Too Busy to Not Change: How Oscar reclaimed his time

The Pressure: “This is impossible.”

Oscar had reached a breaking point. Caught between the high expectations of his leadership role and the demands of graduate school, he was losing hope.

“So I thought to myself, there’s just absolutely no way. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s the sheer volume of the work that’s now expected. I just thought, this is impossible.”

“I can’t do this. And maybe you just can’t overcome the barriers to learn.”

The reality? He was absorbing content inefficiently. Flashcards and spaced repetition weren’t enough.

“There was really no way to try to capture everything. I just could not get enough cards memorized in my head and be able to at least exist. It was impossible.”

Discovering iCanStudy: “I was already a sinking ship.”

While trying to improve his flashcard retention, Oscar stumbled on a YouTube video by Dr. Justin Sung.

“The first splash I got of Justin was on a YouTube video. I was looking for a way to improve my recall with Anki.”

He was skeptical at first—another influencer, another “fix.”

“I want to say influencer who is going to sort of persuade me that they have, you know, this secret bullet. I don’t think there’s any more bullets left, right?”

But this time felt different.

“He actually had discretionary time… He has other hobbies… he has people that are important to him… and not only was he able to master that, but he was also able to show retention levels.”

“I thought, I’ll give it a try. I mean, what can I lose, right? I’m already sinking ship.”

Early Realizations: “What ends up happening is… it works.”

Very quickly, Oscar’s approach to learning was challenged.

“What I realized is my efficiency of studying… I was doing no good trying to memorize facts when those facts, I had really not connected with each other.”

The core shift wasn’t just about technique—it was about mindset.

“I had to deconstruct… the way in which I was learning and try to say, OK, why am I learning it this way?”

“I’m memorizing a lot of facts that have nothing to do with their importance.”

“The undoing process has actually been one of the most helpful things I did in the beginning.”

Instead of stacking facts, he started building relationships between concepts.

“Learning to unlearn the things that I thought were absolutely ground truth… that undoing of learning actually freed me.”

Tangible Wins: “I was able to get through a technical book on two flights.”

Oscar began applying the techniques immediately to his high-stakes professional and academic work.

“So I feel like now my confidence has grown in that I think there’s more frontiers that I could probably master other than the ones that I’m already doing.”

“I was able to get through a technical book and pretty much master all the main content. Of course, I’m not implementing anything on the plane. But those hours are hard to get back if you waste them.”

More than just absorbing material, he began organizing and applying it with clarity.

“These skills that the program has taught allow me to apply that directly to every meeting I attend, to every strategic planning event that I go to, any of the deliverables… I can understand how they influence the rest of the company.”

He also learned how to protect his time and health.

“If you want more time, you need to spend time in learning more efficiently.”

“Actually, I was too busy to join the program, right? But I was too busy not to join the program. That’s how I feel now.”

Mindset Shift: “I thought my time was beginning to wane… now I think the opposite.”

Oscar no longer believes he is declining with age. In fact, he believes the opposite.

“It’s almost certain that I thought my time—I’m beginning to wane, my edge is starting to decline.”

“Now I feel like there are new frontiers that I haven’t even begun to tackle yet… because now I have tools.”

His relationship with learning has been permanently altered.

“Even at my age, it’s possible to start fresh and to have new horizons.”

The Value: “Every single hour you spend is extremely valuable.”

Oscar knows the real-world cost of education. His graduate courses cost thousands per paper.

“I’m currently at a major university here… three credit hours is over $3,000. So if you just multiply that… that’s more than $30,000.”

And he’s clear on the ROI of iCanStudy.

“What you’re doing with the iCanStudy program is you’re actually learning for a lifetime.”

“A lot of what you studied will be irrelevant in two to five years… But this process is allowing you to build a foundation that you can continue to build out for the rest of your life.”

“So I’d say there’s nothing like it.”

Final Advice: “You can’t afford not to re-examine your assumptions.”

“If you say, I can’t undo the way I’m currently learning, I would say you can’t afford not to re-examine your assumptions. Because you could actually be wasting a lot of time.”

“Every program, you can imagine, you can start skeptically… But this actually works.”

“To have a way to look at learning and the process of learning so that you can learn anything now is so worth your investment.”