Effective Revision Strategies: Debugging – Part 1

Effective revision strategies: Debugging – Part 1

Do you remember the last time when you spent hours revising for an exam only to screw up? Yes. We all do. We all do, and most of us will most likely continue to do. And very rarely does anyone ask, why?

You see, here’s the problem – when talking about revision, many people attribute effective revision to amount of time spent put in – you often hear people say, ‘I revised 5 hours straight for 2 weeks in a row’.

Now, for some people, this strategy might work, but chances are, they’re not going to get much sleep. However, for most, this method will backfire, and haunt you. The word ‘revise’ is really vague, and provides no meaningful information for further discussion. Instead, lets dissect the word ‘revision’ into something that is more meaningful.

The mainstream revision method is to write a book full of notes, and read the notes until you memorize it like the bible.

There is one key problem to this method – it’s way too time consuming. ‘Revision’ is an art, and the people who master this art minimize time spent revising BUT maximize result. Let’s call effectiveness of revision, ‘Productivity’, and the variable we use to test this effectiveness, ‘Time’. For someone to maximize productivity, time will be minimized to as little as possible.

Now, to think about how we can save time, why don’t we first consider how we’re wasting time during revision.

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Well, the first major problem which happens very very often is students re-reading notes over and over and over and over again. Firstly, take out your revision notes. Do you know ABSOLUTELY nothing on that sheet of paper that you have to re-read every single bit of detail (including your name) each read? The short answer is no. The complex answer is most probably not. Even if your memory from class is not crystal clear, I’m sure you didn’t forget everything the teacher said (provided you were listening at all) – Many people put too much emphasis on revising everything when it’s only a small sub-section of concepts you need refreshing. Another problem is that when you just re-read your notes, you often have the natural tendency to focus on the things that you have already mastered – as a result,you’re under the false illusion that you’re accomplishing something, when you’re in fact not, and your time would be better spent playing Counter Strike. Might feel good, but you’re going to trip.

The solution to this problem is a strategy is called, ‘Debugging’. Here’s how it works:

1. Take out a sheet of paper and list every single concept you need to learn for your exam.
2. Categorize each concept into three categories: ‘Mastered’, ‘Semi-mastered’, ‘Noob’.
3. First leave the ‘Mastered’ category alone. Focus on the concepts which are marked ‘Noob’. After you go through these concepts thoroughly, you can upgrade the concepts you feel comfortable with to ‘Semi-mastered’. Then, after a while, you can continue upgrading, downgrading, whatever you see fit – the overall goal is to get all the concepts under the ‘Mastered’ section (No duh)

This method is much more effective than the previously mentioned – instead of blindly revising everything, you’re revising what needs to be immediately addressed – you know what you need to revise – and most importantly, this saves ALOT of time. Reviewing 1+1 =2 may not take a lot of time, but time accumulates, and soon, seconds become minutes – you should know that from procrastinating!

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