In all things, begin with the end in mind. This allows you to focus on the big picture when a world of minutiae tends to get people hung up.
That’s also my buzz word (and enemy) of the quarter: Minutiae. There are many ways to study for a big test, but I believe firmly that the worse way is to feel like you must know EVERY thing. I have been telling classmates that if you try learning everything, you miss important concepts or at least fail to reinforce them.
There is a principle called the Pareto principle (aka the 80/20 law) that about 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. For instance, Pareto was growing peas and found out that 80% of his peas were being grown from only 20% of his plants.
Which means that 80% of his plants, which he had to care for and watch over just as closely as his 20%, weren’t doing much good in the big picture. The same is true with studying for a boards exam. When I look at a new drug/disease/any concept, I like to do the following:
What are 2-3 things I will take away from this (sort of like, which plant out of these five will give me the greatest return of intellectual investment)? And then I move on. If I can nail those 2-3 IMPORTANT concepts, then knowing anymore than that is just gravy (but unnecessary)
This is not an excuse to be lazy. I will spend the SAME amount of time studying, but just ensuring I hit big ticket items first always.