We all have a limited amount of time in a day to prepare for our finance exams. Wouldn’t it be great if we all knew how to study effectively for exams in a short time?
What if I told you that having more breaks in your study sessions can increase your productivity and study effectiveness? Here’s how you can learn to study smarter not harder.
Read on to find out more!
Let’s imagine this: Two exam candidates of equal skill, Alice and Bob, planned to have 10 hours allocated for studying in a particular day, but with different approaches:
Guess who had a better quality study session?
Alice, knowing that she’s up for a long day ahead, started the first 3 hours at 80% of her capacity to pace herself.
She gets tired after lunch, averaging 60% her capacity from 12pm-4pm, before dragging herself over the last 3 hours at 40% of her capacity.
At the end of the day, her effective study hours are:
(3 hours x 80%) + (4 hours x 60%) + (3 hours x 40%) = 6 hours
Bob took 2 hours off studying throughout the day – 5 sessions of 15 minute breaks and longer 45 minute lunch break.
In that 8 hours of studying, he averaged 80% capacity since a break is never too far away, which gives him the opportunity to recharge for the next study sprint.
His effective study hours are:
8 hours x 80% = 6.4 hours
This is 24 minutes more than Alice, and he did it in less time, with way more fun, and less chance of long-term burnout. A 2011 Universiy of Illinois research has proven that taking short, disciplined breaks from tasks at hand helps improve long term focus.
What’s the lesson here?
At some point in our studying life, we know how it felt like to be Alice – slogging the whole day without feeling like we got much studying done (or absorbed).
Doing “other stuff” than studying often invokes feeling guilty, stressed and unproductive, which is counterintuitive once you’ve seen the results above!
Just like anything, the law of diminishing returns applies to studying too. Your concentration and focus takes a nosedive if you’re sat there too long without the opportunity to renew that energy.
It’s not just about quantity, quality matters too – it’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk that determines the value we generate. This is possibly why there’s such a huge variance of study hours needed to pass finance exams, the definitions are probably not the same!
We know that finance exams are tough, we’ve been through some of it ourselves. That’s why it’s crucial to work the way Bob does (be effective!), as you’ll get more done, in less time, at a higher level of quality, more sustainably.
What’s your study routine and schedule like? How do you you think your productivity varies across the study session? Share your experience with us in the comments below!
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