2 Steps to Bulletproof Retention

So it is hard enough to find the time and the discipline to get yourself to sit down and study each day for weeks on end to prepare for your next CPA exam

But what happens to most people is they get to their final review and they feel like they've forgotten everything and that they're essentially trying to relearn everything in a week or two

In this video, I will show you two simple strategies so that you are continually improving your retention and understanding of all topics as the weeks go

by so that by the time you get to test day, you are fully confident and fully prepared

So, in my opinion, there is a huge issue with the normal way of studying, meaning you go into

your review course, you move through each lesson one by one in a linear fashion, and of course

you're spending a bunch of time up front trying to master the concepts in each lesson

And, you know, it's logical to think like that. the big problem is with this retention component

So you go through whatever your study timeline is, six weeks, eight weeks, maybe even more

So by the time you get to your final review, you are whatever it is

You're six weeks removed, four weeks removed from a big portion of the material

even two weeks removed from a big portion of the material. All this time and energy that you put in learning all these topics, but you never looked back at them until your final review

and trying to relearn everything over a week or two, again, this is what I would say 90% of CPA candidates

This is their general approach to studying. And of course, it results in the 50% fail rates that you hear about

So the idea here is simple. You want to dedicate a portion of your day to re ongoing re So you are constantly going back and re all the topics that you have previously studied so that as time goes on your retention and understanding of all the topics is continually improving

Now, just me saying that, you're probably thinking that is so obvious

Like, why isn't that part of how a review course works? But then the next question that you'll probably have is, okay, well, actually, it's hard enough for me to find the time

and motivation to just get through the new lesson each day. So how would I possibly go back and re-review everything that I've previously studied

That would take forever. Well, there is actually a very simple way of doing it

There's actually two very simple ways of doing it. And when you do both, it's incredibly effective

So if you saw one of our previous videos about finding the time to study and what we teach

our clients is how to have this two-hour main study session in the morning

each day. Part of that two hours, in fact, it's the last 30 minutes, there is a specific exercise

that we have you do, and it's an extremely high leverage way of re-reviewing all the topics

you've previously been through on a daily basis. The other thing or things that it does for you

I refer to this as the it solves a lot of problems in advance strategy because this 30-minute

exercise done daily, it solves a lot of test day problems way in advance

This will solve your time management issues. This will solve exam anxiety

And this will unlock the number one test day strategy for the simulations

Again, we explain this in detail on one of our free strategic CPA studying workshops

So there should be a button in the description or link in the description that you can

click on to register for one of those trainings We explain this strategy and the other five strategies in detail on those trainings Attending one of those one workshops will save you months and months of time and frustration

and make your life much easier. So I would highly recommend you take the time to attend one of those free trainings

All right. So that is the first way of building re-review into your daily study process

The second way, I also referred to this in the video on finding the time to study

but it is using study supplements on your phone throughout the rest of your day

For example, with our review notes and our audio notes, they are concise enough, yet detailed

enough to be incredibly helpful because they're based on thousands of exam questions by topic

which goes right along with our overall strategy of studying to pass, constantly practicing

what you're actually going to be doing on test day. Anyways, our review notes and audio notes are concise enough that in two to three days of doing the mini sessions idea, which again, if you haven't seen that other video, it's basically replacing social media, time wasting time on your phone with reading review notes, taking quizzes, listening to audio notes whenever you're in your car, just constantly having these little mini study sessions in the nooks and crannies of your day

When you do that diligently and make it a habit, you can get through our review notes for whatever section you're studying for in two to three days of doing that, five to ten minutes at a time

And same thing with the audio notes. If you listen to the audio notes about an hour or a day, you will get through the audio notes from start to finish in two to four days

So the idea there is simply that every two to three days, you are just hitting the key points from all topics from the entire section over and over and over every two to four days

two to three days, you are just hitting the key points from all topics from the entire section

over and over and over every two to three days Now I think once I explained that you would have to agree that that makes a lot of sense Now I not saying that you need to use our study supplements We have made them the most simple easiest to understand study supplements available anywhere

and they all work nicely right inside of our app. But if you want to use the app that came with your review course, you know, whatever you want

to do. But the general idea is while you're going through this excruciating process, you might as well

be constantly trying to improve your understanding and retention of the topics so that you give

yourself the best chance possible to pass on test day. So instead of just studying a topic once and

then leaving it behind for several weeks and then trying to relearn it during your final review

I think you'd agree it makes a lot more sense to touch on the key points of everything every two

to three days throughout the entire process as you're doing new lessons in your main study sessions

and everything just starts to come together much, much easier, much more effectively

So to recap, you want to make constant re-review part of your daily study process

so that you are constantly improving, keeping things fresh in your mind

Also, I mentioned on that previous video, there are numerous studies about retrieval learning

It's proven to be much more effective to touch on things that you're trying to learn

multiple times a day in smaller chunks than one long study session done once a day is

And again, to go deeper and get the full explanation on our 30 minutes a day, it solves a lot

of problems in advance strategy. That is just one of the strategies you'll learn on our free

strategic CPA studying workshops that you can sign up for. There should be a link in the

description below the video or the button below the video. There should be somewhere you can click

to sign up for one of those they are that valuable they are that helpful