Ep 37: Stop Procrastinating: Start GAMSAT Now

Hey, it’s your girl Mare here. I am ready for another instalment of the Nurses Doing GAMSAT podcast. Super excited to be here today because I’m going to be talking about one of my favourite topics of all time.

So today’s episode is for you if you are sitting the March GAMSAT and you have not started studying yet. You must listen to this episode. This is going to rock your world. This is also for anyone who has found that procrastination sometimes gets in the way, or you feel like maybe you’re a little bit lazy, or you feel like you’re not motivated sometimes. Spoiler alert: motivation is never meant to last forever. It’s just a spark. You are never going to feel as motivated as you are when you first start a project. When you’re halfway through, it’s usually not as motivating.

So what we’re going to do today is find out why you’re feeling that way, and what we can do to make sure that you actually do the work you need to do to get the result you want.

Now, I want to start by introducing something we call the Crush the GAMSAT Triangle. This is a system you can use in any area of your life, but we have implemented it specifically for the GAMSAT so you can understand what it actually takes to get a good score.

Now imagine, if you’re watching this on video, a triangle with three sides. There are three sides to the Crush the GAMSAT Triangle. I’m going to run through each of the sides, and we’re going to figure out what might be going on for you if you’re not studying the way you should be studying, which, you know, might be a problem. So if you haven’t started yet and you’re sitting March 2026, this is your sign. This is your sign. We’ve got to get moving.

So let’s imagine this little triangle. On all three sides of the triangle are three different areas that help you improve or get what you need done. These three sides will help you build any skill. The first side of the triangle is what we call skillset.

Now, if you imagine a triangle and there are three little lines coming off it, there are three areas of your skillset that you need to build within the GAMSAT to get a high score. It’s pretty obvious what those are. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know it’s Section 1, Section 2 and Section 3.

Now, my problem is that everybody focuses just on skillset. If skillset alone was enough, then for most people, they’d already be in. But there are two other sides of the triangle that are just as important as skillset when we’re talking about study, and most people miss them.

The second side I want to talk about is something we call work ethic. This is how you get down and actually do the work. How you’re learning the skillset. If you imagine three little lines coming off that side of the triangle, there are three areas we can focus on here. Two of them most people focus on. One of them almost nobody I speak to is focusing on.

The first area is the number of hours. How many hours are you actually sitting down to study? If you’re telling me you’re studying 20 minutes a day and you’re sitting March 2026, we’re going to have a problem. There just aren’t enough hours to get through what you probably need to get through.

The second area is just as important as the first, and that’s the quality of your study. If you don’t have a plan and you’re studying 20 hours a week but constantly thinking, “What am I doing next?” and making it up as you go along, you’re not actually doing 20 quality hours. What’s the point of putting in 20 hours if half of them are spent faffing around, deciding what to do, and getting distracted?

So we need the number of hours, but we also need the quality of those hours to be high. We need to be engaging properly and actually learning the skills while we’re investing the time. We call this quality of hours, and that comes down to planning.

Now the third area, which almost no one tackles even though everyone actually loves it, is called recharge. Recharge is all about not burning out. If you’ve been studying for a while, and maybe you’re working full-time, or studying on the side, or juggling life, sport, social commitments, and all the things, because life doesn’t stop when we’re studying for the GAMSAT, recharge becomes the most important thing. And it’s usually the first thing that goes out the window.

Recharge is about what you’re doing outside your study time. If you’re studying 20 hours a week, what are you doing with the rest of your time that actually allows you to show up and do quality study when you sit down? What’s your eating like? Your sleep? How are you moving your body? How are you making sure you’re in a peak state and actually taking care of yourself?

Because the number of hours doesn’t matter if you don’t have a quality plan. And you can have all the hours in the world, but if you’re studying between 10 pm and midnight every night after working full-time, exhausted, with no self-care in place, what’s the point? They’re just rubbish hours. Work ethic is just as important as skillset.

Now, if you clicked on this episode because you’re feeling unmotivated, procrastinating, or maybe even self-sabotaging a bit, this last part of the triangle is the most important. We call it mindset. So the triangle is skillset, work ethic and mindset.

Within mindset, particularly for the GAMSAT, there are three core areas we focus on. The first is negative self-talk. The second is self-sabotage. The third is fear of failure.

For some people, even hearing those words makes an alarm go off in your head. You’re like, yep, that’s me. And for others, there might be a bit of denial. So let’s go through each one so you can understand what it is, how it shows up, and what we can do to coach ourselves out of it.

Let’s start with negative self-talk. This is the little voice in our head. We all have it. The question is, what is it saying to you?

I was on the phone with a gorgeous student the other day and she said, “I’ve sat the GAMSAT four times, and I actually did better the times I didn’t study compared to the times I studied really hard. So that means I shouldn’t study. No matter how much work I do, I’m not going to get better, so why try?”

Alarm bells. That is negative self-talk. The story she was telling herself wasn’t empowering. It wasn’t helping her build what she needed to build to achieve her dream of becoming a doctor.

She may have had evidence from the past that supported that belief, but if she didn’t find a new way through that story, it was always going to block her. She didn’t understand that work ethic isn’t just about hours. It’s about planning, quality, and strategy. Once we started working on that, the story in her head began to change.

I hear negative self-talk all the time. “I’m not smart enough.” “No one in my family has been to university.” “Who do I think I am?” These are just stories we’ve made up. And I always say, if you’re going to make up a story, at least make it a good one.

Just because no one in your family has gone to med school doesn’t mean you can’t. Why not you? You’ve done hard things before. And one way to challenge negative self-talk is to ask, whose story is this anyway? Most of these beliefs came from something someone else said to us at some point.

Beliefs can be changed by telling yourself a new story and finding evidence for it. You might say, “This is going to be hard, but I can do hard things,” and then write down ten hard things you’ve already done. I promise you, you have done hard things.

When I face challenges, I remind myself that I gave birth. My daughter took 36 hours to arrive. Not the highlight of my life. A lot of pain. And now I compare everything to that. If I can do that, I can do a test. Or when we were renovating and tradies didn’t show up, I reminded myself I could handle it. It’s all about your point of reference.

The key thing with negative self-talk is that what we say to ourselves repeatedly becomes our truth. You would never tell a child something awful every day and expect them to thrive. But we do it to ourselves all the time. The first step is noticing it.

Next is self-sabotage. We’ve all done it. The key is identifying your pattern. Is it going out for one drink and coming home at midnight? Is it cleaning the house instead of studying? Is it Netflix until 2 am? Once you see the pattern, you can interrupt it.

The third one, and the biggest one I see, is fear of failure. This often shows up as “I’m just doing this as a trial” or “I haven’t really studied.” That’s fear of failure protecting your ego. If you don’t try your hardest, then not getting the result doesn’t mean anything about you.

But what happens if you do try your hardest and it doesn’t work? For most people, the fear is, “I’m not good enough.” That’s the deepest fear there is.

One simple strategy to start working through fear of failure is to follow your plan and allow yourself to do it badly. Just don’t skip it. Doing the work, even imperfectly, builds trust in yourself. And when your self-trust grows, everything else lifts with it.

If you need help with this, raise the white flag. Reach out. Get support. Environment matters. Sometimes just changing your environment changes everything.

These three areas – skillset, work ethic and mindset – can make or break your sitting. And this triangle doesn’t just apply to the GAMSAT. It applies to any skill in life.

If someone you love is struggling with something, share the triangle with them. Ask where the blockage is. Because when the tide rises, all boats rise.

That’s all from me for now. Enjoy the rest of your week, and happy studies. Bye.