It is easy to succeed.

Yes it is.

There is a logic behind this statement:

90% of people do not give their best. They either show off or waste time in complaining or give fake assurance to self that they are doing their best.

So here is a trick -

If you want to be successful at something, please understand that you are competing with only 10% of people.

Don't be scared looking at other 90% because these are the people who are there because:

1. Their parents, friends or colleagues told them to try for It
2. They are over confident
3. They are a part of little work, little play and all show off
4. They are too stubborn to change their opinions
5. They don't know what they are doing
6. They are the ones who begin at rocket pace but soon adopt turtle pace.
7. They don't want to succeed as hard as they are pretending they want to succeed
8. They are busy doing multitasking
9. They suffer from superiority complex
10. They are busy doing comparisons
11. They have only one goal - to earn money
12. They change their goals too easily
13. They don't work silently rather they work to prove their worth
14. They are insecure about everything
15. They interfere in other people's business
16. They are not consistent with their work
17. They give up easily

So If you are preparing for world's toughest exam or be an astronaut or the next Einstein or A. R.Rahman - get this in your head that you have to compete with only 10% of people.

And if you are doing anything or all from above mentioned 17 pointers - please accept the fact that you are also a part of 90%

-Kruti Naik

If a cab driver makes more money than an IT professional, why should I study?

I find that my studying routine for classes at MIT depends largely on 3 factors:

 1) how difficult the concepts are to grasp, 2) how much content there is to learn, and frankly, 3) how much I care about my grade in the class.

However, for the purposes of this answer, I'll elaborate a bit on my study habits for a hypothetical technical class that has a lot of difficult material, and one that I actually care about doing well in (this condition is pretty crucial). I'll break my studying habits down to what I do 1) In class, 2) Outside of class, and 3) For tests.

1. In Class:

• Sit in the first four rows of the lecture hall. This has the effect of helping me stay more alert (read: awake) in class since you feel like the professor is right there in front of you, eliminating distractions from people with laptops open, and helping me see better (some professors have tiny writing).
• Don't be afraid to be the guy who asks questions. I know, it can be awkward to be that guy. However, many times professors will assume knowledge about a particular concept that is not so obvious to the rest of the class. If there's a concept that just didn't make sense, I'll usually lean over to the person next to me for some quick clarification first, and if we both are lost, I'll raise my hand.
• Take notes as if you're taking them for your friend. I've been known to take some pretty scrupulous and neat notes. Call me anal, nitpicky, or whatever. But I've never encountered a situation where I've struggled to read my notes come review time. Taking neat notes in a very deliberate way also helps me internalize what I'm writing, so I don't have to relearn them again later. Learn the stuff in the moment so you don't waste another hour later having to learn it from your notes.

2. Outside of Class:

• The night before lecture, skim the corresponding section in the book. Can't emphasize this enough. To be clear, this isn't a detailed perusal of the content, but rather a quick flip-through to orient me to the material being presented. If there are bolded definitions or important diagrams, I might take some light notes. The point is, when I come to class the next day, I know which parts of lecture are particularly important to grasp and which ones are more peripheral. This step really shouldn't take more than 15 minutes per class, but it saves so much time later.
• Right after class, skim over your notes. I find that this helps tremendously. Often when I take notes, I'm concentrating on internalizing the particular diagram or definition and not necessarily tying it to the larger picture. Looking over the set of notes as a whole helps me fit the puzzle pieces together. How does the content at the end of the lecture fit into what he was talking about at the beginning? Are there obvious gaps in the topic that he failed to explain?
  
• Old-fashioned studying. Hopefully if you've done the two bullet points above, this step shouldn't take that much time. I generally find that the best way to do this is to have my notes and the book open at the same time, and just compare them to see if they jive. If there are parts in the notes that aren't in the book, or vice versa, make a note of that, and consider why that is. Is the topic new? Outdated? Unimportant?

3. For tests:
These studying tricks have worked extraordinarily well for me, but I realize that they might not work for everyone. But what's the harm in trying them out?

• Do your review at least 2 nights in advance. It's okay to cram when you need to - just do it 2 nights before. For example, if the test is Friday morning, do your cramming Wednesday night, not Thursday night. This will give you some buffer time to digest and chew on the material, not to mention relieve the pressure of last minute studying.
  
