Thread: Overwhelmed!!
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Old Oct 13, 2008, 09:22 PM
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splitimage splitimage is offline
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It's really easy to feel overwhelmed when it seems like everything is coming due at once. What worked for me, in getting through school, both undergrad and grad, and my accountancy exams was seriously planning and then sticking to the plan.

Make a big list of everything you have to do, with due dates noted. You may find it helpful to do it on a calendar so that you'll have a visual. Then figure out how much time you realistically have to study. Allow time for eating, sleeeping, and exercise, because it's really important to stay healthy.

Then figure out how to break each task down into smaller components. For example with an essay, there might be research, writing the outline, writing the essay, proofreading / pollishing.

Do this with each task so you have a mini flow chart for each major task. Thsi may seem like a big deal, but having things broken down into smaller bits actually makes things more manageable. Then decide that how much time you can spend on each task, within your total available time, so that you can cover as much as possible. You can focus on areas that need more work and assign them more time, or conversely you may decide that there's simply no way you'll be able to learn X by the time of the exam unless you focus exclusively on it, which is not a good use of your time. So ignore X completely and focus on reviewing everything else in the subject thoroughly.

I did this pretty ruthlessly when I was studying for my accountancy exams because I was working full time at the time, so I only had a finite number of hours that I could devote to studying, so I grouped studying into subjects that I knew really well, that needed only minor practice and revies, topics I didn't know well that needed a lot of study, and topics that I was simply unlikely to learn well. I focused mainly on the middle group since they offered the greatest return for the effort and reviewed my good topics in between hard topics, both as a break and to make sure I'd get as many possible points on the easy stuff as possible.

It takes some time to set up the plan and some effort to stick with it, but it is a really efficient way of working.

Good luck.

--splitimage
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Thanks for this!
multipixie9