How to utilise the Last 50 Days before CA Exams

CA Exams are hard and you know what is even harder? Keeping yourself motivated after failure and studying the sa,e

We are having roughly one and a half months for the upcoming attempt and the tensions are surging high. So, I thought it'll be helpful for you all if I write a blog on the subject “How to utilise the Last 50 Days before CA Exams | CA Exams”.

Coming to the point, we all remain more frightened rather than excited regarding these CA exams, which is understandable given the depth and vastness of the syllabus it carries. But, if properly planned and executed, this is not that difficult task as it is assumed to be.

Recall a very famous quote, "If you can dream it, you can do it". So, you try to visualize your success on a daily basis, try to feel like a qualified person from your inner self. If you can convince yourself, then it is pretty easy to convince the rest of the world. Remember what you visualize, you attract that. Your mindset should be very clear to focus on the area that is going to take you closer to your goals. You have to forego things of lower nature to achieve something of a higher nature.

I have a few points to share with you which may help you during your preparations tremendously which are as follows:

Planning:

It is very rightly said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Even though we are in this phase currently where we don’t have much time, but still there should be a clarity of thoughts regarding what you need to do and when. If you are still unsure about your daily tasks, take out some time and plan the next 50 days, so as to ensure there isn’t anything left undone. You need to be on the track to crack this. Understand that "all-planning" and "no-execution" is futile, will not lead you anywhere. Planning makes you battle ready so that you don't have to face unwanted shockers in those ultimate 3 hours.

From study-room to revisions, you pretty much have to each and everything for your Final Examination. If you're finding it difficult to study at home because of noise and you're not able to concentrate because if so many distractions, then you might want to check out the Library for All Students in Faridabad

Taking an assumption that you have already started your preparations and you want to revise all the subjects at least thrice (excluding the one which is to be done on a day prior to CA Exams). Now your focus should be to get those revisions done thoroughly well in time, but the big question arises, HOW?

Talking about the revision, I have seen students committing mistakes by just revising the syllabus and not systematically revising it. Now, What do I mean by revising the syllabus systematically?

The Forgetting Curve

As per research called as "forgetting curve", which says whatever we learn, we tend to forget 80% of that, if we don't revise that in 24 hours, 80%, that's huge. Have you ever been in a situation where you have gone through a chapter or a topic and while trying to recall that after a month or so, you struggled badly? Well that's because of this forgetting curve only. People ignore this as they are not very aware of any such thing. So, to overcome this, you not only need to revise, but revise systematically, and by systematically I mean maintaining a pattern so that you revise a topic after certain intervals so that it gets stored in your subconscious mind and you will never tend to forget that.

Talking about the revision, I have seen students committing mistakes by just revising the syllabus and not systematically revising it. What do I mean by systematically revising the syllabus? As per research called as "forgetting curve", which says whatever we learn, we tend to forget 80% of that, if we don't revise that in 24 hours, 80%, that's huge. Have you ever been in a situation where you have gone through a chapter or a topic and while trying to recall that after a month or so, you struggled badly, well that's because of this forgetting curve only?

People ignore this as they are not very aware of any such thing. So, to overcome this, you not only need to revise, but revise systematically, and by systematically I mean maintaining a pattern so that you revise a topic after certain intervals so that it gets stored in your subconscious mind and you will never tend to forget that.

How actually to revise systematically?

THE 3-7-30 RULE

There is a technique which I have named as 3-7-30 rule (not developed by me). As per this rule, whatever you have studied today shall be revised for the first time within 3 days, for the second time within 7 days and for the third time within 30 days. It is not very possible to remember the dates of topics you studied manually. So, for that purpose, you need to maintain an excel file. Prepare an excel sheet, in this put dates in Column A and Revision frequency in the corresponding rows. For your ease and time saving, I am sharing the file with you, you can download it.

Click here to download: http://bit.ly/2m6Wc4T

Take a print out of this page, put manual entries in this on a daily basis. Let's suppose you have studied Capital Gains chapter on 10th Sep, put date in Column A, put study date as 10/09/2019 in Column B, particulars as Capital Gains (mention the part which you gone through) in Column C, the page reference of the material you are studying from in Column D (so that you don't need to find the topic in the book again and again), put 1st revision date as 13/09/2019, 2nd revision date as 17/09/2019 and 3rd revision date as 10/10/2019 in Column E, F & G respectively. The final revision is the day before the CA Exams; you can leave it blank as of now or put a date just before the CA Exams date.

DAILY 5 DIARY

Let me tell you one important thing that you have to prepare this schedule for every subject separately. Further, to accumulate everything that you have to do on a given particular date, you need to carry a diary as well, I used to call this as 'Daily 5 diary'.

