This is your dynamic, effective yet feasible guide to making a sustainable roap-map for studying across the next 3 months. Let’s see what it says.
- Self Awareness: The first step is to be ‘true’ to yourself, talk to yourself and be ‘aware’ of yourself. Ask yourself, “Am I really willing to do this ?? Does it actually align with what I want to do for a long period of my life ?” Then ask, “Have I been doing justice to my study ? Have I been giving it the worth and time that it deserves ? Have I been sincere enough ?”
Reflect within and reconsider.
- Priorities: Once you have firmly been true to yourself and decided that you really want to prepare and qualify as a Chartered Accountant, you start to prioritize. You need to foresee and plan, so you tell yourself the affirmations, “I will be disciplined, sincere and honest with my preparation. I need to make studying my priority for the next three months. Friends, social media, sources of entertainment and traveling are secondary to me.”
- Reality Check on Paper: A reality check means actually bringing down on paper the number of days you have until your examination, the number of hours you need to study each day, the subjects that need maximum and immediate attention and in turn, how “disciplined” you need to be.
- Long term time-table & Daily To-Do Lists: You need to have a long-term time table that entails the time each subject needs individually, how many days you’ll assign to the first round of study, to each round of revisions, test papers for each subject individually. It is a road-map for the next 3 months
Along with this, you need to plan the concepts/topics/pages for each day. You could make these daily To-Do lists every day, or plan them together for a week. They help you make sure that you’re not lagging behind on your long-term time table.
- Mental Conditioning: Mentally conditioning yourself by using the age-old yet equally relevant psychological techniques of “Positive Reinforcement and Negative Reinforcement” makes you complete targets by use of rewards and Reward yourself IF you complete the target for the day. The reward could be anything like an hour for watching your favourite series, going out to your favourite restaurant, or your video game. This is called ‘Positive Reinforcement.’
Contrary to this, you punish yourself IF you fail to complete the target for the day. The punishment could be something like an extra hour of studying, no social media for the day, not stepping out of home. This is called negative reinforcement.
- 2 subjects each day: Studying only 1 subject a day puts you at the risk of losing motivation to study quite quickly. So you pick up 2 subjects together, one of them is the primary subject, the other one becomes secondary.
- Splitting & Slotting, NO long sitting hours: Long sittings are not advisable. If you are someone with a very short attention span:
- take 5 minutes break after every 25 minutes of study
- take 10 minutes break after every 40 minutes of study
- and a break of half an hour after 2 hours of study.
- Explore the Pomodoro technique or the Eat that Frog theory
Split your day into slots. A slot of study divided by a slot for a nap. This is the basic funda/formula.
- Include a good sleep time for long lasting consistency: Do not fall into the trap. You need optimum sleep to be able to study continuously for 3 months at a stretch. Your brain cells need sleep to be able to grasp proper information throughout the day. Take a minimum sleep of 7 hours, at least. You must sleep well during the day IF you are someone who studies during night time as distractions are least.
- Social Media in Control, NO social media during first hour of the Day:
It can be understood that it is hard to get over distractions like social media, movies, or OTT series, and even your small getaways to a restaurant or mall for entertainment. Spare these for the time after your daily target of studying is achieved. No one is asking you to stop using social media or stop watching your favorite series online. All that is needed is to shift these sources of entertainment for the end.
I wish success for all my dear students. All the very best.…!