Logical Reasoning Time Management

Pride Only Hurts

I've found my LR scores took a hit ever since I began adopting time management strategies like skipping and doing the first 15 questions in 15 minutes. When I go back and look at the ones I missed the correct answer is typically clear but under timed conditions I'm often not even circling these questions! Am I simply moving too fast? I want to learn how to skip effectively but so far it hasn't helped.

10000019

I don't understand why anyone would suggest 15 in 15. I sat for December 17 (PT 83) and some of the most difficult questions were within the first 15.

What is your current approach to skipping questions? I think what I use to do was:
- If the stimulus made no sense to me, I moved on.
- If I thought the question type (specifically parallel reasoning) would be time consuming, I moved on without reading the passage first. I believe once I got better at those question types, I didn't need to skip them at all.

keets993

I think you're experiencing a common occurrence when we first start PT-ing. We're so focused on looking at all the questions within timed conditions, as we are advised to throughout our prep, we end up sacrificing our accuracy. There's a fine line between rushing which results in decreased accuracy and wasting time with a lack of diminishing returns.

Strategies like "15 in 15" or "25 in 25" are just general guidelines. I think doing more timed drills might help you figure out what that 'sweet spot' is on time spent on a question in regards to accuracy. Video tape them if you can so that you can analyze where you spent too much time versus moved too fast.

btate87

@10000019 I very loosely stick to this rule after seeing it mentioned in multiple 7sage webinars (and on the forums) I think the basic idea is to ge through 15 total and skip the harder ones. So if there are two really tricky questions in the first 15, aim to be through question 17 by the fifteen minute mark. It's more of a way to gauge time than a hard limit - at least the way I use it.

@jdmccar95 I've found I had to be careful when implementing that sort of timing strategy. My first tries didn't turn out the best because I felt like I needed to be rushing to keep up with the marker. That's not the way to do it. Your natural pace on LR needs to be around a minute/question, and you need to learn to make snap assessments on when to skip without letting this increase your natural pace and thus how prone you are to errors. It's about getting rid of wasted time on hard questions, not about hurrying. Hopefully that helps!

Pride Only Hurts

Thanks for all the feedback. I'm currently still figuring out my skipping strategy. The only questions I skip without reading are the later 15-26 parallel flaw questions. Otherwise I'll read the stimulus and if I have no idea what the correct answer would look like I move on. I will try to implement skipping without wasting time going through the answer choices though. I do think I may be spending less time on the simulus in an effort to get through questions quickly.

Tom_Tango

Just read and try to understand. Stop focusing on time if you have the habit of looking at the watch. Maybe even try not using a watch (still set a timer). Arbitrary tips like "10 in 10" and "15 in 15" is just pure bullshit.

Sami

@jdmccar95 said:
Thanks for all the feedback. I'm currently still figuring out my skipping strategy. The only questions I skip without reading are the later 15-26 parallel flaw questions. Otherwise I'll read the stimulus and if I have no idea what the correct answer would look like I move on.

I would say don't try to predict what the answer choice will look like. There are a fair amount of hard questions in 1-15. Also, you have got to watch your section video and figure out why you thought the wrong answer was attractive in the first place.

I will try to implement skipping without wasting time going through the answer choices though. I do think I may be spending less time on the simulus in an effort to get through questions quickly.

I never try to spend less time on the stimulus. Take the time you need to understand the stimulus properly. If you think you are going to need a lot of time to understand the stimulus, then skip it. Speed doesn't come from reading stimulus faster, it actually comes from recognizing if an answer choice is wrong/right faster. But this only happens if our understanding of the stimulus is really good and we didn't do sloppy reading.

Also, I don't think I have never taken a test where I havn't skipped 1 or 2 questions, maybe more, from the first 15.

I liked the advice above by @Tom_Tango. Turn the clock away. You can watch your video later to see if you had any timing issue. If you took too long in question 3, the solution to that can't be to rush question 5's stimulus. Each question is still going to take as much time as it needs. The solution once you make an error like that is to make sure to listen to that voice that says that form here dictates I move on to next question.

Cant Get Right

This isn’t at all uncommon. Rushing is the biggest problem. You need to be managing time, not racing against it. You need to move with a sense of urgency, but you need to read at a comfortable pace. Even a slight hit to your reading comprehension level will have a big negative impact on your score.

The other thing that happens with these types of exercises is that they serve as stress tests on your fundamentals. The more aggressive you are, the more the basics are stressed. Often times, a more conservative approach allows us to correct for little misunderstandings. The more aggressive you get though, the more you turn up the pressure. It’s actually a good thing. It allows you to identify and correct little misunderstandings that you wouldn’t otherwise. Just make sure you’re taking the time to analyze those so that you can benefit from it.

Time management is critical and there are a lot of little ways you can contribute to better efficiency. I do think that things like “25 in 25” are a little over simplistic, but it can serve as one goal of a broader approach and be a good average of a high level strategy. The underlying idea of that type of goal is simply to get maximum value for your time. So think of your 35 minutes as 140 fifteen second blocks. You want to make sure you’re getting good returns for each block. For easy questions, you can maybe answer them in 30 seconds with 90% confidence. That’s a lot of value for two blocks. For the hardest questions, it’s easy to spend a couple minutes and still have very little to show for it. That’s bad value for eight blocks.

As you hone your skills, you want to look within questions and see how the value evolves. Sometimes you can make quick progress up to a point and then hit a wall. So within the question, you started out getting good returns and then stopped. Maybe you’ve eliminated three answers and can’t decide between the final contenders. If you can’t make that determination quickly, you get poor returns if you continue. So you should move on at this point. Just because you haven't answered it with 100% confidence doesn't mean you haven't made important progress. In this situation you've turned a blind guess into a 50% coin flip, so that's a net gain of +30%. If you can nudge that 50/50 to 60/40, that's great. You're going to get this right more often than not, and you're going to do it quickly. Hopefully you can see how picking up this quick progress plus having ten minutes at the end to clean up puts you in a really powerful position.

As far as the first 15 versus the final 10, there's nothing particularly special about that distinction. As a group, the first 15 will have a lower average difficulty, but any given question in the first 15 could be a curve breaker and any given question in the final 10 could be quite easy. So judge the questions on your assessment of the difficulty, not on the question number.

samantha.ashley92

I think that PTing will help you figure out how to best employ a skipping strategy. While you're PTing, circle any questions that you feel like you've spent too much time on. While you're doing a BR, really pay attention to what those questions and answer choices look like. If you see a similar question in the future, there's a good chance it's worth skipping. (Of course, try to learn these question types, too.)

hawaiihi

I use the 20 for 20 guideline when practicing on sections -- but let me just emphasize that I use it as a GUIDELINE. It's more to know where I'm at. If, say, you're on Q07 and 15 minutes have passed, that's a yikes.
I usually don't wait until 20 minutes to check either on stand-alone practice sections. At 7 minutes, I try to be around Q06 - Q08. At 12 minutes, if I glance up, I hope to be around Q12. It's purely a guideline so I can realize that, Wow, I've been spending a TON of time on this question. I need to move on.
It's also important to note two things: First, by around the 18th or 20th question, I find that they're much more difficult and take me much longer. Secondly, while I now finish LR questions with anywhere from 3-12 minutes left, staying within the 20 in 20 didn't come until a bit later in my studying.