It seems to me that one reason why some people behave irrationally is that they start implicitly thinking about themselves in terms of a particular identity, particular archetype. If people of that archetype tend to be bad at a X and one is also bad at X, one might not feel the irresistable urge to fix it, even though intellectually one might agree that it would be better if they fixed it.
In a university setting, at least at the beginning, two such archetypes are “hard working (but not necessarily talented) student” and “talented, but lazy student”. You might even observe a negative correlation in your university. However, most likely this is a result of Berkson’s bias, because people who are both hard-working and talented are probably studying at a more prestigious university than yours, therefore you don’t meet them. Thus whenever you notice that you are very talented yet work very little you should not think about how efficient you are, instead think in terms of not using your potential to the fullest.
If you are able to find people who are passionate about learning about similar things as you, team up with them (an example), create your own unofficial book club or your own unofficial seminar.
Try to be strategic. Use Paul Graham’s heuristic “always produce”. Write a diary where you can log what you have learned and what you still don’t know.
Currently, most of the advice is very abstract and a lot of it is common sense. Perhaps someone from countries with a lot of prestigious universities (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, etc.) could post more concrete advice, for example links or step-by-step instructions how to apply to a university, how to apply for scholarships and internships in your particular location, what other useful educational resources do you know? Even if such advice is not as generalizable as the more abstract advice, it might still be useful for some people, and even people from different locations to whom the exact wording of an advice might not be directly applicable might still find enough similarities that reading it is still useful for them.
It seems to me that one reason why some people behave irrationally is that they start implicitly thinking about themselves in terms of a particular identity, particular archetype. If people of that archetype tend to be bad at a X and one is also bad at X, one might not feel the irresistable urge to fix it, even though intellectually one might agree that it would be better if they fixed it.
In a university setting, at least at the beginning, two such archetypes are “hard working (but not necessarily talented) student” and “talented, but lazy student”. You might even observe a negative correlation in your university. However, most likely this is a result of Berkson’s bias, because people who are both hard-working and talented are probably studying at a more prestigious university than yours, therefore you don’t meet them. Thus whenever you notice that you are very talented yet work very little you should not think about how efficient you are, instead think in terms of not using your potential to the fullest.
If you are able to find people who are passionate about learning about similar things as you, team up with them (an example), create your own unofficial book club or your own unofficial seminar.
Try to be strategic. Use Paul Graham’s heuristic “always produce”. Write a diary where you can log what you have learned and what you still don’t know.
Currently, most of the advice is very abstract and a lot of it is common sense. Perhaps someone from countries with a lot of prestigious universities (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, etc.) could post more concrete advice, for example links or step-by-step instructions how to apply to a university, how to apply for scholarships and internships in your particular location, what other useful educational resources do you know? Even if such advice is not as generalizable as the more abstract advice, it might still be useful for some people, and even people from different locations to whom the exact wording of an advice might not be directly applicable might still find enough similarities that reading it is still useful for them.