Deep Work for Fellowship Exams

Make it yours. Copy this into your own Google Doc and add to it as you go. Your notes, your links, your tweaks.

Part 1: Mindset

Professional vs Amateur

The amateur works when inspired. The professional shows up regardless of motivation. Clock in, get it done, clock out. That’s what makes it sustainable.

Coherence Before Comprehensiveness

Get your arms around a topic first (the broad outline, the overall shape). Subsequent passes add detail and nuance.

Don’t get lost in isolated micro-facts. Details stick better when they have somewhere to live.

Three Learning Formats

Balance three formats, each with different strengths:

Format Efficiency Salience
Anki High (quizzes at optimal forgetting point) Low (repetitive, machine-driven)
Reading Moderate Moderate
Quizzing/Clinical Low (random timing, others’ schedule) High (social pressure, verbal, minimal cues)

Use all three. Don’t rely on just one.

Play Mode vs Exam Mode

Learning/teaching sessions: Ask questions freely, make mistakes openly, upward inflection okay, growth mindset.

Exam conditions: No questions to the examiner, confident tone, no uncertainty markers.

Label which mode you’re in. They require different headspaces.

Part 2: Time Architecture

The Weekend Block Method

Determine your weekly study hours. Block them in your calendar. Then:

The promise of that free afternoon keeps you disciplined in the morning.

Recommended: Cal Newport’s Core Ideas playlist. Focusing efficiently means more play time and less feeling consumed by study.

Daily Planning - Building Accurate Self-Knowledge

  1. Plan your schedule for the day
  2. Log what you actually do alongside it
  3. Tomorrow: design a more realistic schedule based on yesterday

Iterate toward accuracy. You need a plan, not a fantasy.

When You Fall Off Schedule

Don’t go back. Jump to where you should be now. The schedule keeps moving whether or not you do, so just rejoin it. This also trains better time estimation because you feel the cost of overruns immediately.

Immersion Before Exams

“Immerse yourself in a sea of dermatology information as you’re ramping up.” - Clay Cockerell

Like studying for the California Bar: total immersion in the weeks leading up. Podcasts on commute, flashcards in waiting rooms, reading before bed.

The Final Two Weeks

Don’t require yourself to cram a season’s crop in a week.

Instead:

This will be easier if you’ve actually done the work.

Post-Exam Recovery

Your brain won’t work for about a week after written exams. This is normal - knowledge feels scrambled, locked away.

Recovery protocol:

The promise of this break keeps you disciplined beforehand.

Caffeine Protocol

Before/during each exam: document your caffeine regimen and timing, note how it felt.

After each exam: write post-game notes, plan modifications for next time.

You think you’ll remember. You won’t.

Part 3: Learning Methods

Only Get It Wrong Once

“Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.”

When you miss something (in clinic, on a practice question, during quizzing), make an Anki card immediately. Better to discover you don’t know it now than in the exam.

Group Quizzing

Regular weekly sessions with 2-3 people. One hour. It’s okay if some of it is just chat. Consistency matters more than intensity.

Make it a standing commitment with expectations that everyone attends unless they have a good excuse. Not: “Are we doing it this week?”

Chapter Definition of Done

Before moving on from a topic, verify you’ve:

This prevents fake progress. Reading without producing something doesn’t count.

Document Everything

Write down:

This stuff isn’t in the books, and you’ll forget it if you don’t write it down.

Part 4: Tools & Resources

Anki - Setup

Get this right before launching into cards, or you’ll get overwhelmed and frustrated.

Essential:

Nice to have:

Allocate an hour or two per week to learning Anki itself. It’s a skill.

Anki - Card Quality

Bad card: “T stage for tumor-stage MF = ___”

Good card: The entire MF/Sézary staging system on one card:

Stage Key feature
Ia Patch/plaque <10% BSA
Ib Patch/plaque ≥10% BSA
IIa Node involvement
IIb Tumour
IIIa Erythroderma
IIIb Erythroderma + Sézary cells >5%
IVa1 Sézary syndrome
IVa2 Effaced node
IVb Visceral

A coherent relational framework you can picture, not isolated fill-in-the-blanks.

This seems to violate the “one fact per card” rule, but Anki distinguishes between notes and cards. A note stores all your information about a topic (fields, context, the full picture). Cards are generated from notes - they’re what you actually review. One note can spawn multiple cards. Your notes should have the full picture; the “minimum information” rule applies to what each card asks, not what your notes contain.

Isolated fragments don’t stick. Context is everything.

Read: SuperMemo’s 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge

Master Planning Document

A single source of truth (SSOT) containing:

Reduces scatter.

Video & Audio

Video:

Podcasts:

These are 12 months ahead of Australian conferences/journals on recent developments. Listening during commutes meant I didn’t need to read journal articles for “news” and could focus on other things at my desk.

Practical Tools

Productivity:

Work efficiency:

Closing

The exams will end. The relationships and habits you build during training won’t.