How to stop making careless mistakes on LG?

joshuazyt11

Honestly, more power to those who routinely got -0 on LG but it seems that I just can't stop making careless mistakes like misreading or even forgetting about rules! Sometime, I got stuck on a question only to find that I had misread a rule, which is a significant time sink. This leads me to not finishing the last game on my take in June and I'm quite disappointed since I was in fairly good shape for LR and RC. Anyone had the similar issue? And if so, how did you eventually overcome this?

claremont

A few things that have helped me mitigate some clumsy errors:

Read the rules in their entirety before writing anything down.

Write neat. Don't clutter your paper. I use an erasable pen for my games so that I can clean up my rules and/or board if needed.

For each rule that I notate on my paper, I make sure to highlight it on my computer. I would sometimes get stuck trying to answer a question only to realize that I had skipped over a rule.

If applicable, check each rule against the first question immediately after you have written it down. If you eliminate more than one AC based on a rule, that's a red flag that you have potentially made an error. Immediately check to make sure you wrote the rule down correctly.

I exclusively drill full sections. The mix between relatively easy and difficult games and having to manage time might help keep you more engaged.

joshuazyt11

@claremont said:
A few things that have helped me mitigate some clumsy errors:

Read the rules in their entirety before writing anything down.

Write neat. Don't clutter your paper. I use an erasable pen for my games so that I can clean up my rules and/or board if needed.

For each rule that I notate on my paper, I make sure to highlight it on my computer. I would sometimes get stuck trying to answer a question only to realize that I had skipped over a rule.

If applicable, check each rule against the first question immediately after you have written it down. If you eliminate more than one AC based on a rule, that's a red flag that you have potentially made an error. Immediately check to make sure you wrote the rule down correctly.

I exclusively drill full sections. The mix between relatively easy and difficult games and having to manage time might help keep you more engaged.

The one with checking the first question after writing each rule is a nice trick. And tiny habits like keeping game boards neat and organized are definitely underrated. I'm guilty of routinely brutalizing them tho.

Jonathan Wang

You can employ whatever tricks to achieve this goal, but ultimately it boils down to you having to slow down until the requisite level of attention to detail is a habit and not just a tactic. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Think of it this way: the time you spend stuck on a question, finding out you made a mistake, redoing your setup, remaking your inferences, and redoing all of the questions you've already done up to that point not only washes out any time advantage you gained from going fast, in the vast majority of cases it's a huge negative. It's the literal doomsday scenario. Making sure that you don't ever have to go down that road is worth an extra 30 seconds of setup time per game. If the extra 2 minutes you're adding to your LG time as a result is going to torpedo your score (which, it won't), then you can always just get a tiny bit better at the actual mechanics of the logic games to compensate. But making sure that you're actually using the correct rules is literally the most important piece of the puzzle, so you never want to skimp on that.

Many of my best and most consistent LG students over the years haven't been anywhere near the fastest execution-wise, they just didn't do thoughtless things that require tons of extra time to go back and fix in the first place. Even when they made mistakes, it was limited to single questions because they made absolutely sure that their big picture conception of the scenario was correct before leaving the setup phase.

matthewtodd1212-1-1-1-1

I fully acknowledge that this might not be the "healthiest" way to fix careless mistakes. What I do though is I punish myself. 15 pushups and 20 sit-ups for every mistake I make. I found that this worked well for me.

joshuazyt11

@"Jonathan Wang" said:
You can employ whatever tricks to achieve this goal, but ultimately it boils down to you having to slow down until the requisite level of attention to detail is a habit and not just a tactic. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Think of it this way: the time you spend stuck on a question, finding out you made a mistake, redoing your setup, remaking your inferences, and redoing all of the questions you've already done up to that point not only washes out any time advantage you gained from going fast, in the vast majority of cases it's a huge negative. It's the literal doomsday scenario. Making sure that you don't ever have to go down that road is worth an extra 30 seconds of setup time per game. If the extra 2 minutes you're adding to your LG time as a result is going to torpedo your score (which, it won't), then you can always just get a tiny bit better at the actual mechanics of the logic games to compensate. But making sure that you're actually using the correct rules is literally the most important piece of the puzzle, so you never want to skimp on that.

Many of my best and most consistent LG students over the years haven't been anywhere near the fastest execution-wise, they just didn't do thoughtless things that require tons of extra time to go back and fix in the first place. Even when they made mistakes, it was limited to single questions because they made absolutely sure that their big picture conception of the scenario was correct before leaving the setup phase.

That's very true. I've been observing recordings of Leia doing LG on the explanation page, and she really took her time on every game. I don't tend to do mindless things and like to observe, but I should be more intentional in keeping a steady pace.

joshuazyt11

@"matthewtodd1212-1-1-1-1" said:
I fully acknowledge that this might not be the "healthiest" way to fix careless mistakes. What I do though is I punish myself. 15 pushups and 20 sit-ups for every mistake I make. I found that this worked well for me.

lol the good old conditioning. Maybe I could wear a rubber band on my wrist and flick myself for every mistake