The PANCE is exhausting. It’s 4 grueling hours of concentration. Reading, thinking, and concentrating harder than you’ve ever done, for LONGER than you’ve ever done.
It’s ridiculously exhausting.
It’s like training so that you can swim 10 good, fast laps in a pool. Then being put in the ocean and told you have to swim 10 miles. AND by the way, there are sharks in the water, so get moving. Oh, and the sharks have lasers on their heads; move, move, move!
I don’t think I can overstate it.
In order to train for this life or death swim, do you think you should swim more?
Like a lot more?
What else could you do get ready? Because swimming that much is boring. Not quite as boring as studying, but really close.
You could do some running to mix it up, or some weight training. I can think of 15 things you could do (besides swimming) that could help you get ready for this swim.
There are lots of things that you could do to mix up your training, keep you interested, and still be working toward your end goal. In this analogy, that goal is surviving a swim in the cold ocean water for 10 miles while being chased by sharks with lasers on their heads.
Here’s what this means for you…
You can use cross-training to get ready for your exam.
You need content, but you also need stamina. You could study content constantly or you could mix it up.
Can you think of one activity besides studying that you could do?
Come on… one?
Mine is READ. Read anything. It doesn’t matter what. Just read.
But do it for increasing periods of time. Read for 10 minutes before bed at first. Or 10 minutes when you wake up in the morning. Set a timer (that’s what we are doing with my 8-year-old). Then make it fifteen. Then do 20 minutes (and don’t check your phone during those 20 minutes. I know, I know). Build up your stamina.
Remember, we said you’re going to have to read and think critically for 4 HOURS. If you get bored and tired reading a novel after 15 minutes, it’s going to be hard to read test questions for 4 hours.
So practice. Cross train. Build up your ability to focus. The more you can maintain your focus on test day, the higher your scores will be. It’s a direct relationship. You can know every bit of content, but if you are tired and bored at 90 minutes, you’re screwed.
But if just learning content is what you’re looking for, you’ll want to get a copy of The Final Step.
Brian Wallace
P.S. What else can you do to “cross train” for your exam? Hit reply and send me your ideas. If I get some good ones, I’ll share them on next week’s show.
