Advantage CA — Reaching the Top by V. Pattabhi Ram

IF WITHIN an hour you do not revise what you have read, 50 per cent of it could be forgotten. If you take more than 24 hours to revise, there is a loss of 82 per cent. If you take more than a month to revise, almost 99 per cent will be forgotten.

If all this is frightening, there is an antidote — the remembering graph: On an average, we remember 20 per cent of what we read, 30 per cent of what we hear, 40 per cent of what we see, 50 per cent of what we say, 60 per cent of what we do, and 90 per cent of what we read, see, hear, say and do. This and more tips are in Advantage CA — Reaching the Top by V. Pattabhi Ram and Seetha Srikanth. Read on:

• A goal must have a deadline. Otherwise, they remain as dreams. Remember, in a hockey match you have 70 minutes to win, draw or lose. It won't do to say, "I want to become a chartered accountant." You will have to say, "I want to become a CA by May 2004."

   

• In using leisure hours, it is always better to actively participate in some sport or pastime than to be a passive spectator. You can profit more by playing table tennis for half an hour than by watching a cricket match for two hours. Better to take a 10-minute brisk walk on the sand than to sit on the beach sipping coke.

   

• The CA course treats you like a responsible adult and lets you have the freedom of studying by yourself. You have to become disciplined and allot time as you think fit. It takes time to get your system accustomed to do things differently. Therefore, startling positive results won't be immediate. They will be slow and incremental, but they will be real.

   

• If procrastination is the thief of time, doing a sloppy job when you do it the first time around is its first cousin; for you will now have to redo it. The best way to get that extra hour in the day is to do it right the first time itself. Thus when you study a topic, study it actively — question it, make notes, and so on.

   

• It is easier to earn the first 50 per cent of the marks for any question. Unless you are working in complete ignorance, you will always earn more marks per minute while answering a new question than while continuing to answer the one that is more than half-done. So you earn many more marks by half completing two answers than by completing either one individually.