Disclaimer
*Before we get into the positive side of this, let’s be completely real: being out of alignment sucks ass. I say that with 100% intentionality. The only reason I had to build the intense, manual system I’m about to talk about (the finger-counting, the secret voice recordings, the isolation) was because I was fundamentally out of alignment with what I was studying to begin with.
I had mates at university who could smoke spliff, get drunk and go party, then roll back to the dorms at 2:00 AM, and smash out their calculus assignments in twenty minutes flat. It was terrifying to watch. That is what effortless, natural alignment looks like.
For me to keep up and pull the exact same grades as those people, I had to push myself to the absolute limit using a gruelling, manual framework. Yes, you can survive and achieve things when you force yourself through the meat grinder, but this is a cautionary tale about the brutal, exhausting tax of not choosing yourself, not knowing yourself, and staying in a space you do not belong in. Here is how I survived it.*
We live in a culture obsessed with standardising the human mind. Go online, and you’re met with an endless parade of productivity gurus peddling the exact same checklist: buy these specific sticky notes, use these flashcards, download this app, study for six hours using this exact, rigid technique.
The underlying message is quiet but heavy: If you aren’t digesting information the way we are, you’re doing it wrong.
But when you blindly copy someone else’s blueprint, your body usually rejects it. You feel that natural, physical friction, a quiet instinct telling you this isn't working. Yet, we override our own biology because some YouTuber got top marks using a method that makes us want to claw our eyes out. We ignore the basic reality that how we process information is tied to a massive web of personal, genetic, and psychological factors.
It always comes back to the same law: Know Thyself.
If you don't know your own cognitive build, you will constantly try to run software your system was never built to support.
When I was at university, I realised very quickly that the highly recommended "study group" was a complete waste of time.
Society tells us to gather with our peers to collaborate. In reality, the moment I stepped into a study group was the moment my learning stopped. Instead of academic progress, those sessions almost always devolved into a bizarre, micro-social ecosystem of drama and posturing.
You had some guy trying to play the "alpha" by reciting equations just to put everyone else down, another guy using the session to chat up a girl on the other side of the table, and two others arguing over what might be on the exam based on what a maths tutor told them back in fucking primary school.
You walk away with absolute brain fog, having synthesised nothing but other people's personal baggage.
Group study works for some, and that’s fine. But I had to get radically honest with myself, strip away the social expectation, and find out what actually aligned with my brain.
Once I stopped trying to study like everyone else, I designed a system tailored to my specific build. And that meant embracing the things that standard productivity culture tells you to be ashamed of.
First, I read slowly. Very slowly. In a fast-paced academic environment, that can feel embarrassing. But when I aligned with it, I realised it was actually a massive advantage. I don't skim. I don't breeze through pages just to say I finished them. Because I read slowly, I digest the material on a fundamentally deeper level than the person speed-reading to keep up. I’m actually taking in the knowledge, line by line because I have no other choice.
And then there's the big one: I count on my fingers.
Imagine being a grown man (big man at 18 lol), sitting in a university study group, physically counting on your hands to process a calculation while the people around you are throwing out complex formulas. It’s humiliating. In a room full of people desperate to look like the smartest person in the room, counting on your fingers makes you look like a child.
But my hands are how I process the world. In my art practice, I work with my hands. I construct, I shape, I manipulate physical materials to understand concepts. My brain is hardwired to need that physical connection. So why the hell wouldn't I use my hands to process numbers?
Once I accepted that, I stopped trying to hide it. I stepped out of the noise and built a quiet, highly deliberate process that actually worked for me:
Under-the-radar recording: I sat in lectures and voice-recorded them on my phone. Honestly, I didn't care if the lecturer explicitly said recording wasn't allowed. I knew my brain needed to hear the raw nuance of those spoken explanations again, in my own time, for the information to actually settle.
Isolated trial and error: Instead of struggling through equations in a chaotic group, I sat with past papers in absolute isolation. I read at my own slow pace and physically counted my way to the answers.
The zero-ego route: Every time I hit a wall, I didn't panic or pretend I understood. I wrote down my exact, hyper-specific pain points on a list. Then, I took that list straight to the campus mentors, the older students who were designated to help, who had zero ego, zero social stakes in my success, and just genuinely wanted to guide me. No posturing. No judgment. Just pure, focused synthesis.
The funniest part of this entire journey is the aftermath.
You spend months being the quiet one who reads slowly, works alone, and counts on his fingers while the louder, "alpha" study-group guys pretend they have it all figured out. You let them make their assumptions.
But then the exam results come out, the dust settles, and you’re both staring at the exact same grade.
The look on their faces in real-time is hilarious. You can practically watch the gears turn as they try to reconcile how the guy who was manually counting on his fingers just pulled the exact same results as them without ever stepping foot in their loud, chaotic study sessions.
This isn't just about university calculus or surviving an economics degree I wasn't aligned with. This is a framework for everything.
Think of it like the gym. No two bodies are built the same. One person can lift massive weights and still have structural weak points, while someone else lifts lighter but possesses raw, functional strength. You have a unique physical and mental makeup. Trying to force your mind into a generic mould is a fast track to burnout.
It is highly valuable to experiment. Try the flashcards. Try the study groups. But the moment you realise certain methods aren't yielding results for you specifically, have the courage to bin them. Stop letting a copy-paste productivity culture dictate how your brain should function. Sit with yourself, figure out your unique cognitive build, and run your own race.