Speaker 1: I used to absolutely hate high school. When I was a freshman, I sat alone at lunch, like just doing work on my computer, not because I was productive, because I was low-key like lonely. Also, my homework literally took me forever because I was freaking inefficient and didn't know how to study. But things have changed dramatically since then. I'm gonna show you guys exactly how I switched the narrative and made my high school years optimal for leveling up in life. Also, I feel like it's quite important to mention that this video is not for everyone. This is for like my high achiever high school girls, okay? So like take my advice to the grain of salt. Not claiming to be some type of expert on high school, but I will say I'm a sophomore in high school. Some of my friends are in high school. And I've been asking my friends like, what are you struggling with in life? And it tends to boil down to a misalignment of values and actions. So a mental model that I kind of like to go by is a golden circle. So you have your values in the core center. You have your rules and your systems. Your values are what you live for. And your rules are what it looks like to be in alignment with your values specifically. And then systems, detail how you live in accordance to your rules. I'll give you guys an example of my little golden circle. So my values are, I serve my God, I live out my purpose, and I inspire others. My rules are, I prioritize church on Sundays in my youth group. And a system that I put in place to make sure that happens is having those as reoccurring events on my calendar. Like for instance, if your values are similar to me or to excel in your purpose and like do what you're really good at, then playing a sport that you suck at and that you hate is not in alignment with your values. And it's probably bringing you like a lot of pain. My friends will often tell me about activities they do and they're like, oh, I think I want to quit. But I'm like, the way you're talking about this, like you totally want to quit. Like I kind of like to go off this like quitting framework that I got from Steve Bartlett. The first question is like, are you thinking about quitting? Why are you thinking about quitting? If it's challenging, you ask yourself, is this challenge worth the potential reward? And if it's worth the potential reward, then you keep on going. And then on the other side of the spectrum, it's are you thinking about quitting? And the answer is it sucks. So for me, I wanted to quit basketball because it just sucked. And then the question is, do you believe you could make it not suck? And I truly believed at that time, yes, I could make it not suck. And then the next question is, is the effort it would take to make it not suck worth it? For me, it wasn't worth it. Wasn't really good at basketball. Didn't enjoy the game for the game. So I quit. And because I've quit these things that like, even if I made it better, it wouldn't be worth the reward. I've been able to invest so much more time in my YouTube channel business and really just like get into what I love. Just pause this video for like two to three minutes, sit down, stare at a wall and just ask yourself like, what are my values? This will either help you actually define the values or it can, I don't freaking know what my values are. Like, it's totally fine if you're like, wait, I don't know. That's just a really like a signal to yourself, like meditate on that this week. Okay, now we're gonna move on to like the worst part of this video. That's the part that sucks, right? I always feel scared to tell people this, but it's something that I wish I knew like two years before when I was really starting my self-development journey as a young student. Oh, I'm kind of like scared to say this. Like, I don't even say this to my friends. Like, I don't know why I'm like scared to like talk about this. But like a lot of the times, people are like, like, I don't know why I'm like scared to like talk about this. People aren't actually like that busy. Like, I'm not that busy. I always have time for something. Like, when someone tells me, oh, I don't have an hour in my day to work out. I'm like, then you don't have a life anymore. Like, if I ever tell you guys, oh, I have no time to work out. Like, that means I no longer have a life. And sleep is super important. But if something's really important to you, like, I will cut back an hour of sleep. But like, there's never not enough time. But procrastination's a big, big issue. Parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the amount of time allotted. This is really common in high school, where you see like super high achieving students that take really hard classes, and then students that don't. They're both like stressed. So then it's like, why are you guys both stressed if you have different workloads? And yes, extracurriculars factor into that. But I find that you just get used to whatever workload you have. And then that just like invites procrastination. A lack of discipline is the root to your procrastination. I'm saying this because it was to mine too. Like, I used to really struggle with discipline. It can't be like taught in a video, but it can definitely be built. But at the end of the day, you need a purpose behind your discipline. I wanted to be disciplined so that I could keep on making YouTube videos in high school, still doing hard classes, because I was really scared, like the pressure and weight of high school would like rip away my time for YouTube. But if I had nothing to look forward to, I probably would procrastinate. So I think that's where the value piece goes in. Like, what are you living for outside of school? When it comes to stuff inside of school, I really want to share some study tips that really helped me in high school. Honestly, when I was middle school, I felt very insecure. I always felt like kind of like a stupid Asian. I was performing well in school, but I feel like relative to like, just Asians, like if you were just to like, only have Asian kids in my school, right? I feel like I would not be doing very well relative to that. But it's like, I've completely switched the narrative and I do a lot better in school now. Like obviously a better solution to that is not to do better in school, but to change your outlook on your self-worth. But I think I did both. I unfortunately don't like naturally pick things up super quick. Firstly, if it's like in STEM. So my competitive advantage is like, I just make sure that I start studying really early. So I don't study more than most kids. I just make sure, that my studying is spaced along a long period of time. So I have time to really like soak up the material, process it. My next tip is for studying for like humanity classes. So for example, history. What I did in my last history test that really helped me score well, and I'd say above average. Like I'm saying this because I used to score so badly in history. But what I did was I took all the key terms that my teacher said we needed to understand. And I didn't reference my old notes, but I just wrote down what I could remember on the spot. And then whenever I'd forget something, I would just leave it empty. And then later on, I re-referenced my notes and then wrote down what I missed in a different colored font. So when you see my doc, I know exactly like, oh, this is the stuff I didn't really remember. I didn't really recall this. So let me study that more. Like active recall is so freaking powerful. Next tip is when you are going into the freaking test room, act like you're going to war. My mindset when I'm going into a test is like, this is my opponent. Like this is some game. Like we're trying to get as much XP here as possible. It'll change your position from like being scared of the test to being like kind of like mad. I don't know, like channeling your anger in a productive way. And lastly, know when to stop studying if school is not your like number one priority. I know a lot of you guys are like captains of your sports teams doing really cool stuff. Some of you guys also have YouTube channels. There's like a certain threshold for studying where like once you pass like four hours, it starts to have less of an impact, like kind of diminishing returns. Like I won't study nine hours for a test to get four more points. It's really helpful to know when to stop. Okay, let's chat about health and fitness. So quick thing on health that I'm going to be trying this month. Like this is not only like a tip because still experimenting, but I ordered some powdered meals from Kewl. I'm going to start bringing these to school and just like start drinking liquid meals because I'm like too lazy to make my school lunch and the lunch that my school sells is like pretty unhealthy. So I'm trying to see if my health will be better this way. Also with fitness, what's really worked for me is going to the gym for a shortened amount of time, but very consistently. And this can even be working out at home if you don't have a gym membership. Ah, extracurriculars. Literally, I love this. I love this topic. Like you deserve to have extracurriculars that make you feel freaking alive, pumped up, excited. If you don't like being in the environment of school, like don't sign up for a school sport that like you're going to have to do, like unless you enjoy it. And like there's so much pressure, I feel like for your extracurriculars to look super packed for colleges. But honestly, if you go and do your own personal project that you're super passionate about, it's going to look so much better. That's all I have for you guys and I'll see you guys in the next video.