40 · Three Hundred Papers

Only one thing changed: I stopped visualising, stopped dreaming, and took radical action. At some point I was so sick of living in my head that I chose sheer volume of execution. I was drilling five to seven past papers a day — not just solving them but iterating on the ideal answer — for two full months. For each subject I had fifteen past papers done in physics and nearly double that for every module in maths. That's literally 30 × 7 + 15 × 6 — around three hundred past papers in two months. And what a surprise: I got better at maths, further maths and physics.

This will go down in history. Ten past papers a day is three hundred in under a month — and counting the cumulative daily revision and the memorisation of every question, it's effectively more than three thousand papers. Each exam was spaced three to five days apart, and during those days I ran flashcard revision every hour and ten papers of that subject a day — so each subject got something like a hundred key-note revisions and thirty to fifty paper revisions before its exam. That unfathomable, tolerated volume is what made it happen.

The right cadence: five or six papers untimed first — just writing it out and studying the material from there — then start timing. You time it later; first get the marking scheme and the model answer into you. For anything you have no clue about, visit the notes, blurt them out, then come back.

Officially finished the entire maths and further maths textbook content for Edexcel. From now on, before the day starts: one hour every morning reading through all the content and revision notes on PMT — going through all thirteen papers' content still takes no less than an hour even when you know it. Morning workout, morning revision, day started by eight. From there it's timed past papers, then fixing every mistake.

With twelve hours left before Paper 1, there's anxiety about doing more papers versus the thirteen that are still to come. The right choice: go over the ten papers already done, re-work the questions where marks were lost, the hardest questions, and hunt for bottlenecks. Revise all seven papers before the exam — resist, with everything, the temptation to get complacent. There was no reason to get complacent in the first place: there were twenty more papers on MadAsMaths, and because one stranger said five papers per module was enough, you chose to trust that blindly?

Remember the goal is not merely full marks — it's transcending that. You're a HFT trader: the goal is full marks in a quarter of the time, just like the TMUA. But that comes at the end. First: accuracy, method, marking-scheme fluency. Then speed.

You need to set small goals, get small wins in short periods, then ramp. You lose the sense of urgency inside an undifferentiated block of eighteen hours. Twenty minutes for one topic — a win. Some pushups. Thirty minutes for the next topic — a win. Ten minutes. That's how you stack the small wins.

Wow — it's funny how I'm able to find joy under insurmountable pressure. Number theory is so cool. I didn't realise how profound this was when I learned it in middle school.

The strategy for the final stretch: PMT, examiner reports, and the textbook. That's all you need. If you fuck this up there's no excuse — it's only a lack of work and pressure tolerance. Volume matters so much right now. Start with one or two done properly a day, then scale to ten or fifteen. Do them with precise iteration: what is the perfect answer that loses zero marks?