Author: Robin Phillips
Through his TSM column, Robin Phillips shares insights on mindfulness, brain fitness, and the ingredients that go into mental and emotional wellness.
The Power of Positive Smelling
The Invasion of the Negative
It’s common to hear people complain that they are weighed down by negative thoughts or depressive mood-states. This can be especially true for individuals in high stress situations, including students preparing for exams or EPPP candidates trying to qualify for licensure.
But even when we don’t have stressful life circumstances weighing in on us, many people still find themselves dragged down by a barrage of negative thoughts that seem to take on a life of their own. This has become such a problem that many practitioners in the medical community are concerned about the health effects of toxic thoughts.
Although historical evidence shows that people have always struggled with toxic thinking, the phenomenon of negative mental chatter seems to be growing worse with each passing year. Evidence also suggests that Westerners are increasingly less happy, grateful and content than those in less developed nations, even though we live in one of the wealthiest cultures ever to have existed.
Why Struggle and Frustration Are Good (Study Myths Part 4)
I am grateful to TSM for inviting me to contribute the next article in their series on study myths.
This ongoing series has aimed to debunk some of the myths about memory and learning that pervade so many people’s understanding of the study process. While this series has been focused on students preparing to pass their psychology licensure exam, the research has applications for anyone trying to master material or develop new skills.
Creating a Lifestyle for EPPP Success
At TSM we provide you with all the content you need for passing the EPPP. But having the content is only one part of the picture. We recognize that to achieve success on the EPPP you also need to be attentive to creating a lifestyle of success. The skills that it takes to pass the EPPP are the same skills that it takes to succeed in life: diligence, time-management, goal-setting, positive life-style, etc. Because of this, we regularly monitor what others are saying about these topics and pass them onto you. Here are some resources we’ve recently come across that are a must-read for anyone wanting to create a lifestyle of success.
How to Prepare for the Eppp Exam When You’re Not Feeling Motivated
At TSM we provide you with the tools and training materials to literally guarantee (yes, that’s right) a passing EPPP score. But having the right tools for success is only one part of the picture. You also have to put in enormous effort. It’s at that point – the effort part – that many people flounder because they lack sufficient motivation. Unmotivated students are the most likely to fall into the trap of EPPP procrastination.
Of course, it is possible to prepare for the EPPP exam even when you’re not feeling particularly motivated, by simply doing what you need to do. Many tasks in life are like that – they are things we don’t particularly enjoy, but we have to grit our teeth and do it anyway. However, it is much harder to achieve success, and much harder to overcome the obstacles that stand between you and your goal, if you’re feeling consistently unmotivated. That’s why I want to share how you can create motivation to give your studies a sense of purpose and flow.
Top 5 Ways Successful Students Achieve Focus During EPPP Studies
“I just can’t focus on my EPPP studies!”
“I’ve been trying to prepare for the EPPP, but every time I start I become distracted.”
Perhaps the above statements describe exactly how you’ve been feeling as you struggle to achieve focus in your studies. If so, you are not alone.
Among average would-be psychologists, the common experience is that when you sit down to focus on your EPPP studies, the last thing that actually occurs is focus. Instead, the mind is constantly bombarded with numerous distractions. By contrast, only a minority of successful students are able to achieve focus.
10 Steps for Becoming a Licensed Psychologist
What are the prerequisites for becoming a licensed psychologist? How do I reserve a place at the licensure exam? When I have passed the EPPP, what do I still need to do to become licensed?
These are important questions that often overwhelm doctoral students. In this post we will answer these questions by breaking down this complex process into a series of ten easy steps.
New Study Reveals Importance of Mindset in Career Success
Believing that talent is innate may hinder your chance of career success, a recent study suggests.
The study, published earlier this year the journal Science, had set out to discover why women and African Americans are underrepresented in certain academic fields such as philosophy, economics, music and math.
Drawing on data collected in a nationwide survey, the authors of the report found that this under-representation correlated with academic disciplines where practitioners believed that raw innate talent is the main requirement for success.
Myths about innate talent are particularly strong in philosophy, music, economics and math. By contrast, in molecular biology, neuroscience and psychology, practitioners tend to hold the more accurate view that success is based on practice and hard work.
EPPP Preparation Program Points to Future of Online Education
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, Graham Taylor joined me for an exclusive interview. I talked to Dr. Taylor about the way the internet has changed how we view education, advertising and life in general.
Robin Phillips: Thank you for joining us on this special day. Perhaps you could explain to us the significance of this day.
Graham Taylor: It’s a pleasure to talk with you today Robin. The reason this day is important is because it is the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web. It was 25 years ago today that Sir Tim Berners-Lee was credited for inventing the internet through a proposal on how to improve the flow between links.
So many changes have happened since that day 25 years ago. This has prompted a lot of self-reflection in the papers about how the internet has changed our lives. What I’m particularly interested in is how the internet has permanently altered education. Continue reading
Ed Cooke on Forgetting, Revision and the Spacing Effect
In an article for The Telegraph, Grand Master of Memory, Ed Cooke, makes the following observations about the spacing effect:
The reason that forgetting is so rife is that memories fade in time – and only those memories that get repeated are strengthened for the long term. This is usually a good thing, since repetition correlates with importance. Meaningful or important things tend to happen again; random things tend not to. By forgetting what doesn’t repeat, we sort the wheat from the chaff.
The problem with most education lies in a distinction between two ways to go about repetition: spaced and massed. Massed repetition (“cramming”) is when you repeat something over and over in a short period of time. Spaced repetition is where the repetitions are spaced out.
To understand which is better, think of memories as plants in the garden of your memory. Think of repetition as watering. Massed repetition is like watering a plant over and over all at once, and then failing to do so for months. Spaced repetition is like watering the plant once a week for a period of months. The same amount of total watering leads to two very different plants at the end of the story, only one of which is dead. So it is with memory.
A century of scientific research has shown that the very best way to space repetition of material in the service of efficient, long-term learning is in fact to water memories just before they’re about to shrivel, and with gaps that increase with time. Optimally, we want to revisit a new memory roughly after a minute, five minutes, an hour, a day, a week, a month, three months, a year: always catching the memory just before it expires.
Algorithms are the best way to handle this scheduling, but there are two simple things that can be done to worked into an exam revision plan.
First, review what you learn continuously as you learn. After each page of a text book, look back over the main points. After each chapter, review all of its contents. This obviously sounds really boring. But in reality it can be pleasurable, and you’ll learn far faster.
And during revision blasts, look over what you do each day at the end, and each week too. The positive results are staggering: rather than constantly resuscitating dead memories, or over-watering them pointlessly, you can reduce the net amount of time spent by as much as a factor of three.
Further Reading