When working on your firefighter promotional exam prep you may not know where to begin each study session. I encourage you to start your study session by tackling the hard stuff and saving the easy stuff for the end of the session.
Start With the Hard Stuff
Simply put, one of the best ways to organize your study session is to start with the most difficult, most challenging, most worrisome material first. If there is something you are dreading studying, do it first. If there is something you are struggling with, start there. Get the hard material out of the way,so the rest of your study session will be a breeze.
Why it Works
Your Brain is in Better Shape
When you sit down to study for your firefighter promotional exam, your brain will be at its best. Your brain will be less fatigued, your focus will be stronger, and you will be able to think clearer. Even if you go into the study session feeling tired and foggy, you will be less so than at the end. By the end of a long study session you could begin to feel really tired and have trouble paying attention. You do not want to be working on your most challenging material when you reach that point in your study session. You want to be in tip top shape when you tackle the hard stuff.
Get it Over With-Reduce Stress
Another great thing about doing the more challenging studying first is that you can complete it and move on, giving yourself less time to stress about it. If you wait for the end of your study session to do the material you are worrying about the most, you will spend the entire study session thinking about it. This will ultimately distract you from the other topics making your study session less productive and take longer. This will also allow more of your mental energy to go into your studies and not into your anxieties.
Time Management
Another reason you want to start with the more challenging material is to ensure you have plenty of time to complete it. If you save the hard stuff until the end of your study session you may run out of time and be able to study as much as you need to. The more challenging study material is guaranteed to be more time consuming. If you start with the easy material every time you study, you will constantly be having incomplete study sessions and missing out on studying the material that you are actually struggling with. If you keep repeating this pattern you will never be able to understand the more challenging material fully. So, start with the hard stuff, save the easier stuff until the end, that way if you can’t study all you need to, you don’t have to stop right in the middle of understanding the harder information. Starting and stopping in the middle of the challenging material is ultimately going to prolong your study time because you will likely have to start completely over with it come the next study session. However, the less challenging review material will be easier to slip into a shorter, spur of the moment study session or sprinkled at the end of other study sessions.
Feel Accomplished
Nothing feels better than completing something you are struggling with. So if you keep putting off the hard stuff you will never get that feeling of accomplishment. If you start every study session with a challenge you will end every study session feeling like you reached a goal and accomplished something. This may even make you more likely to study and make your study sessions more enjoyable in the long run.
The Takeaway
Studying for your firefighter promotional exam can be challenging. Planning your study sessions can take awhile to get used to. So I urge you to start your next study session with whatever is challenging you or stressing you out the most. Then end your study session with whatever you are feeling successful in or a bit of review.