Students suffering from test anxiety often make things worse by misunderstanding the nature of successful preparation work.

They think: “my goal is to have new knowledge and new techniques.”

But that’s wrong. The right goal is to have new habits.

Under pressure, all people follow their habits.  So if you don’t have new, well-established, constructive and functional habits by Test Day, you’ll just automatically revert to what you did before.

And of course, when you do what you used to do, you’ll get the score you used to get.

The alternative is to painstakingly train new and better habits in the weeks (months?) leading up to Test Day. Then, under pressure, you’ll thrive.

(Also check out my book, specifically Chapter 9, Stress.)