Key Ingredient #1 to CPA Exam Success

So let's say that you really wanted to get good at basketball

Would you watch hours and hours of videos each day about how to play basketball better

Or would you actually go out and spend hours and hours actually practicing playing basketball

Now, the answer to that sounds very obvious and it is very obvious

And this is an idea that I refer to as the elusive obvious when it comes to setting up your study routine and your study process

Most people, without realizing it, they are spending about 80% of their time goofing around with the video lectures, highlighting chapters

They're doing stuff that's very low impact, very passive study methods that really don't translate to better scores on test day

Now, of course, video lectures and the text, they have their place

But as we discussed in other videos, you have to use them strategically

So on exam day, you need to be able to go in and answer the multiple choice questions and the simulations that you're going to get on the actual exam

You're not tested on how well you can watch a video lecture or how well you can highlight a chapter

So if you work backwards from that fact, that should dictate how you spend most of your actual study time

Again, as we've discussed in some of the other videos on our channel, the idea of death by a thousand video lectures or the video lecture hamster wheel

where it's very easy for a 20 minute video lecture to actually turn into something more like two to three hours to get to the point where you feel like you understood it

And even then you go to the practice questions or simulations for that lesson and you realize you still don't really have any idea how to actually solve practice questions or simulations

So, again, going back, this idea of the elusive obvious is simply the backdrop for our entire study strategy process

Everything that we do or that we teach you how to do is based on the fact that on exam day, you just need to be able to answer the questions that you're going to see

You don't need to have the same depth of understanding of every single topic like an accounting professor would

Your job on test day is to be able to answer the questions you're going to see

And so working backwards from that, if that is how you set up your approach to the study process, it is much easier and much more effective as it pertains to your ultimate goal of getting a passing score

So if you would like an in-depth walkthrough of our actual study strategies, then sign up for one of our free strategic CPA study workshops

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