The Art of Overkill
I strongly believe that how you do one thing is how you do everything. The amount of effort you put into one area of your life, and your attention to detail, is likely consistent with how you execute all of your undertakings. It’s the beat to your internal drum – your philosophy.
At first, while studying for the Dental Tooth-Anatomy Midterm, I was trying to figure out what questions the teacher was most likely to ask. With this outlook, I was looking through the material that was presented, and trying to rank it in order of importance.
I happened to be in the library, and as I walked by two of my classmates, Alicia Jackson and Sergey Gazarov, I saw them working on some very obscure eruption patterns of the teeth — purely numbers. I asked them if they thought these questions would even come up on our midterm. “If they do, we’ll be ready for them,” they said.
So instead of assigning these obscure facts as unimportant and moving on to the materials we were guaranteed to be tested on, these particular students took the time to perfectly commit this to memory. Having some inside knowledge into the fact that they were both top students, I decided to take on their philosophy about studying.
It became a game as I created an absolutely unique way to remember these eruption patterns by folding all 10 of my fingers in a way I cannot even describe with words. It only took a few minutes to master, and then I went on to teach the technique to several other classmates in the library — I was too excited not to.
I systematically studied, rehearsed, and committed to memory absolutely anything that was presented about the topic at hand. I then looked at previous Board Examination questions for everything I could find from 2009 to 1998, which was hundreds of questions, very similar to what was going to be on the test.
By this point I was very confident. Sergey was also very much on point, so we sat together until almost 4 in the morning bouncing questions back and forth. He would quiz me, I would quiz him, and anything that was even slightly ambiguous would be combated by a witty mnemonic, or a more thorough understanding of why something was possible.
Going into the test at 8 in the morning I felt like I was bringing a machine gun to a fist fight. I had all the information locked up in my head and was radiating with confidence that any variation of anything that could possibly be asked was easily accessible to me.
The studying was purely overkill. However, if I kept telling myself that I want to learn enough to answer the questions, I would have been at a huge disadvantage. This could certainly be applied to anything that you do in life, anything that needs preparation, and anything that deserves to be done with love and diligence.
It should also be noted that students that spend time together develop similar GPAs. Likely due to the way they manage their studying, which stems from their philosophy. Philosophy most definitely rubs off on people, so whatever it is you’re going after in life, see if you can hang with the people that have the overkill philosophy.
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Posted by Alex Shalman in Accelerated Learning | October 17, 2009 | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumble | Print | 13 comments
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Alex, this is one of my favorite articles that you’ve written. I like your take on the overkill. Your anaology of “Going into the test at 8 in the morning I felt like I was bringing a machine gun to a fist fight” is ingenious.
Sometimes overkill is a good thing, but not always though.
@fas – that’s like saying ‘Everything in moderation, even moderation – sometimes you need to be extreme.’
Alex,
There is a book called Talent is Overrated that called mentioned overkill being a form of deliberate practice. When I played basketball in HS I would practice one or two specific shots over and over. I once spent an hour taking the same shot even though made it 90% if the time.
You’re right, you do gain confidence after doing something like that. Great Post!
Alex, I like the concept of hanging with people with an overkill philosophy, it’s brilliant. It’s amazing how we can draw analogies from all aspects of our lives.
Imho when you’re studying in university overkill is a good thing… If you are passionate about your career you want to be a great doctor/astronaut and not a mediocre one. Besides that, simply memorizing like a parrot would do it’s not useful.
@Ralph – I’m going to be taking those one or two shots all the way to graduation.
@Avil – I let everything in life teach me. Everything has a lesson.
@Giorgio – Hmm… astronaut huh? Perhaps I’ll be the first dentist in outer space.
Overkill can kill. I think taking things in stride step by step is the best way to get to your dreams!.
@PG – I can just as easily say that being over-prepared can save someones life. I would rather have CPR performed on me by an EMT who has been well trained and done it a million times than a random guy who was forced to sit through a CPR class dragging their feet the whole time.
I think much of success is about doing more than is expected of you. If you do the ‘average’, you’ll get the average results of the average person.
I so agree with this train of thought. Through out life I have come to known many a “what” people. People who are satisfied with the answer to the question as regurge is to an acid reflux victim. Knowing the answer is never enough, knowing WHY is always over kill but after you know why you can figure out the remaining questions presented.
Knowing the answer to something then knowing why you come to that answer to me is paramount in every aspect of life. There are why seekers and their are answer seekers. The why seekers in my opinion will always stay one step ahead for they have a full well rounded understanding of the situation and the reason it became as such. Therefore anything after that is small peanuts.
I train Mixed Martial Arts (you know this Alex
In MMA, they teach you to train as hard as your body possibly can. if you train at a level that is far superior than you will ever need to fight with, you will wind up at worst case scenario at that level come fight time. Train hard, fight easy. I have come to know many people both in life and in training who are adept at things and always seem to be naturals in the way they obtain skills. But if you study the onion and remove some layers you will see time and again a burning desired to know WHY. Why does this move work, why does it work over other moves, why is it defeated by other moves. Knowing why is the key to greatness. Its also been said anyone who is a master at anything in life, usually can become masters at other things in their lives. It takes a certain fortitude, a certain attention to detail a certain psychotic need to know why things work the way they do. only thru the Why can we ever begin to understand the how what when, and who.. Great Post!!
Alex
When you say “It should also be noted that students that spend time together develop similar GPAs.” I was wondering where you got it from. Are you talking strictly about a study of dental students?
My experience was quite the opposite but the field that I was studying (Law) is certainly far more subjective in grading than Dentistry.
NOOOOO. Overkill is the strategy of people with too much time on their hands. That strategy will fall apart in crunch time. Eventually discrimination is the key element of getting a lot done. If you get a 100 on any exam–YOU have WASTED your time. it’s more efficient to get a 94 and use your failures for instant feedback on the missing material.VERY Fast way to beat the problem of diminishing returns on study.