How to stop making careless mistakes?

Comments

• 2 Likes

  jeff.wongkachi Member

  May 2020 410 karma

  Take a bit more time upfront to check the rules and board you've created against the actual writing from the text. It ultimately saves you time because you further internalize the rules, and you don't run into the questions with one dud rule or representation. Note down your specific careless mistakes to see if you notice patterns. My dumb ass mistake is sometimes mistaking Vs for Ys because my writing is messy af, so I had to calm down a little and write a little neater.
• The Great White Shark Member

  May 2020 1058 karma

  How confident are you on the problems you end up missing?

  If you have doubts about your AC then flag it so you can return to it at the end of the section to double check your work. I have found this to help me a lot if I feel like I’m missing something.

  But if you are completely confident in your AC and you end up getting it wrong due to a careless mistake, it’s important to figure out why that keeps happening. Are you misreading a word? Did you look for a MBT when it was a MBF? Did you forget about the “except” in a Q stem? You’ve got to pinpoint exactly what is going on so that you can address it.
• EagerestBeaver Alum Member

  May 2020 703 karma

  I second @"jeff.wongkachi" above. In the moment, it is obviously difficult to relax, but going that one tick slower can make all the difference. I also have horrendous handwriting so many of my letters look like numerous other letters, and I made common mistakes of miswriting rules. If you take an extra ten seconds to double check your rules and double check your handwriting, you can prevent many silly lapses. Especially if you are at the -3 and below stage, you clearly have the aptitude for LG. That 45 seconds to1minute you spend double checking your setups will not ruin your timing.

  So my one recommendation is build it into your LG routine and mechanics. Even if the game is super simple, before you dive into the questions, give those rules one more read through, one by one, and make sure they are written properly. You are super close, keep up that focus.
• ahnendc-1 Member

  May 2020 642 karma

  @Markmark I'm right there with you man! When I do a new LG section, I find myself always make "dumb" mistake; sometimes its picking a could be true instead of the must be true, other times its an error in manipulating the symbols in my head so I 'misread' a game board, even though made all the right inferences (so frustrating!); there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what the mistake is...

  What I am doing, and take this maybe with a grain of salt because I haven't seen the payoff yet, is I have created a checklist that I complete after I complete every game when I FP. The goal is that I want to make sure I approach each game in EXACTLY the same sort of way from how I read the indented rules to where I put my game board on my scratch paper to making sure to circle floaters, etc. - every time I do a game I want to execute it perfectly per my process, I feel that if I can do that then the chance of me making some sort of error will be reduced. Also, I'm hoping that a stricter process will provide a greater sense of calm and reduce the chance that I'm feeling rushed or that my eyes are darting all over my paper because I don't know where my master game board is for this particular game. Best of luck man!
• studyingandrestudying Core Member

  May 2020 5254 karma

  I just wrote myself a big note about not misreading rules.
• Markmark Alum Member

  May 2020 976 karma

  @"jeff.wongkachi" said:
  Take a bit more time upfront to check the rules and board you've created against the actual writing from the text. It ultimately saves you time because you further internalize the rules, and you don't run into the questions with one dud rule or representation. Note down your specific careless mistakes to see if you notice patterns. My dumb ass mistake is sometimes mistaking Vs for Ys because my writing is messy af, so I had to calm down a little and write a little neater.

  Thanks for the suggestion, yea re-reading the rules and gameboard is something I'll make sure to do each time. I haven't really seen a pattern in my mistakes other than "wow that was dumb" but I'll keep looking. Thank you!
• 1 Like

  Markmark Alum Member

  May 2020 976 karma

  @"The Great White Shark" said:
  How confident are you on the problems you end up missing?

  If you have doubts about your AC then flag it so you can return to it at the end of the section to double check your work. I have found this to help me a lot if I feel like I’m missing something.

  But if you are completely confident in your AC and you end up getting it wrong due to a careless mistake, it’s important to figure out why that keeps happening. Are you misreading a word? Did you look for a MBT when it was a MBF? Did you forget about the “except” in a Q stem? You’ve got to pinpoint exactly what is going on so that you can address it.

  Yea I wish it was something I recognized to flag, the mistakes I made today were 1 in an acceptable situation because two elements that couldn't go next to each other WERE next to each other, but the text in the AC was separated across a line of text (does that make sense?). Another error was in a very, very fundamental MBT inference where one element would have to lead another, and I don't know how, but I chose something that was wrong, not the proper inference, and not a MBT. Totally totally wrong. Maybe I misclicked, I really don't know. I'm implementing a rule for myself that I have to read each AC and poe each one too, hopefully that will work.
• Markmark Alum Member

  May 2020 976 karma

  @EagerestBeaver said:
  I second @"jeff.wongkachi" above. In the moment, it is obviously difficult to relax, but going that one tick slower can make all the difference. I also have horrendous handwriting so many of my letters look like numerous other letters, and I made common mistakes of miswriting rules. If you take an extra ten seconds to double check your rules and double check your handwriting, you can prevent many silly lapses. Especially if you are at the -3 and below stage, you clearly have the aptitude for LG. That 45 seconds to1minute you spend double checking your setups will not ruin your timing.

  So my one recommendation is build it into your LG routine and mechanics. Even if the game is super simple, before you dive into the questions, give those rules one more read through, one by one, and make sure they are written properly. You are super close, keep up that focus.

  Thank you!!!!
• Markmark Alum Member

  May 2020 976 karma

  @"ahnendc-1" said:
  @Markmark I'm right there with you man! When I do a new LG section, I find myself always make "dumb" mistake; sometimes its picking a could be true instead of the must be true, other times its an error in manipulating the symbols in my head so I 'misread' a game board, even though made all the right inferences (so frustrating!); there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what the mistake is...

  What I am doing, and take this maybe with a grain of salt because I haven't seen the payoff yet, is I have created a checklist that I complete after I complete every game when I FP. The goal is that I want to make sure I approach each game in EXACTLY the same sort of way from how I read the indented rules to where I put my game board on my scratch paper to making sure to circle floaters, etc. - every time I do a game I want to execute it perfectly per my process, I feel that if I can do that then the chance of me making some sort of error will be reduced. Also, I'm hoping that a stricter process will provide a greater sense of calm and reduce the chance that I'm feeling rushed or that my eyes are darting all over my paper because I don't know where my master game board is for this particular game. Best of luck man!

  Yes that's exactly what I've started doing now too is writing a strict step by step strategy that I'm trying to get into. Thank you!!!