# If You Want An Academic Comeback in 2025. Please Watch This Video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBhsz8l1CE

[00:00] it is a new year which means a new New Year's resolution except I have been actively avoiding making New Year's resolutions for at least 10 years now and it has been one of the best decisions of my life in this video I'll explain why I don't make New Year's resolutions and first resolution and really the only resolution that you should make moving forward I'll be talking about a method of resolution that has allowed me to completely transform my life in terms of my fitness and General Health my financial stability leaving my career pursuing my dream job which apparently also involves me just like talking to a camera alone inside my room and thinking about creating New Year's resolutions in the way that most people create New Year's resolutions honestly that makes me feel really stressed so hopefully this video will help you too if you're new to this Channel and you're wondering who I am I'm Dr Justin Sun I'm a learning coach in the head of learning at I can study it's my job to look at
[01:02] the research on learning and self-management and then apply it to thousands of people to see what works and what doesn't.
[01:08] I've been doing this now for over a decade working with thousands of people from all around the world.
[01:12] so first of all let's just State some of the obvious things which is the problem with New Year's resolutions.
[01:18] I remember I'm fortunate now that I've got my gym at home but I used to go to the commercial gym and January 1st to like January the 10th the gym is just packed.
[01:29] like yeah there's a line in front of every single machine because that's the New Year's resolution like this year I'm going to get fit.
[01:36] by February the gym is just empty again it's just back to normal.
[01:40] and even if you are not the type of person that goes to the gym I think the analogy kind of makes sense here.
[01:47] which is that there's this huge Drive of motivation we're wanting to achieve all these goals for the new year but then that Fizzles out very quickly.
[01:53] and so I often notice a few problems and these are also problems that I noticed in myself which which is that there are often too many goals that are being set.
[02:03] like I used to want to achieve like my dream life by the end of the year.
[02:08] and it doesn't help that that's often followed with a very vague and ambiguous plan.
[02:14] and actually it's not like I'm deliberately trying to create bad plans.
[02:19] like I would try to create plans that I think are pretty effective like okay Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know every day I'm going to sit aside an hour to do whatever.
[02:25] but the problem is that I just didn't know enough.
[02:27] and I think actually no one knows enough about a goal that they want to achieve to create the perfect plan, especially if they're in the early stages.
[02:35] it's only when you actually start pursuing the goal do you realize what the barriers are and all the other variables that you didn't consider and probably should have considered in your planning.
[02:45] but all of these things start adding up which derails you from the goal and then stops you from being able to achieve it.
[02:50] and because now you're like, okay, well I sort of derailed on this already, that whole year's plan is sort of just ritten off.
[02:58] and so ultimately that comes down to the effect that there's usually this All or Nothing kind of thinking when it comes to plans like I'm going to definitely do.
[03:05] it and achieve this goal and it's going to go perfectly or I'm going to give it a go next year.
[03:08] this must just not be the year for it.
[03:11] it's like last year was like the year of the the rooster and then it's like the the year of the the snake.
[03:16] uh and then next year will be the year of achieving my goals.
[03:20] all of these things contribute to being unmotivated at fizzling out and then by the end of the year we are in the same position as we were at the end of last year.
[03:28] which I think is really the worst case scenario when you're creating a New Year's resolution is that the new year brings nothing new except for like new experiences at failing to achieve a goal.
[03:39] which is kind of sad but if that happens every year is that still a new experience anyway.
[03:42] I want to introduce you to a method of resolution and planning that I've been using for several years now which is a reason why I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore and it's because i' never feel the need to.
[03:55] I get to the end of the year and I think okay well what am I going to do next year and I think everything that I want to do I'm already in the middle of doing like all I want is to just
[04:06] continue to keep going and so for me New Year's resolutions are very meaningless.
[04:11] there are some people that are really against New Year's resolutions.
[04:14] I don't think there's anything wrong with using an opportunity like the end of a year to reflect and plan and be a little bit more introspective.
[04:23] often throughout the year we're so busy with things that we just don't have the mental time and freedom to think about our goals and where we are in our lives at higher level.
[04:31] so New Year's resolution can be an amazingly beneficial thing for that reason.
[04:33] but I also think that it can end up being either a waste of time or actually make you feel worse because you set another goal that you can't achieve.
[04:42] which is why I want to give you an alternative or rather the first resolution you should ever create.
[04:47] so here is the way that I view any kind of planning or goal setting.
[04:55] in order for your actions to have any significant impact on your life it needs to stack and compound.
[05:01] meaningful changes in life are usually not possible through just a few actions and this is actually fairly
[05:06] obvious but it has to come through in our planning or how we plan to plan.
