When we ask students what they wish to achieve out of their schooling / tutoring we often hear answers along the lines of; "I want to do better", "I want to feel more confident in tests", "I want to be better organised". These goals are a great starting point, however they are vague and difficult to act upon. Who doesn't want to do better? Who doesn't want to be more organised? To combat this lack of clarity, we wish to encourage a new way for you to improve; Reverse Engineering.

It happens a few times per year; we get a burst of motivation and say to ourselves "I'm going to be more organised and start studying more. Today is the day"! Everything is great for a few weeks, we feel proud of our habits and new found work ethic. Our families congratulate us on what a remarkable improvement they have seen. Then something happens, we lose momentum and as quick as it came, our new enthusiasm disintegrates and we fall back into our old way of doing things.

Just to be clear, the problem is not the student. It is the way the student does things. The most common reason people fail is not due to their lack of ability, but their lack of consistency in complying to the process. In order to succeed we first need to set ourselves up for success.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail - Benjamin Franklin

So what is Reverse Engineering Anyway?

In personal life, Reverse Engineering is the process of working backwards from what your end goal is, to identify the steps you must take to get there. That summary is a bit vague in itself so we have broken it down into 3 key parts.

1. Establish a desired outcome so that you have a clear picture of what it is you want to accomplish.

2. Identify a real or imaginary mentor that has achieved the goal you have in mind who you can model yourself upon.

3. Introduce the required habits and modify your approach accordingly to achieve the desired outcome.

Let's use a made up example to better understand the above steps. 

STEP 1

Suppose Jonathon, who is currently a regular student, averaging 55-60% on assessments decides he wants to change and do better. Rather than just implementing a plan based on doing more hours of work (which we know is destined for failure) he first creates a clear picture of what he wants to accomplish. He works with his teacher and tutor to come up with a reasonable goal of achieving 70% on his end of year mathematics exam.

STEP 2

Jonathon doesn't know anyone from last year who achieved 70% on this exam so he once again consults his teacher and tutor to get a better understanding of what will be required of him to get there. They tell him something along the lines of; 

An imaginary student who gets 70% on their exam does all of their assigned textbook exercises and uses their school diary every day. Anything they don't understand, they ask for clarification from their teacher & tutor soon after the problem arises. They then revisit everything they have had trouble with at the end of every week. They do extended response / exam style questions upon completion of every topic. Before class they pre-read and attempt some easy questions so that they have an idea of what will be taught in the lesson before they get there. Also, students who get 70% in the exam seem to average 70-80% on their practice exams.

STEP 3

Now that Jonathon knows what his goal is and has done his homework to find out what it will take him to get there, he must now modify his behaviour to match that of the imaginary student. This is where he must be kept accountable. He can create a weekly checklist with all of the things he wants to achieve during the week like the one below.  

• Pre-read before at least 3 out of my 4 classes
• Complete the assigned textbook exercises
• Revisit the things I had trouble with last week

If he ticks them all off, he rewards himself (Go to the movies, grab a pizza with some friends). If he doesn't tick them off, there could be a penalty in place (no chocolate the next week, miss your favourite TV show for the next week). He asks his family and friends for support and to keep him accountable. He tells them that if he gives up they have his permission to upload that embarrassing video of him singing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" to Facebook.

BONUS STEP: STEP 4

Jonathon implements all of the strategies above, the weeks with with penalties of no chocolate and TV were hard but he quickly learnt that it was easier to put in the work than it was to refrain from the TV / chocolate! Also, he didn't want that video to go public! Despite some minor hiccups along the way he actually came to enjoy the process and received a 72% on his end of year exam! 

Summary

These set of steps can be modified to apply to any aspect of your life whether it be fitness / sporting goals, you wanting to play a certain song on guitar or even income targets for the parents reading this!

No more vague goals. No more aimless habit changes. And most importantly, no more work without results!

We hope this post has helped you achieve your learning goals. As always, this post was written by an Indigo Education Tutor. If you have any questions or you wanted to make an inquiry please don't hesitate to contact us and we'll get back to you. 

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