Useful tools that actually helped me score higher.
Strategy gets you part of the way. These are the unconventional methods that changed my results more than any practice set. I'll keep adding to this page as I go, so check back for more.
What gets measured gets managed.
This is a simple sheet where you log your day in 30-minute blocks: what you did, the category it falls under, a focus rating from 1 to 5, and a quick note. It sounds tedious. It was the single thing that changed how I studied.
The point isn't to feel guilty about your time. It's to replace your guess about where your hours go with the actual data, so you can make one or two changes that compound over a whole prep cycle.
Today's summary (auto-calculated)
The truth about your time
At the end of a day or week, paste your log into an AI assistant and ask it to break down where your hours actually went. The gap between where I thought my time was going and where it really went was a wake-up call.
Your real peak hours
The focus column quietly reveals when your mind is genuinely sharp, not when you assume it is. Once you can see it, you can protect those hours for the hardest material instead of burning them on admin.
A test-day edge
If your sharpest hours don't line up with your DAT appointment time, shift your sleep and wake schedule in the weeks beforehand so you peak exactly when it counts. Most people never think to train their circadian rhythm for the test.
Download the template, open it as a Google Sheet, and run a single day. There's a lot more to get out of it. If you want the deeper playbook, get in touch.
When you know you can, but on the day you can't.
I've always been able to perform in practice and then freeze when it counts. On my first DAT, I knew the material cold, but the moment the test started my mind locked up. Thoughts stopped flowing. I was stuck in my own head.
I knew that feeling well. It used to follow me onto the soccer field, where I carried a heavy case of imposter syndrome: I'd started years after everyone else, nobody believed I belonged, and eventually I stopped believing it myself.
I didn't get the score I knew I was capable of that first time. I couldn't face going home, so I walked around downtown Vancouver for hours, full of shame and anger that the same feeling had chased me from the pitch all the way to the testing centre. That night I hit a wall, and out of it came a quiet vow: I would find an answer, whatever it took.
A few days later I stumbled onto a book called Letting Go. The idea is simple, and it undid years of self-sabotage.
Instead of fighting or burying an emotion, you let yourself fully feel it, and then you release it. I used it every single day while I studied for my second attempt, and studying stopped feeling like a fight. There was no resistance to push through. The verified scores on the main page are what came out the other side.
One exercise I leaned on hardest: I made a mock score report showing a perfect result, set it as my desktop wallpaper, and each day I'd look at it and ask myself, honestly, whether I believed I could walk in and earn it. Whatever doubt surfaced, I let go of. I wasn't perfect at it. There was still some doubt on my last day. But even done halfway, it worked.
One idea kept me going through the hard days: there is a finite amount of any feeling. Once you have genuinely let one go, it is gone for good. And if it resurfaces, that is not failure, it just means there was more of it left in the tank to release.
Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender
The full philosophy behind releasing emotion instead of suppressing or acting on it.
The Sedona Method
A practical, repeatable system for the same releasing technique, with exercises you can drill.
A note: I share this because it genuinely changed my results. It's performance and mindset coaching drawn from my own experience, not therapy or medical advice. If you're going through something heavier than test nerves, please talk to a doctor or a mental-health professional. Buy the books from the authors or your library; I don't host or hand out copied material.
Want these built around you?
The time audit and the test-day work are part of how I coach. If that's the kind of edge you're after, start with a free 15-minute intro call.
Apply for a free intro call →