[05:11] there's something in medicine that we call ventricular fibrillation.
[05:15] colloquially it's just called your heart stopping.
[05:18] when we go into like a cardiac arrest, what's happening is that our heart is no longer pumping blood around our body.
[05:25] but the thing is when you look at the electrical activity of the heart, what you see is not actually a completely flat line, at least not at the beginning.
[05:34] what you see is a lot of up and down movement, and this is because in order for the heart to pump blood effectively around the body, it has to have a synchronous contraction.
[05:44] with ventricular fibrillation, which is when you enter into cardiac arrest, your heart is no longer working in a synchronized way.
[05:54] it is actually fibrillating, which basically just means it's vibrating.
[05:59] every part of the heart is trying to contract at the same time, and therefore it's not able to effectively pump any blood out, but in
[06:08] terms of sheer activity the heart is actually doing more stuff when it is just vibrating than when it is doing a few synchronized contractions and this is exactly the way that I've been trying to look at planning and goal setting and productivity for years and so one of the first really more me meaningful resolutions that I ended up making for myself which at the time I didn't realize how big of an impact this would have on my life was I made a resolution that I would never feel the need to create New Year's resolutions in the future and I started thinking how can I create enough consistent output throughout my life at all times of the year so that by the end of the year I don't feel the need to make additional plans or change the way I'm producing output so this year on next year depending on when you're watching this give this a try try having a monthly realignment session with yourself I've been doing this every 1 or 2 months for
[07:09] the last at least 7 or 8 years and it only takes about 30 minutes to an hour every one or two months but it makes the time between those months so much easier and more purposeful during these sessions.
[07:21] here's what you need to ask yourself number one what is my long-term vision.
[07:27] when I say long-term Vision I'm talking somewhere in the span of maybe 5 to 10 years and it doesn't have to be very specific it just has to be a general idea about the type of life you want to live the type of values you want to live too and the type of person you want to be.
[07:42] I wouldn't recommend fixing on specific careers that you're going to have because even if you're like 100% sure that that's what you're going to end up doing I can tell you for a fact when I was 18 years old I was 100% sure I was going to stay as a medical doctor.
[07:59] but but you just don't know what you don't know life has a way of throwing curve balls at you and what's important is that you stay true to living the life that you want to live not staying true.
[08:09] to a random goal that a past version of you made which was actually more ignorant than the current version of you.
[08:18] keeping long-term Visions relatively Broad and open means that we're not trapping ourselves and giving ourselves tunnel vision or missing other opportunities that could be really beneficial for our lives.
[08:28] on the other hand when you're making short-term goals which are days weeks or maybe even a couple months out then they should be very very specific but longterm goals should be broad generally higher level a little bit more flexible.
[08:41] the second question you ask yourself is is my long-term Vision the same as what it was in my last checkup.
[08:48] third we reflect and think are the things that I'm doing now and the way that I'm spending my time aligned to helping me achieve that long long term Vision.
[09:01] now quite a lot of the time the answer is going to be no.
[09:04] in the modern world I think it is really actually very difficult to constantly stay always aligned with your long-term.
[09:11] Vision there are always competing commitments and pressures and responsibilities that are popping up that you feel that you need to address and often you do need to address them.
[09:20] The problem is not that we spend time on things that aren't directly contributing to our long-term Vision that's just life.
[09:26] The problem is when we end up never committing enough time to our long-term vision and therefore at the end of the year wondering why has my life not changed at all.
[09:35] So if the answer is no then we ask ourselves the fourth question which is why we want to look for the barriers or the things that are missing.
[09:42] What are the things that stop me from spending more time and energy to align my actions with my long-term vision and one of the things that are missing that would allow me to overcome those barriers or make greater strides.
[09:57] And this part is actually crucial we have to have the mindset that there is a solution here somehow that will help and our job is to find it.
[10:07] There's no point saying I've not been able to align myself it's not going well and I can't.
[10:11] because of these barriers.
[10:14] and stop there, we're not on a problem finding mode.
[10:16] we are in a solution finding mode and often the solution is not obvious and it may not fix the problem immediately or completely.
[10:23] but it's about taking steps in the right direction.
[10:25] for example, before I LIF clinical medicine, one of the barriers for me in actually taking that step was that if I quit my job, I would not have any money.
[10:34] cuz at the time I wasn't even paying myself for working in my education business, it was running as a nonprofit.
[10:41] I didn't pay myself for the first four and a half years.
[10:43] so I realized that I actually have to start paying myself a salary so I can make that transition.
[10:49] and the barrier for me in doing that was that I just didn't know how to make money from my business effectively enough to do that.