I used to put at least 5 tasks in that diary for a single day, the tasks in that diary were entered from the schedule mentioned above only, e.g. on 17/09/2019, you will be revising the topic done on 10/09/2019 for the second time plus revising the topic done on 14/09/2019 for the first time, along with 3 other tasks as well, so you need to enter these 5 tasks in the diary for date 17/09/2019, and please ensure that you complete these tasks on same day before going to bed. The tasks you have done, you should strike through that in the diary, so by the end of the day, all the 5 tasks should be struck-through.

What if I miss my target?

Due to any reason whatsoever, if you are not able to complete the allocated tasks for any date on that date itself, you need not carry over any task for the next day, just leave that behind and move forward, otherwise the very purpose will be defeated, you can manage undone tasks on some buffer day. I understand, Some of you are finding it very tedious to do all this planning, recording, revising stuff and you must be saying in your head: "We are already struggling with our syllabus and this guy is adding up to our difficulties", but let me tell you, if you are able to do this, this will provide you super command over the subject and tremendous amount of confidence for appearing in the CA Exams.

And who doesn't like to be confident in exams?

To get better results, we need to shift towards better strategies; the strategy which I mentioned above (the 3-7-30 rule) is scientifically proven. So, I will urge you to follow this, at least for 2 subjects in the beginning and if you feel like this is benefiting you, you can carry on this with other subjects as well.

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Some subject-specific ideas:

While you are in the revision mode, you have a lesser amount of time, so how to utilize that time in the best possible manner? Subjects like Advanced Management Accounting, Financial Reporting and Strategic Financial Management are fully practical with loads of questions to solve. And given the vastness of these subjects, it is practically impossible to solve each and every question 3 times. So, for revising any practical subject, you need to follow one basic strategy, which I'll try to explain in the following example:

HELPING YOU GET YOUR REVISION ON FLEEK

Let's suppose you are revising Pricing Decision chapter of Strategic Cost Management and Decision making for the first time, then first of all you need to go through all the concepts given in that chapter, and after that take up 60% questions given in the chapter (if there are 60 questions, you need to pick 36 out of those 60) and let me tell you; you don't need to solve all the questions using pen and paper, just go through the questions carefully, try to get the actual requirements and visualize the process of solution in your mind and then compare your solution (visualized in mind) with the actual solution there in book or notes, if your thought process was correct, congratulations, but if you cannot visualize it at all or the answer is incorrect, then you need to put a star mark on that question.

You got to invest a little more time for questions like these. I will be explaining the relevance of a star marked questions in the next paragraphs. For your personal satisfaction, you can solve 7-8 questions out of those 36 to comfort yourself with the formatting procedures.

Starred Questions that give you nightmares

If you're in CA Intermediate and struggling with accountancy subject, then here's a must-read article: How to Score Good Marks in Accounting Exam

Now, when you will be revising the Pricing Decision chapter for the second time, you again need to go through whole concepts first and afterwards go through remaining 40% questions (in above example, remaining 24 questions). You need to follow the same procedure for these 24 questions as mentioned above, put star mark over the questions which you find difficult or unusual. This time, you need to go through the star marked questions which were spotted during the first revision and be more careful about those, if you want to practice them, solve them on paper for best results. If you are feeling much confident about those star marked questions, you can remove star over those to ease out the things for third revision.

Now moving on to the third revision. While revising this chapter for the third time, you again need to go through concepts first and then you have to pick only the star marked questions which were spotted during the first and second revision. One thing you may have noticed that you need to go through full concepts every single time so that your base is strong enough to tackle every single question. This is the most realistic method to revise the practical subjects for at least 3 times prior to the CA Exams.

What About Theory Subjects?

Coming to theory subjects, the 3-7-30 rule is really a boon while revising theory subjects for the second or third time; you have to try to recall the concepts not simply re-read the concepts. If you are able to recall, which is highly probable, you will feel confident. Only one thing students miss out is practising theory questions, this is very normally seen that you are aware of the concepts, laws and sections, but you are not able to reproduce that on the paper in an effective manner. So, to overcome that solve at least one theory question on a daily basis and evaluate that. In this manner, your answer writing skills will enhance which is must for any given subject.

Just remember one thing, you should not regret anything after the exams like I could have done this, I could have done that. For every this & that, start now, give your best shot and rest everything is in the hands of almighty, he is watching everything and he will, of course, do them justice. All the very best, may you come out succeeding with flying colours. And I hope after getting so many insights, your search for How to utilise the Last 50 Days before CA Exams is finally over.

Many thanks for sparing time and going through this, if you have any query, you can leave your that in the comments section below

Diwakar Jha