Session 3
In Control of Busy & Lazy:
Implementing ELF Strategy
The last Session of our Workshop is to put you in full control of your CFA exam prep by showing how you can apply the 4 steps of ELF Strategy we talked about last time:
How To Make ELF Strategy Work For Me?
Before we answer this question, let’s first remind ourselves why on earth you’d even care to follow any strategy at all. Because there are certain DISTRACTIONS you need to MANAGE to have a successful exam prep, namely: the Busy, the Disorganized, the Lazy, the Unproductive. The ELF Strategy helps you develop 4 KEY ABILITIES to MANAGE THESE DISTRACTIONS:
ability to prioritize,
ability to plan,
ability to act as planned,
ability to focus.
The ELF Strategy forms the basis for your Study Plan.
On a regular basis – every week of your CFA exam prep – it:
allows you to make detailed plans (helps you be more organized),
motivates you to study as you planned (gives tools to overcome laziness),
makes you focus (prevents inefficiency),
necessitates prioritizing (signals you got too busy doing something else).
HOW IT ALLOWS YOU TO MAKE DETAILED PLANS EVERY STUDY WEEK
(& HELPS YOU BE MORE ORGANIZED):
Say you have 5 readings to study this week. Fits in your timetable? Great! But over the next 3 months until your exam, no two weeks will be the same.
Flexibility about planning every week of work and study is what you need. That’s why you can EDIT your WEEKLY plan by adding some more readings or taking a few away if you need.
You end up with a feasible weekly study plan you can handle.
HOW IT MOTIVATES YOU TO STUDY AS YOU PLANNED
(& GIVES TOOLS TO OVERCOME LAZINESS):
As soon as you do part or whole of a reading, you can change its status respectively to partially done or done, which shows your progress. That’s how you see yourself act as you planned: when your readings turn yellow or green and your total weekly study time accumulates.
Your weekly study plan has been also filled in with different apps with videos, tests, and formulas to be used on a daily basis. Although they’re rather meant for review, do watch a 6-minute video explaining arbitrage on a simple example even if you’re too busy today. Or at least learn some FRA formulas if lazy is what you are tonight. That’s surely better than doing nothing!
AVAILABLE ON OUR NEW PORTAL: ANALYST.GUIDE
HOW IT MAKES YOU FOCUS
(& PREVENTS INEFFICIENCY):
No doubt, you can better focus on your tasks when you know exactly what to do. It’s like with grocery shopping. Unless you make a list of things to buy, you end up with a full trolley of things your fridge just won’t hold. Your weekly study plan gives you a list of concrete CFA readings you need to study over the week.
So: you know precisely you must do Reading 7 today. Much better than the general thought:
I think I’m going to study Quantitative Methods now.
To enhance your productivity, you have the review apps inside your weekly study plan. And the importance of review just cannot be stressed enough:
it makes you focus on the most important aspects of each reading,
it makes you practice (& also learn the exam format),
it makes you remember what you studied.
You mustn’t forget all this makes you overcome the forgetting curve, which is the worst enemy of all CFA candidates:
Yep.
The retention of information drastically decreases as time passes.
To act against it: hear a short video while on your way to work, practice formulas at lunch, and do a short test every night before going to bed.
HOW IT NECESSITATES PRIORITIZING
(& SIGNALS YOU GOT TOO BUSY DOING SOMETHING ELSE):
At the end of the week, your task is to sum up your achievements. If you’ve done well, there’s a reward – your Chance To Pass grows. If, however, your weekly plan has just fallen apart – your Chance To Pass can’t go up. More! It goes down if you can’t hold yourself accountable for your failure. Should you fail too often, you’ll also see more and more readings change their status to red – meaning they’re overdue.
All this is intended to keep you on the right track and make you prioritize when you see no progress.
This is how the ELF Strategy works
inside your Study Plan.
From week to week YOU: PLAN, STUDY, REVIEW what you’ve studied, and ASSESS your headway.
To make the weekly cycle of ELF Strategy of even more benefit to you, you can further customize it by using personalized tactics.
We have some PLANNING, STUDY, REVIEW, and SELF-ASSESSMENT TACTICS prepared for you. Analyze them in the context of your work and study time. Then choose the ones you find most appealing and apply them.
Your customized tactics are the last link in the whole ELF chain and are of much help in developing the 4 KEY ABILITIES effectively on a weekly basis so that you can finally succeed.