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Advanc'edge MBA / October 2003

Testing Times

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Revision: Solid Formula for Success


- Dhiraj Malhotra

unil was really frustrated.


He was aiming at the Best
Student of the Year award
in his school for the third
consecutive year, but now it felt like
the sand had slipped away in the
hourglass. He had fared miserably
in the surprise test today and his
competitor Sanjay was ahead of
him. Life could not have been
worse, he thought. Instead of going
back home from school, he headed
straight towards his friendly agony uncle Raj.
Uncle Raj was sitting in his backyard with a whole
lot of brass items of his house and was busy scrubbing
them with lemon. What are you doing, uncle?
asked Sunil. Uncle Raj told him that he was scrubbing
those brass artifacts because they had accumulated
a lot of dust over time and had hence lost their shine.
He was cleaning them to give them their original
shine. Sunil told him about the days test and how
dejected he was with his hopes completely shattered.
After listening to him patiently uncle Raj told him
that his case was similar to the brass artifacts that he
was scrubbing. And how is that? asked Sunil.
Uncle Raj told Sunil that he had bought these brass
artifacts over a period of time to decorate his home.
At the time when I had bought them, they were all
new and shining. But slowly, their shine deteriorated
due to accumulation of dust. Now if I do not bother
to clean the layer of dust, the brass items would
continue to look older and dirtier with each passing
day, spoiling the overall look of the house. The end
objective was not to buy an expensive brass item,
hang it on the wall and then move on to buy another.
The end objective is to add to the aesthetics of the
living room and maintain it.
Maintenance of valuable items is crucial to derive
maximum value out of your investment. The
investment may be in terms of time, money or energy.
For example, consider this brass item. I scrub it once
every two months but I dust it off daily. If I stop
dusting this item daily, then the rate of deterioration

of this item would be greater. If it


currently takes two months to
reach a stage when it requires
scrubbing and cleaning, without
the daily dusting it would reach
that stage in a week! Similarly,
Sunil you have missed the bigger
picture altogether. The ultimate
aim is not to study a subject and
then move on to study another in
the pursuit of Best Student
Award, but to acquire knowledge
in the process of studying those various subjects. And
to achieve this ultimate objective, one has to regularly
dust-off the layer of dust over the things that one
studies, by REVISION.
If one goes deeper into the words of what uncle
Raj told Sunil, one realises the universal applicability
of this fundamental truth. In the corporate world of
today, it is easy to find many people who, like Sunil,
spend each day of their life running after small goals
and accomplishing the task at hand on a very
transactional basis. They would work on assignments
given to them in a structured way, make mistakes,
correct them and move on to the next assignment and
repeat the whole process again. Very few people
actually pause to take stock of the situation and assess
what they have learnt and how these learnt lessons
can be applied for better performance in future. And
the way to distinguish these people from the rest is
to look for those who are successful! There is a
favourite question HR managers ask prospective
employees in interviews: Who would you select,
given a choice between two people who have both
solved a problem wrongly 728 times? And the
answer they are expecting is: The one who can recall
ALL the 728 ways of NOT solving the problem!!
Though he has not been able to solve the problem, he
surely knows 728 ways of not doing it. In future he
shall make sure NOT to solve that problem by any of
those 728 ways, thereby increasing his chances of
hitting the right answer! And to achieve this
capability calls for the attitude to look back not at the

Advanc'edge MBA / October 2003

Testing Times
failure but at its reasons and make sure that in future
one keeps in mind the lessons learnt. An important
pre-requisite for such a mindset is the habit of reVISION: The habit of re-visiting the lesson learnt and
revising it to consolidate the learning, for greater
retention.
The Art Of Revision:
To manage ones time effectively to fit the entire
schedule of various tasks at hand can be a
disconcerting task. What is required, however, is a
concerted effort to manage ones time effectively
giving equal importance to tasks accomplished and
ones yet to be accomplished. Here are a few tips
4 It is essential to scientifically manage your revision
schedule in order to make it work in reality. Make
a yearly schedule for your revision. Make a list of
all the study items that you feel need to be revisited and prioritise them.
4 In the context of a forthcoming exam, make a
complete list of ALL the subjects, topics and subtopics relevant to the exam. Have a clear focus of
what you want to revise. Depending on your basic
proficiency and susceptibility to make errors,
determine the frequency of revision for each of
those subtopics. Mark these dates with a sketchpen on the calendar. A point to be noted here is
that one should write down the list of topics to be
revised per week and not fix them for particular days.
Sticking to specific dates and days becomes
practically unfeasible and strains the entire
exercise causing it to fail. So depending on the
schedule that you have made, get a complete set
of all revision schedules for each week till your
exam date. Stick to this format, while
simultaneously updating the list as your
proficiency in various tested areas increases.
Religiously following this schedule is of
paramount importance, not only because it would
help one fulfill the long term
objective of achieving
maximum proficiency in
each of the testing areas, but
also helps one imbibe and
imbue the concept of internal
discipline. (As I mentioned in
the previous article on
concentration techniques,

Read on ...................................

this is one of the most sought after personality


traits that corporates look for in prospective
employees)
4 Whatever rhetoric one might profess on the
importance of revision, there is no denying the
fact that the reason it is one of the most difficult
things to accomplish is that it becomes
monotonous. The best way to ensure that your
productivity does not deteriorate due to
monotony is to develop the art of making
combinations. Take diverse topics and revise them
together. Revise reading comprehension and data
interpretation together. You can reward yourself
for sticking to your weekly schedule or keep a
target for maximum allowable errors in a
particular topic you revise and challenge yourself
to overachieve it.
4 Another major advantage of revising ones work
is to acquire a broader perspective of ones
understanding. It re-enforces your learning, as
during revision you begin with the end in mind and
strengthen your grasp of the topic on hand.
4 Develop the system of making analysis sheets on
each topic that you study. Every time you revise
the topic, record the analysis on the same sheet
and compare the most recent performance with
the earlier one. This provides clarity on the level
and direction of preparation, which are crucial to
achieve success.
4 In another format, make a list of mistakes that you
commit in each topic and write down the page
reference number for each mistake. After every
round of revision, mark the status of that mistake.
This would act as a catalyst in acquiring command
over the subject.
In the end, remember that the possibility of
forgetting what you learnt is high in the initial phase
(immediately after learning) and after a while it is
altogether forgotten!! So pick up that duster and start
dusting all your key learning points so this CAT will
be proof that your work station and mind station are
swankier than they look

The author is an MBA in Finance and consulting with


one of the leading multinational consultancies in
Mumbai.

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