A lot has changed about how I will be studying in our short three weeks together and figured it might be a good idea to summarize some of those changes. I hope that this will give you some insight into what hasn’t worked for me and what I’m currently doing. My old study schedule looked like the following:
- Read the chapter
- Do the reading assignment (usually a section of an IRS publication)
- Go back through the chapter and re-read all of the additional chapter notes
- Re-read and rework the examples in the chapter
My revised study session looks like the following:
- Read a couple sections of the chapter
- Read the related IRS tax publication (highlight anything interesting, or that seems to difficult but important to remember)
- Repeat these two until completed
- Go back through the chapter and reread all of the additional chapter notes
- Re-read and rework the examples in the chapter
- Go through and answer the review questions offline
- Move to the next chapter
As you can see, my list has gotten a bit longer but I feel like it’s starting to better fit my study style. Numbers 1 and 2 allow me to not run into the issue discussed in my last post. I no longer sit down and just read all the publications in one go. Number 5 is related to this post where I talked about wanting to complete chapters 2 and 3 before taking the online test. I am going to experiment with completing the review questions offline initially and then going back and completing the online test and seeing the correct answers every two chapters. I am hoping this will create a staggered effect where I am constantly seeing older material which I hope will help me to retain all of the information. I’ll really be putting my new study method to the test this weekend and am hoping that it will improve my productivity.