then one morning i woke up and i thought hey why don't i have a go at university and after sitting on the idea for a while i thought but this time i've got to give you absolutely everything a few more weeks went past and i started to increasingly warm to the idea of going to university but then it got me thinking how does an a grade student actually get a grades i went on to spend three years studying high performance students their behavioral traits their morning and night time routines their daily schedules their daily habits their intrinsic motivations their extrinsic motivations and eventually after studying high performance people for so long i was ready i was ready to put into practice everything i had learned and i finally mustered up the courage to apply for university so fast forward a few years and i graduated with a first class honours degree and i also graduated in the top five percent of my class and with the undergraduate degree classification in the united kingdom anything above 70 is equivalent to a 4. 0 gpa and i managed to achieve an average of 75.
5 percent so at high school i graduated with a 1. 3 gpa and at university i graduated with a 4. 0 gpa so what did i do differently what happened in those years in between well i spent years studying exactly how high performance people become high performance people but more specifically how high performance students become high performance students so what exactly do they do differently that differentiates them from an average performing student and the easy answer is they study more right but that's a bit of a cop-out because it's fairly obvious that on average someone is getting good grades will probably study more than someone who is getting poorer grades but i eventually boiled it down to seven habits because as aristotle said 90 of everything you do is the result of habit so these are seven incredibly powerful habits that i noticed that the vast majority of high performance students have implemented into their daily lives that help them achieve high grades consistently and that's important consistently every exam every assignment every presentation and if you implement these habits into your life you too can be in the top five percent of your class just like i implemented these into my life and i managed to transform my grades into a 4.
0 gpa habit number one when high performance students study they enter into a flow state have you ever been so involved in a task where you're so in the zone that you completely lose track of time you can stay 100 laser focused on that one task for hours and you're so focused on that task at hand that you even forget to eat now this is a concept originally named in 1975 by psychologist mihaichi semihai outlining his theory that a flow state is a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation it is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter in an interview with wide magazine cheek semi-high described flow as being completely involved in an activity for its own sake the ego falls away time flies every action movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one like playing jazz your whole being is involved and you're using your skills to the utmost and when you're in the state of flow you are completely focused on the task at hand you forget about yourself about others about the world around you you lose track of time you feel happy and in control and become creative and productive and now imagine this imagine if you could actively turn on this level of focus almost like flicking on a switch every time you sit down to study what if i told you that you can train yourself to reach this flow state because that's exactly what high performance students are able to do they have trained themselves to enter this state of flow where nothing else matters only the work they are doing in front of them so how do you train yourself to enter into a state of flow so the first thing you need to do is find a quiet study place it's fairly obvious right clear away all distractions and yes that includes your phone and any desktop notifications from instagram or facebook or emails or anything else that might pop up or make noise to interrupt your thoughts i also find it helpful to have a clear desk even if that means sweeping papers that i don't need immediately into a folder to be sorted through later and actually all the habits that i'm going to go through in this video will help you reach that flow state and once you hit that flow state particularly when you're able to just switch it on every time you study it's an absolute game changer and that's how i was able to transform my grades from a 1. 3 gpa to a 4. 0 gpa i was able to train myself to reach this state of flow whenever i needed to and that leads us on to habit number two high performance students have a productive daily routine now this is such an important step in being able to achieve peak flow it's to create a productive daily routine that fits around your lifestyle so at high school i never had a daily routine and i just kind of did what i wanted to do i woke up rushed to the bathroom grabbed something to eat on the way out of the door and hurried to school because often in the morning i would be late and that was pretty much my morning routine at high school so there was no structure there at university that all changed though so when i finally created a routine for myself it reduced the need to make decisions throughout the day and it enabled me to know exactly what tasks i needed to do for that day so for example as soon as i woke up i would go to the gym straight away so i would train my body to know that that's just what i do that's just what my body does i wake up and i go to the gym it's non-negotiable no questions asked and i didn't have to contemplate or think too much about things i just did it and after a few weeks it was hard but after a few weeks of implementing the habit of going to the gym in the morning it became standardized and it became a lot easier as a result so my daily routine at university was pretty straightforward i'd wake up at 5am leave the house at 6 arrived at the gym at 6 30 then go to the library at 7 45 i'd go to class at nine finish at three go to the