• Condense your notes twice. The best way I've found to review the material is to look back at your notes (which are hopefully detailed and neat), and condense/summarize them by half in another sheet of paper. Then take those condensed notes, and halve them one more time. (When I say condense, I don't mean just write smaller - I mean actually summarize the concepts so that the new set of notes only contains what you deem to be the really important or overarching themes of the unabridged notes.) When you are all done, your final notes should be able to fit on one sheet of paper, front and back. Carry this with you and do a mini skim-over when you have a spare minute (a minute is all it should take to review this).

I hope this has helped! These are the primary study habits that have worked well for me over my four years at MIT. Not saying that they'll be perfect for everyone, but hopefully you'll take something helpful away from them

  -Michael Fu

The vast majority of abusers do not believe that they are being abusers. In fact, they oftentimes believe they are abuse victims, truly and sincerely.

 If you talk to therapists or counselors who work with abusers, the answer you get, over and over again, is "Abusers believe they are not abusing others". The vast majority of abusers do not believe that they are being abusers. In fact, they oftentimes believe they are abuse victims, truly and sincerely.

You can read a list of abusive behaviors to an abuser, but that almost never triggers a lightbulb. The abuser does not say "aha, I am being an abuser!" Instead, the abuser says "yes, I do that, but I do it because of this thing that she does to me. I am only protecting myself."

Abuse grows in soil where the abuser feels a combination of things, usually pain and entitlement to control.

Abusers are hurting. They are not healthy, happy people. They are suffering. Their suffering is real. It's often self-inflicted, but it's still genuine pain. They feel jealous or insecure. They feel that if they permit it their lover will leave them, or that their lover wants to be with someone else, or that they are in danger of being abandoned. It does not matter if these things are true or not. They feel true. If you're afraid of something that isn't actually dangerous, that doesn't make the fear you feel any less real.

But, and this is the dangerous part, they also believe, sincerely believe, that they are entitled to control their partner to relieve their pain. Lundy Bancroft, a therapist specializing in abuse who has worked with abusers for decades and written books about his experiences, says that abusers almost never change their abusive behavior (with intensive therapy, only about 3% of abusers change; without therapy, it's close to 0%) because abuse is, first and foremost, about attitude. An abuser feels justified in control. An abuser believes it is natural, right, and proper to control the victim.

If you look at relationship questions, you will see that lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of people truly, sincerely believe that it is okay to control your partner. As an example, look at any of the zillions of questions about "my girlfriend talks to other guys and that makes me feel bad, what should I do?" and you'll see many, many people say "tell her to stop talking to other guys! If she really cared about you, she would stop! If she loved you, she would not want you to feel bad, she would stop talking to other guys!"

This is a common social idea. Of course, abuse counselors and therapists will all tell you that trying to isolate someone else and control who they can and can not talk to is the #1 sign of abuse, yet people do it because they feel that doing it is their right. They truly believe "she is doing something wrong by making me feel this way; I have the right to stop her from hurting me by making her cut off contact with other guys." They believe not that they are being abusive, but that they are reacting to something their partner is doing that hurts them.

They do not realize that their partner talking to other guys is not what's hurting them; it's their own insecurity that causes the pain. They externalize responsibility for their own emotions: "She is hurting me by talking to other guys! I have the right to stop her from hurting me!" instead of "I feel insecure when she talks to other guys; my insecurity is hurting me."

I have found, when I've talked to abuse survivors and to people who do counseling for abusers, that it is absolutely common for abusers to accuse their victims of being abusers. So when you have two people both pointing their finger at each other and saying "they are abusive," how can you tell what is going on?

Look at which direction control goes in. Abuse is always, always about power and control.

The person who is trying to control their partner is the abuser.

So if you have two people, and one says "That person is abusing me by talking to other guys even though they know that talking to other guys hurts me, and they won't stop talking to other guys" and the other person says "That person is abusing me by trying to force me to stop talking to other guys," the abuser is the first one. They both feel hurt, neither one feels like an abuser, but the abuser is the first one. Abuse is about power and control.