Most test-taking advice is garbage.
“Get a good night’s sleep”
“eat breakfast”
“read the directions.”
Thanks for the life-changing wisdom.
But there’s a deeper level of test strategy backed by actual neuroscience that nobody talks about—strategies that can give you a 10-15% performance boost without knowing a single extra fact. Let me break it down.
The “Hard Start – Jump to Easy” Technique: Why It Works When Nothing Else Does
Most people approach tests like they’re reading a novel—start at question one and chug along until the end.
This is monumentally stupid.
Here’s why: When you hit a difficult problem, your focused thinking mode activates intensely. That’s good. But it often hits a wall, and you waste precious minutes spinning your mental wheels.
Instead, try this: Start by quickly scanning the test. Spend 1-2 minutes attempting the hardest problems, then immediately jump to the easy ones.
This isn’t just random advice. Your brain has two modes: focused mode (intense, analytical) and diffuse mode (relaxed, big-picture). By briefly engaging with difficult problems first, you activate both. While your conscious mind collects easy points, your diffuse mode works on the hard stuff in the background.
It’s like planting seeds in your mind and letting them grow while you handle other business. When you return to the difficult problems later, you’ll often find insights waiting for you that weren’t there before.
Your Brain Under Pressure: It’s Dumber Than You Think
Under test conditions, you become even more stupid. Stress hormones flood your system and your working memory—that mental workspace where you juggle information—shrinks dramatically.
This isn’t some personal failure. It’s biology. But you can hack it:
The Emergency Brain Dump The second your test begins, turn it over and immediately write down every formula, key concept, and framework you might need. This externalized knowledge bypasses your compromised working memory.
Strategic Breathing When you feel panic rising, deploy 4-7-8 breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7, exhale for 8. This literally forces your parasympathetic nervous system to activate, shutting down the stress response that’s making you dumb.
Micro-Recoveries Your brain isn’t designed for sustained focus. Between questions, take deliberate 3-5 second mental resets. Look away, breathe, reset. These micro-recoveries prevent cognitive fatigue from accumulating.
Becoming Your Own Mental Babysitter
Most people have zero awareness of what’s happening in their minds during a test. They’re like drunk drivers insisting they’re fine while swerving between lanes.
It’s time to get some self awareness and develop what psychologists call “metacognitive monitoring”—basically, watching your own thinking:
- Notice when you’ve read the same sentence three times without comprehension
- Recognize when emotional reactions (“This is bullshit!”) signal potential errors
- Identify when you’re stuck in circular thinking and need to deploy diffuse mode
- Catch yourself when your confidence doesn’t match the evidence
This isn’t mystical mindfulness crap. It’s practical awareness that prevents you from wasting time in unproductive mental loops.
Information Overload: Stop Trying to Remember Everything
The average course contains way more information than anyone could possibly remember. Most students respond by trying to memorize everything equally—a strategy guaranteed to fail.
Instead, use the Knowledge Value Framework to ruthlessly prioritize:
- Core Concepts (70% of your focus): The fundamental principles that everything else builds on
- Procedural Knowledge (20%): The methods and techniques for solving problems
- Contextual Examples (8%): Specific applications that illustrate the core concepts
- Peripheral Details (2%): Interesting but ultimately skippable information
This isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about acknowledging reality: your brain has limits, so allocate its resources intelligently.
Progressive Summarization: The Art of Not Reading Everything Five Times
Don’t just reread material endlessly. Each pass should dramatically condense information:
- First pass: Highlight key points (maximum 20% of the text)
- Second pass: Bold only the most important highlights
- Third pass: Create margin notes summarizing the bolded material
- Fourth pass: Compress everything into one tight paragraph
- Final pass: Express the central idea in a single sentence
Each level forces deeper processing. By the fifth pass, you’ve metabolized the information instead of just renting space for it in your short-term memory.
Concept Mapping That Doesn’t Suck
Those sprawling mind maps with 50 branches? Useless. Your working memory can handle about 5 items. Period.
Create concept maps with constraints:
- Maximum 5 main branches
- Clear visual hierarchy (size, color, proximity)
- Minimum effective information—if removing something doesn’t hurt understanding, cut it
- Separate detail maps that connect to the main map
Your brain isn’t a computer with infinite RAM. It’s a flawed biological system with serious constraints. The best test-takers aren’t necessarily smarter—they’re just better at working within those constraints.
Now go crush that exam like the neurologically-informed badass you are.
Joe DiAndrea 