library again at 3 30 i'd go home at six usually to do some video editing for this channel and then spend time relaxing at eight and be in bed by nine and that was pretty much my routine seven days a week throughout university habit number three high performance students surround themselves with greatness you'll hear me mention this quote quite often on this channel you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with or as dampening you would say show me your friends and i'll show you your future wasting your time with people that means correct you okay show me your friends and i'll show you your future that's one of your top top it is three pieces show me your friends and i show your future and i can't really articulate how powerful how life-changing this is when you actually start spending time with people that are where you want to be right now so after graduating from high school i spent about two years one and a half two years working a dead-end job stacking shelves in a supermarket and i saved up enough money and quit my job and went backpacking around asia for six months and in these six months i met some phenomenal people from scientists musicians lawyers pilots business people some of them owning ferraris some of them owning lamborghinis and i had a bit of an epiphany if these people seemingly ordinary people right can make such a positive impact on the planet to the point where they're able to generate that level of wealth then what's stopping me from also making the same level of impact and it really helped me lift myself limiting beliefs you see through high school i was surrounded by average average performing people average grades average everything and it wasn't until i stepped out of this bubble that i was in and started rubbing shoulders with people far more successful than me that i actually started to believe that i was capable of achieving phenomenal things and so i brought this mindset to university and at university i was naturally drawn to students that were high performance students and i would talk to them and observe them and watch how they studied and how long they studied for and i would learn so much from them but what if you don't really know anyone that is a high performing person someone that is incredibly successful in whatever field they might be in because i had this problem too and probably a lot of you watching this right now might be in a similar position and that's when you can take advantage of all this amazing technology that we have around us endless hours of videos of podcasts of documentaries of books that have been produced or written by some of the most successful people on the planet so there really is no excuse to not learn from the most successful people whatever your field is in whether it's medicine some of the best doctors and surgeons on the planet have written books and they've even got their own youtube channels some of them the same goes for lawyers accountants entrepreneurs whatever it is that you want to be great in you can learn from the most successful people on the planet in that particular field it really is easy to take all the wealth of knowledge we have around us and take it for granted because there's literally so much of it right and that leads me on to habit number four high performance students practice gratitude and this is something that i started doing probably three and a half four years ago now and first and foremost i'm a lot happier and my life is a lot more meaningful and fulfilling as a direct result of consciously practicing gratitude on a daily basis now i was watching an interview by tony robbins a few years ago and he practices gratitude every single morning as soon as he wakes up and he calls it priming and part of his priming process is to think of all the incredible things that are happening in his life that he's grateful for and he steps in like he's there so he can feel it within himself he can feel the gratitude deep within himself and i think it's more important now more than ever to practice gratitude because we're bombarded with negativity and suffering in the media and pretty much every digital platform we're coming on the air with breaking news very sad news tonight the end of a catastrophic year and hopes and fears for 2021.
if you think back over 2020 you'll probably automatically think about the coronavirus about the black lives matter riots about the beirut explosion about kobe bryant's death for example because this is the news that sells that's what people actually want to hear and in fact in 2014 researchers mark trussler and stuart soraka set up an experiment run at mcgill university in canada and in the study the volunteers were asked to select some stories about politics to read from the news websites and they were asked to answer questions on the kind of political news they prefer to read and interestingly the results showed that participants actually chose stories with negative topics such as corruption setbacks and hypocrisy and so on they tended to stay away from neutral and positive stories and people who were more interested in current affairs and politics were even more likely to choose bad news over good news and the researchers explained this with a theory that we have evolved to react quickly to potential threats because bad news could be a signal that we need to change what we're doing to avoid danger and it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective and with all this negativity in the media it's important to remember that you have so many things in your life to be grateful for the fact that you even woke up in the morning because the reality is is that thousands of people unfortunately didn't and it can be easy to forget and take for granted that tomorrow will be here and the truth is is that none of us know how long we're going to be alive for and for me since practicing gratitude more often is a phenomenal antidote for pretty much all the negative emotions and situations i have in my life so for example it's difficult to feel grateful and sad at the same time or it's difficult to feel grateful and angry at the same time and there's a video on youtube where tom bilyeu is interviewing ed milot and ed milot if you didn't