Mike Abasov

The finals are coming up. Can you feel them? I can. 

Over the years of epicly failing and wining on exams, I have developed a list of tools and tips that I use to get through any test. Today I want to share them with you, and I encourage you to post your own advice in the comments!

Tools

1. To-Do lists. 
I use these a lot. For every assignment, textbook chapter or test, I have a task, a due date and other details. 

I also tend to divide chapters into subtasks like 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 instead of “Ch. 13.” This gives me the satisfaction of crossing out something without competing the whole chapter.

2. iTunes U and Academic Earth. 
These apps save me time trying to figure out concepts that I’d missed in class (I blame it on you, Facebook!).

3. Double-sided highlighter.
Makes reading textbooks twice as productive! One side is red — for terms; the opposite one is yellow — for explanations. Mine is handmade, but you will probably look less weird, if you buy one.

4. iPod, Last.fm. 
I can study only with music. iPod for listening at a coffee shop, Last.fm for a perfect shuffle.

5. Coffee Shops. 
Starbucks, Blenz, Waves, whatever. Remember to check for free Internet access, good coffee, large enough single tables, and hours of operation (24/7 all the way).

6. Grades.
An awesome iPhone app that allows me to track my performance in every class. Replaced a lot of calculations I used to do myself every time.

Tips

1. First test is your  reconnoiter. 
Yes, I said reconnoiter. It doesn’t matter that much how well you do on your first midterm, but it matters a lot what you find out. See how the test is structured, what types of questions are there, how multiple choices work, how is the whole thing marked. 

The more data you collect, the better you’ll be able to do in the future by adjusting your learning style.

2. Raise the stakes. 
If I fail a course at UBC, I will waste 4 months, $2,000 of my parents’ dollars, get my ass kicked by the same parents and might as well loose my chance to immigrate. Surprisingly, I try my hardest not to fail or even get anything lower than a B+.

Raise your loss in case of failing. I don’t know, give a $100 to a good friend and and ask them to burn them, if you don’t get an A. Make a bet with another friend. Whatever you do, don’t leave yourself the power to change your mind — you will always cheat.

Good luck!

Only you decide what you get on your tests. Not a mean prof, not a crappy textbook, only you. Get used to this fact and show them how badass a student can be!

So what are your tips and tools for getting through the finals?

So here we are. You already know that, in order to become really successful, you need to step up your game, which we will, from now on, call personal branding.

Sure, personal branding is not yet a must for becoming successful but only in cases where success is directly related to your achievements.

If being successful means to you being the best at doing what you love, then dive into the activities described below and start building your brand now!

Warning

I should warn you that taking these steps will make you forget 2 words from your vocabulary: boredom and free time.

Boredom. You will never be bored, if you are actively working on achieving success by doing something you like. You will be excited, full of passion, tired but fulfilled. Bored — never. 

Free time. You won’t have any free time, because you won’t need it. Don’t worry, you will still party and have fun, and date. But those days when you didn’t know how to entertain yourself are forever over. You can now find entertainment in work, and this is your first step to happiness.

Action Plan

Here are 5 simple activities that will help you start branding yourself.

1. Join student clubs.
Check out any student clubs you find interesting and get into a few! You’re not making any commitments, so don’t worry about joining too many — you can drop them along the way.

For every club you’ve joined, participate in their events. Try them out!

You will meet new people, and people = opportunities. Every job I had, I had got because of the people I knew. Networking is extremely important.

You will also figure out what you like, develop your palette of interests.

2. Become active online.
Yes, it’s time you get on Twitter. Start tweeting about the stuff you like, the books you read, the things you do to become successful. Tweet about this article, after all!

Putting yourself out there will help you show everyone who you are and what you do, leading to conclusions about why you are better than your competition, why you should be hired.

I don’t advise you get into blogging right away, but if you feel like it, go ahead!

3. Learn. More.
Curriculum is good. Extra-curriculum is extra-good. Start reading blogs and books about your profession, watching documentaries and going to conferences. Absorb avery bit of information and be hungry for more.

Then share your knowledge with your new friends from student clubs and followers on Twitter.

4. Increase productivity.
You might not feel this pain yet, but as you become more and more active with your life, you’ll understand how scarce the time is as a resource. So start early! Here’s a list to consider: speed reading, time management, life-hacking, utilizing commute time.

The more efficiently you can use time, the more you will be able to achieve before graduation.

5. Read this blog.
And subscribe to the “Awesome Sunday” newsletter, for god’s sake! :)

Summing up

Every point mentioned here, I will be discussing on the pages of this blog in detail. There is a lot more to learn about personal branding and other aspects of improving your college life. But these few tips will get you started.

Are you doing any of these already? What exactly? How is it working out for you?

This is not a hardcore tip but, for many people, not an obvious one either. Of course, you can go search for tags like “marketing” or “ubc,” or else, if you like. But the following idea I got from Twitter. Remember when you checked whom your followers follow to see if there were any cool folks out there? This is just like that.

So, what I do is I go to a tumblr post like, say, the latest video from Gary Vaynerchuk. Then I look for notes on the page. Here they are:

All these people use tumblr and like stuff that you like. Now go and check out their blogs! This way I’ve found many interesting people like, for example, Derek Jensen.

On another note, I’m collecting blogs of my readers/followers to read them and connect better. So leave a link to your blog in the comment section below!

There is one singe awesome tip that will make it incredibly easy for you to get into conversations with people you follow (even when there are a lot of them) without reading tons of useless tweets.

I use HootSuite for this and I think that this is the best tool ever, but if you know some other app that you can use, go for it! On the image below you can see my Home Feed filtered by a keyword. The keyword is a question mark. This filter brings up questions which people that I follow are asking. And if there is a question, you can answer it!

It is this easy: in 2 clicks and 1 character I turned many tweets that I can’t work with into a few engageable ones.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have fun reading the other tweets, but when I don’t have much time, I use this super-simple and super-efficient tip to start engaging is seconds!

What super-tips do you have?

Aslo check out “How to monitor everything on Twitter” series.

I like helping people on LinkedIn. Some of discussions are really interesting, and sometimes there are questions you can answer and help someone in need. All this—caring about people and helping them without any intentions of selling stuff or getting traffic to your site—is great for starting new relationships and earning trust, which is awesome.

Joining Groups

So, you should start by going on LinkedIn and finding as many groups about your topic as possible and join every single one of them. I use these settings for every group I join:

• Group Logos. I don’t want many of those on my profile page, so I turn this setting off. 
• Posts. The only way not to miss anything interesting is to follow all discussions. But you should be ready for enormous amounts of spam (300 emails overnight), which I will teach you how to filter. 
• Digest Emails. There is no need for digests, because you are already following all discussion.
• Announcements. Why not? 
• Messages. You want to let people contact you, so leave in on.

Spam Filtering

The next thing you have to do is spam filtering. This is a huge issue on LinkedIn. People will post links to different articles all the time and sometimes to many groups simultaneously. Notifications about all of these will be coming to your inbox, so let’s stop this now!

I use Gmail, but if you use some other service, it should have the same features. Go to Settings —> Filters and set up 2 filters for your account. In this way, both spam articles and new jobs (which are 99% irrelevant) go to trash never to be seen again.

As a result you’ll get an almost clean inbox and notifications about threads like: “Automated welcome messages on Twitter? What do you think about it. Is it ok or not? and why?” And you know what to do with them ;-).

Bonus tip

Don’t write your website, blog or twitter address in every comment you make. This hurts you credibility, because people will think that you are only promoting yourself and your message doesn’t have any value. Better add your links to your profile and play with SEO, so that people can find your website by googling your name.

Anything you have to share?