Your CAT Coaching offers you a lot – classes, (regular extra-classes, level-wise homework if you are at MBAGuru), study material and extra-material for practice, doubt clearing sessions, tests of varying difficulty levels and at different levels such as topics, sections, overall.
And spurred on by the spread of online coaching for CAT, you have online groups, communities and channels that are on practically 24Ă—7, and blogs and articles (such as this one :)), fundas from students successful in the past and so much more.
If you aren’t overwhelmed, consider yourself extra-ordinary. Chances are you would be soaked as if you’re out walking in the Mumbai monsoon rains without an umbrella.
If that wasn’t enough, you also have access to stuff at other places – free groups and communities, or low-priced test series of other CAT preparation institutes, or something that your friends are doing, perhaps a book you saw someone engrossed in. Voila – more of everything.
You are trying your best to be your best everywhere.
Chances are you are freaking out, if you still aren’t making progress inspite of ALL this.
Well, what if I told you that you are most likely not making progress because of ALL this.
When you try and do everything – you end up with nothing, almost always. Because you don’t do enough of anything to take it past the threshold level. And your mind is cluttered.
So, cull out the weeds, and remove the needless. Get rid of things that take up a lot of time but don’t actually help you improve. Your only barometer should be whether something increases your chances of success at CAT.
You may lose 1-2% edge there in a worst-case scenario. But you can get 10 times more (or even 100 times more, depending upon how flooded you are) in the time you free up daily.
Even a couple of hours wasted daily, trying to stay up with EVERYTHING, still means 100s of hours. And that’s a lot to become a master in 10 areas you currently struggle in. Imagine what that can do to your scores! 10 weaknesses removed!!
Don’t do stuff just because everyone does it all the time – don’t allow FOMO (fear of missing out) to dictate your priorities.
When you focus on everything, you actually focus on nothing!
Focus on less, doable stuff in specific areas and be patient as move step by step in each. You will soon gain momentum beyond your wildest belief.
About the author: Deekshant has sleep-walked through several 100 and 99.9 %iles in practically every section of the CAT. That he is a cricket fan and he writes okay is evident from most of his posts. 1000s of our students swear that he can motivate almost anyone to double his/her percentile through very simple yet powerful inputs. And that’s why every MBAGuru student has direct access to him via mail and Telegram. Oddly, he somehow also finds the time to write songs professionally. And yes … almost missed this … he is an alumnus of IIT Delhi & IIM Cal 