know he's a peak performance coach or for an entrepreneur and in the interview he talks about how everyone has something to be grateful for everyone even if you don't think that you do i had a really good friend of mine i went to lunch and he goes let me ask you a question honestly right now what are you grateful for and at the lunch i said jack nothing brother there's nothing good in my life right now and i'm not exaggerating this to you when i tell you this and this is a factual story as i'm mouthing these words two people walked in with an older man both of them clearly were fighting cancer somehow both had lost their hair one of the ladies had a bonnet on and they were barely moving in both walked by our table and gave me the most warm greeting the warmest smile as a stranger and he goes that's pretty freaking pathetic you can't find anything in your life to be grateful for right now and if you can stack gratitude even more so when you don't think things are going that well for you if you can stack gratitude during these times then your life is going to be so meaningful and abundant when you do manage to turn things around when there are even bigger external things to be grateful for and i'm slowly wiring myself to really think about the small things just like being able to attend university for example because there are millions of people out there that would have loved to go to university but they don't have the opportunity to and other things like having good health for example or having an apartment to live in or having a group of supportive and positive people around me that allow me to keep growing and staying on track and as a result because i am happier and i am more productive and because i am more productive i can get more studying done and i can also get more work done and i just achieve more in general habit number five high performance students are willing to pay the price and if you ask any of your classmates any of your friends even anyone at your university if you ask them what grade they want to graduate with at university they'll probably all say they want to graduate with a 4. 0 gpa right or the equivalent of a 4. 0 gpa and a lot of them will also probably say that that's what they're aiming for but i can bet that the vast majority of them are not willing to pay the price to sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed in order to get to that top five percent or even that top one percent and i was in that position at university because i knew what i needed to do to give up in order to achieve a 4.
0 gpa and i knew that i would spend so much time studying that my social life would have to be cut down and that my time in the gym would have to be cut down that the time i spent running a couple of businesses that i had had to be reduced resulting in having less of an impact and having less money to spend but i made that decision before i was even accepted into university i made that decision that i was willing to do that that it was worth it to sacrifice all of those things habit number six high performance students adopt a growth mindset they never stop learning and striving to become better every single day just small incremental improvements day by day the snowball into huge results over one two even five or ten years so there's a book called rich habits the daily success habits of wealthy individuals written by thomas carley and i've mentioned this book a couple of times in other videos but it's really interesting because the author spent five years studying daily activities of 233 wealthy people and 128 people in poverty and he realized that there was a huge difference between the daily habits of the wealthy and the daily habits of the poor and he found that one of the biggest differences between the wealthy and the poor was that the wealthy group had adopted a growth mindset and he found that 88 of them said that they devoted at least 30 minutes a day to either education or self-development through reading and he also found that most of them preferred to read nonfiction rather than fiction so biographies history and self-help books and at university i noticed the same thing the students that were working at a 4. 0 gpa level they were all hungry for knowledge they were all eager to learn and improve their grades and just generally improve themselves in every way that they could and so they enjoyed reading and watching documentaries and listening to podcasts and it makes sense because the more knowledgeable you become the better decisions you can make and the more successful you can be the next time you fail an exam don't see it as a failure instead adopt a growth mindset and be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself what could you have done better and what could you improve for the next exam habit number seven high performance students know exactly what they want at university i knew exactly what i wanted i made a decision that i would do whatever it took in order to graduate with a 4. 0 gpa and if that means studying 12 13 14 hours a day sometimes then so be it because my grades at high school were so bad at least in terms of what i was capable of and i felt so defeated and depressed this was my last chance the last opportunity i'd get to make up for it and i was 100 clear and 100 focused on what i wanted to get out of university but a lot of students they don't get what they want because they don't know what they want so i knew exactly what i wanted but i had to set some daily goals and put some daily habits in place in order to achieve it so one of my goals was to study for at least eight hours a day six days a week and on the seventh day i studied for four hours so whatever happened i would always study for at least eight hours now during exam time i would often be studying for 12 or 13 hours but even after exams when everyone else was relaxing i'd still be getting eight hours in and preparing for the next set of exams even if those exams were in two or three or four months i'd still start preparing for them and if you like this video i'm going to be making a lot more like this not only on this channel but also on my second channel so i recently made a video similar to this called 7 habits of a 4.
