CPA Review Video Lectures: How to Save Yourself Tons of Time

In this video, I'm going to show you a five minute exercise that you do before you start a new lesson in your review course that helps you cut straight to the most tested parts of that lesson and in the same context that you're going to see it on exam day

Every review course has the ability to do this when you know how to do it

And this will save you countless hours over the course of your CPA study process

Now, before we get into the five minute exercise that I mentioned, it's important to point out what typically goes wrong with the video lecture process so that you can see how this is going to save you so much time

So I refer to this as death by a thousand video lectures or the video lecture hamster wheel

So when you start a new lesson, most people start by just pressing play on the video lecture

And this is dense technical information. So the first time you hear it, it doesn't really register with your brain because you're hearing new terms, new formulas

This is why it's so easy to zone out and lose focus and start thinking about something else

Check Facebook really fast. The other factor is you might not understand a key piece or a segment

So you rewatch it. So once you add all these things up and you've had to rewatch the video several times, it's very easy for what was just a 20 minute video lecture to turn into an hour and a half, two hours, maybe even three hours before you finish the video and feel like you paid attention and understood what was being taught in the video

Another huge key distinction that's important to realize is that even once you've done that, then you move on to try some of the practice questions or the practice simulations

And most of the time you will realize that watching the video in its entirety still doesn't give you the ability to just answer all the practice questions from that lesson

So then what happens with most people is they look through a few of the questions or the practice simulations and they get an idea of, you know, what they're seeing

So they'll think, OK, I still don't know how to do that and I still don't know how to do that

So I'm going to go watch the video just one more time. So that brings us to the magic five minute exercise that's going to save you countless hours

Basically, what the strategy is, is to skip that whole first part that I just talked about

Instead of jumping straight into the video lecture without any context, you spend five to 10 minutes clicking through the practice questions and looking through the practice simulations for that lesson

And just making a mental note of the patterns you're seeing, the same key things that you keep seeing from the questions

So what you're trying to do with this is you're looking through the questions and the practice sims first for that lesson to identify patterns, see what the recurring themes in the questions are

So let's say the lessons about treasury stock and you keep seeing questions on the par value method or you keep seeing questions on the cost method

So you would obviously make a mental note. OK, I apparently need to know what those two things are and how they affect the different stock accounts

So then if you go and watch the video lecture, it will make so much more sense the first time

So that is the little five minute strategy. You look through the practice questions first to gather context about what you really need to learn from that lesson

Now, the next level of this is for a lot of lessons, you can skip the video lecture completely by doing just a little bit more on the front end with this questions first strategy

And that's what we cover in our strategic CPA study workshops, which are free that you can sign up for

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And on those webinars, we just spend more time walking through, fleshing out the strategy so you can actually see how it works

So to recap, before you jump into a video lecture on a new lesson, take five to 10 minutes to set the stage by doing this exercise where you quickly look through the practice questions and the practice simulations

Just make a mental note, maybe even some actual notes on the key things, formulas that keep getting mentioned, what the main three to four things are that you keep seeing questions about

And then the video will make much more sense. And also, if you want to see this strategy explained in detail, along with the other six key ingredients to every winning CPA study process, then sign up for one of our free strategic CPA study workshops where we will walk you through the six key things that every successful study process will have some version of

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So when you have a highly effective study process that you know is working, you have a strategic way of quickly moving through new lessons and a strategic way of constantly improving on all the previous lessons you've been through

You can obviously spend less time sitting in front of your review course each day

The study process isn't nearly as stressful. In fact, the process becomes motivating instead of frustrating and overwhelming

There are no moral victories on the CPA exams. Even if you spend a thousand hours studying for your exam, if you don't get a passing score, your mom might give you an A for effort, but you're still going to have to retake the exam

If you're going to invest the time and effort to take these exams at all, you need to know that your daily study process is effective

So I think we can agree that if what you're doing when you sit down to study isn't effective, then it doesn't really matter how much you study

I've talked to dozens and dozens of CPA candidates that have been working on the CPA exams for years, in some cases five years plus, in a few cases close to 10 years

And these are people that are smart, they're dedicated, they're just missing a few key pieces to their actual study process

But once we help them put those pieces together, make these small tweaks that would just make the difference, those same people that struggled for years and years, all of a sudden start passing their sections

And over the next few months, they are finally done with their CPA exams