More on 80/20 applied to the CFA Exam

Well, pardon for the lack of updates recently but I've been studying for the CFA Level 2 exam in full force (only 3 months left till exam day.)  I'll share one bit of advice that I'm using this time around and wished I had done for Level 1 (even though I managed to pass fine without it, albeit spending more time.)

Previously, I had been spending hours on end reading the texts, both the official CFAI text and supplemental material from Schweser.  Then when I proceeded to work on problems, my mind was blank.  It was as if I had wasted so much time reading.  Turns out, it's true.  Many people I've spoken to who failed the exam despite putting in ridiculous hours did so because they spent too much time reading and not enough time doing problems.

So I'm proposing a radical change: Spend 20% of the time reading and 80% of the time doing problems!

The biggest bang for the buck in studying for this exam seems to come from doing problems.  You can read the text for hours and days but if you have no idea how to work out the problems, you're dead in the water come exam day.  However, you can't simply skip reading (and/or watching the videos) either and jump into the questions, hoping to learn entirely by doing.

Here's my new revised plan:

1) First, watch the Schweser videos each time I start a new Topic (i.e. Ethics, Derivatives, Equities, etc.)  TAKE NOTEs while I read whether or not I intend to go back to them.  It seems I remember ideas better with this approach.  I use the App called Evernote for this purpose which also better organizes my notes into searchable snippets that I can read on the computer or my smartphone.

2) Once I'm done with the videos for a particular topic, I spend about 4x the amount of time watching videos doing problems.  I don't care if I don't understand everything yet.  I'll do the problems and keep doing them to practice for exam day.  The problems that CFAI provides are important for understanding the style of questions on the exam, but they are quite limited in number.  I intend on doing all of them in addition to extra practice problems (Schweser and FinQuiz are great for the latter.)

3) I'll notice the types of questions and concepts that I frequently answer incorrectly while doing practice problems from #2.  In that case, I'll go back to the CFAI or Schweser texts to read up on the concepts.

Your thoughts?

4 Hour Chef: Tim Ferriss's Method for Raipd Learning.

With a New Year resolution of becoming a better cook, I picked up Tim Ferriss's latest book The 4 Hour Chef.  He has a general formula for learning any new skill in an efficient and structured way known as DiSSS.  Here's what it stands for:

D for Deconstruct

What are the basic building blocks involved with this skill?

S for Selection

What are the 20% of the blocks I should focus on for 80% of the results?  This is based on Pareto's Principle which is a central theme echoed in Tim's earlier book, The 4 Hour Work Week.

S for Sequencing

In what order should I learn the blocks I've selected?

S for Stakes

What are the stakes if I fail?  (i.e. you can set up a bet with a friend.)

I'm currently studying for the CFA Level 2 Exam coming up in June 2013.  In a later post, I'll explore how I apply DiSSS to organize my study strategy for the exam.