Tips for Efficient Q&A Revision Strategies

Improving Q&A revision skills requires a strategic approach to maximize efficiency and comprehension.

### Top 5 Tips to Enhance Q&A Revision Skills
* 🕒 The first tip is to approach your questions in "**Twitter mode**" for your initial pass, focusing on **time management and concentration** rather than exam mode, which may hinder your ability to notice **subtle hints** in questions.
* 📝 For the second tip, it's advised to **avoid taking notes during your revision**, as this can lead to **inefficiency and a false sense of understanding**, making you more familiar with content rather than **comprehending it deeply**.
* 💡 The third tip emphasizes improving concentration, suggesting techniques like the **flow method** or the **Pomodoro technique** to maintain **momentum and efficiency** throughout your study sessions.
* 📊 The fourth tip involves a tailored approach to reviewing questions based on your **confidence level**, categorizing them into three groups to **allocate more time to challenging questions** and **less to those you already understand well**.
* 🔍 As you progress in your preparation, expect most questions to shift from the **challenging category to the easier ones**, ultimately **increasing your speed and efficiency over time**.
* ⚖ Finally, remember that the goal of the test is **accuracy, not speed**; rushing through questions can detract from your performance, so focus on **understanding rather than just finishing quickly**.
* 👍 If you found these tips helpful, consider **liking and commenting on the video**, and subscribe for more content to aid your **study journey**.

revealing a block of questions is taking you forever. You're seeing your life get wasted in front of the computer. You want to get punched by a kangaroo every time you open a new block. Too much anyways. If that's the case, this is the video for you because today I'm gonna give you the top five tips to improve your Q&A revision skills. Let's get to it. Okay, let's jump right into it. My first advice is to do every one of your questions in Twitter mode. And yes, I know that this probably contradicts every using Lego out there, everything that you heard, but just hear me out. My first point is that by doing questions in exam mode, you're not becoming a better test taker by magic. You're just improving a couple of skills, very important skills, but just a couple of skills. First, time management, i.e., learning how to pace yourself, and secondly, concentration. You're learning how to stay focused during the whole block. That's what you're improving when you decide to do exam mode.

that's it, nothing else. Now, the thing you have to understand is that by choosing to get better at those couple of skills, you're sacrificing a couple of other skills. First, efficiency, because, well, you have to review every stem at least twice: the first one when you're answering the questions and the second one when you're reviewing the answers. And secondly, you're not giving yourself enough time to pick up the small details, those small buzzwords, those small tiny hints that they usually throw at you in stems to make you pick one answer over the other. Those are very subtle, and by rushing up through the stems, by rushing up through answering questions, which typically happens in exam mode, you're not being able to pick up those small hints. So yeah, if you want my advice when it comes to improving your efficiency, the best thing I could tell you is to do them in Twitter mode, at least for your first task. Obviously, for the second pass, you want to improve your concentration and speed skills, do them in exam mode over there. But for the first pass

exam mode is really overrated. But anyways, coming up is point number two, which is don't take notes. And I know that many people are really passionate about their notes, but the thing you have to understand is that notes are good for a couple of things. First, they help you organize complex information, information that your mind cannot handle on its own, so you have to put it on paper to see how everything fits together. Notes are great for that. And the second thing is that they help you create a backup. Now, that's all good and sweet, but the problem is that in your pursuit of building this backup thing, you're sacrificing efficiency. Just to this experiment, record the time it takes you to complete and review one block of questions while taking notes, and another block of questions without taking any notes. You'll see what I'm referring to. You'll see that you take so much more time when you actually take notes. And I get this idea of creating this backup to review everything you learned, but first thing you have to understand is that

reviewing your notes is probably one of the worst strategies there is to study for the USMLE, and we actually have evidence reporting this evidence that tells us that when the applicant reviews the information he annotated, he increases familiarity with the content, not comprehension. As we have said in some other videos, familiarity is what makes you think you understand but not actually perform, and what you really want to do in the test is perform, not feel like you have a really good grasp on everything when you actually don't. Okay, next we have tip number three, which is to improve your concentration skills. You see, the thing about concentration is that it allows you to be very efficient, but when you lose it, you're completely doomed. And I see this happening all the time with the Step 1. People have like a 40-question block in front of them, and they could very well do the 30 questions, review the three questions in an hour, a couple of hours, and then have the last 10 questions take a whole two to three hours just for those 10 questions.

