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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
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Every review course has the ability to do this when you know how to do it
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And this will save you countless hours over the course of your CPA study process
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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
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So I refer to this as death by a thousand video lectures or the video lecture hamster wheel
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So when you start a new lesson, most people start by just pressing play on the video lecture
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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
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This is why it's so easy to zone out and lose focus and start thinking about something else
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Check Facebook really fast. The other factor is you might not understand a key piece or a segment, so you rewatch it
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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
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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
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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
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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
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So they'll think, OK, I still don't know how to do that and I still don't know how to do that
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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
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Basically, what the strategy is, is to skip that whole first part that I just talked about
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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
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And just making a mental note of the patterns you're seeing, the same key things that you keep seeing from the questions
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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
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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
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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
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So then if you go and watch the video lecture, it will make so much more sense the first time
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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
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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
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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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There should be a link below this video or maybe button is below the video
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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
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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
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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
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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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There should be a link down in the description or a button below the video
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So if you found this video helpful, please take a second to like the video, subscribe to the channel, click the notification bell so that you're notified whenever we publish new videos
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So thanks for watching and we will see you on the next video