[10:58] so the barrier that I found was the lack of financial freedom or lack of financial anything.
[11:05] and the missing part was my knowledge on how to gain that financial.
[11:12] something and so the final part of the self-reflection activity is to figure out the focus what are you going to focus on between now and your next re-evaluation session a month or two from now that is going to essentially guarantee that you've made some progress toward wards that goal so for me I spent a few months just learning and reading more talking to people about the idea of commercialization and how you can use money for impact while also paying yourself I talked to a lot of CEOs from other social Enterprises and Charities about their experiences and their struggles I learned about how to raise funds and so around 6 months later I was able to pay myself out a small salary but enough to stay alive on and now that that barrier had been removed I was was open to many more opportunities that I could explore for example the viability of leaving clinical medicine to pursue this thing that I had for education and Entrepreneurship which in retrospect is an itch that I'm very glad that I ended up scratching and so one of the best
[12:13] things about doing these many sessions is that it increases massively your flexibility and adaptability and your motivation.
[12:20] like I mentioned before when we set ourselves like a one-year goal we often don't know enough about what it takes to achieve that goal and what are the barriers you're likely to face in trying to achieve that goal to make a good plan to begin with.
[12:35] like if you want to do couch to Marathon by the end of next year one of the barriers you find to training regularly might be it's not safe to run in the evenings or maybe you're just too tired or maybe you're just too lazy whatever it is these are all barriers that we might just discover which we don't necessarily know enough to plan for in advance and this is normal.
[12:57] in fact this is is expected so we should expect it by having a more regular checkup it allows us to take all this information and experience that we've gained and re-evaluate our plans and because we're also checking up on our progress on a monthly basis it's a
[13:15] lot more motivating cuz we can see what we are doing to systematically unblock and remove barriers.
[13:23] when we don't think of it this way it's very hard to measure progress.
[13:25] It's either we are achieving the goal or we're not not achieving the goal but a lot of the time the process of achieving a goal is about just removing the barriers that stop you from committing to achieving the goal in the first place.
[13:39] and these are serious wins that should be motivating but it's not going to be motivating if you can't see the progress.
[13:46] and that is when we can start just fibrillating vibrating not really achieving any output because we don't see how each step we're taking is actually progressing us one step at a time.
[13:58] instead we end up just doing one thing and then another thing and then another thing and another thing desperately trying to reach our goal but inadvertently just kind of fluctuating because none of our actions are compounding.
[14:10] and I see this a lot when it comes to people trying to improve the way that they learn or study is that
[14:16] they're looking for something that just immediately helps them to improve not realizing all the different things that are involved in learning to be an efficient learner.
[14:24] for example we'll have people joining our program and they'll learn a new technique and they'll practice it and try it for like 5 to 10 minutes and if it's not giving them that immediate result in just 10 minutes they say okay this is not working for me they move on to the next technique another 10 minutes and it's not working for them and then they go through like dozens of different techniques never really giving themselves a chance to build the skill.
[14:49] in fact there are even some students that will have done this kind of just flittering around different techniques for months before realizing that the thing that actually holds them back the most is not realizing that the first part of making any progress is just removing the barriers that stop you from making progress in the first place which in this example is the mindset perspective and method of practicing new skills and in my experience and I'm not
[15:18] like some you know like old wise man
[15:20] like Asian Guru like with a long beard
[15:23] I don't even think I can grow a beard but
[15:25] in my experience I found that when you remove the barriers to achieving something it's generally pretty smooth to be able to reach it
[15:35] and for every barrier that stays unremoved we have to then overcome and hurdle over it with more effort and energy and time
[15:43] a lot of the time when people create New Year resolutions they are just saying okay here's what I want
[15:48] they're not thinking about the barriers that they're likely to expect along the way
[15:52] whereas in reality the primary focus for the first 5 to 7 months probably should just be consistent and diligent barrier removal
[16:02] as I said before having these monthly realignment sessions has been really life-changing for me
[16:06] it's allowed me to feel a lot more in control of my life
[16:10] and I hope it will be able to do the same for you
[16:11] if you do give it a go please do come back leave a comment on this video to let me know how you found it
[16:16] I would love to hear your stories
[16:18] and if you want to know how you can do the
[16:19] Planning part of it on a short-term basis more effectively.
[16:22] Then I would strongly recommend checking out my video in reverse goal setting that I have here.
[16:27] And if one of your goals is to get better at learning or managing your time or your tasks, then stick around to the end of the video because there's a playlist which is my curated collection of videos that I think will be helpful for you to start with.
[16:39] Thank you so much for watching.
[16:40] I hope you have a great New Year's and I'll see you in the next one.