that same thing happened to me. The way I fixed it is by using a technique called the flow, which is basically just using momentum and prolonging it as much as you can. It really did the trick for me, worked like a charm, but there are plenty of other techniques as well. I explained the flow technique on one of my other videos, which I'll leave somewhere over here and in the description in case you're interested. But you can try out the techniques such as the Pomodoro technique and see which one works best for you. All right, my fourth advice is to use a tailored approach to reviewing questions to develop more time with your questions that are actually more difficult for you and less time to the questions that pop up all the time and just restate everything you already know. That's why I created my own tailored approach to review questions, which is exactly what I'll walk you through right now. So, I divided the questions depending on how I felt while answering the question. So, there are three categories. The first one is the type of question in

which I was mostly lost there once where I read the stem and couldn't even figure out the diagnosis. Did you know what the hell was going on? I felt mostly guessing. The second were the ones in which I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, but I didn't feel 100% confident with the answer, like I wouldn't have bet my life on it. And finally, as a third category, were the questions in which I felt pretty confident, had everything under control, felt mostly like a repeated question. Now, for the first ones, I knew how to review the topic thoroughly, and so I usually took my time. I made sure to read both the main and complementary explanations, and I always asked myself the following question: if this concept were to appear with a different stem, am I sure I'd get it right? Like, just imagine for a second if the USMLE creators come down from the NBME heaven and tell you, Hey, you know what? In your exam, a question very similar to that one, the one that you have just

answered will pop up with a few twitches here and there. Would you scroll to the next question, or would you study it a little bit further? So think about that. But anyways, let's go on to the second type of question now. For those second ones, I usually just read the main explanation very thoroughly and skim through the complementary feedback. And finally, for the third type of question, I really just read their learning objective and skim through the whole explanation to see if there was anything big I missed. But most of the time, it was a matter of 20-40 seconds, really, really fast. Now, when you first start, most questions and most topics will fall naturally into the first category. That's okay, don't worry, completely normal. As you go through your prep, most questions will end up on the second or third category, and that's why you'll gain speed, you'll gain efficiency as your prep goes along. Now, my final word of advice will seem a bit contradictory, but it's totally honest, and it is to keep in mind what really

matters because I get it. We all want to be faster and more efficient, but if you're pursuing that, you're hindering your performance. You're missing the point. Remember, the test is not a measure of who finishes up faster; it's about who gets more questions correctly. That's your goal. Now, if you can improve a little bit of your efficiency by doing questions in tutor mode or by doing questions or by not taking notes, that's great. But if you're just rushing up through the stems, if you're just rushing out through the whole thing, you're missing the point. You're hindering your performance. You're hindering the thing that really matters. So, I don't know, keep that in mind. But anyways, that was it for the video. If you find it useful, make sure to leave a like and comment down below. That really helps me to continue uploading content such as this one completely free of charge for you guys. And if you want to stay tuned for more of my content, for more of my tips and tricks.

make sure to subscribe and click the bell. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you guys in the next video.

How To Study USMLE Questions FAST

Santiago AQ

Doing questions in "Twitter mode" for the first pass helps improve time management and concentration.

This approach sacrifices efficiency and the ability to pick up subtle details in the questions.

For the second pass, switching to exam mode can help enhance concentration and speed.

Taking notes may seem helpful, but it sacrifices efficiency and extends study time.

Reviewing notes can increase familiarity with the content, but it doesn't enhance comprehension, leading to a false sense of understanding.

Improving concentration skills is crucial for efficient studying, as losing focus can significantly extend the time needed to complete tasks.

Effective Techniques for Reviewing Questions

Using the flow technique to maintain momentum can be helpful in tackling difficult questions.

A tailored approach to reviewing questions, based on confidence levels, allows for more time on challenging ones and less on repetitive questions.

Dividing questions into three categories—lost, unsure, and confident—helps in determining the right review strategy for each.

The speaker categorizes questions into three types: those that require minimal study, those that need thorough reading of the main explanation, and those that only require a quick skim of the learning objective.

As preparation progresses, questions naturally shift from the first to the second and third category, leading to increased speed and efficiency.

The speaker emphasizes that the goal is to answer questions correctly, not to finish quickly, and advises against rushing through the material.

The speaker encourages viewers to subscribe and click the bell for notifications.

They express gratitude for the audience's support.

The speaker concludes by saying they will see the viewers in the next video.