I was playing cricket with my then four-year-old son. He was batting, but he kept missing the ball. I gave him gentle instructions: “Keep your eye on the ball,” “Move your feet closer to where it’s bouncing,” and so on. But nothing seemed to stick. (Not that I minded much – he was four.) Yet, he knew all about boundaries, fours, and sixes, and was determined to smash every ball out of the park. And so, in trying to hit every ball for a four or a six, he wasn’t even connecting with many balls.

Then I changed the rules slightly. I told him, “Every time your bat touches the ball, you automatically score a run. Boundaries are a bonus.” Suddenly, without further instruction, he did everything I had been suggesting. He watched the ball closely, adjusted his feet according to the bounce, and connected bat with ball far more often. In fact, as a result, he scored more boundaries than before too.

It was a fascinating exercise for me. What I thought were the fundamentals of batting – hand-eye coordination, footwork, etc were actually not. There was a layer underneath these things – incentives. Once I incentivised simply connecting ball with bat, the hand-eye coordination and footwork started falling into place.

The big takeaway was clear:

What we reward is what gets done. 

So, why am I telling you this?

Because even in GMAT prep often incentives are not aligned. Sure, your ultimate goal is a high GMAT score, and for that, you should target high accuracy in your practice. But initially, accuracy isn’t what you should focus on – it’s clarity.

Many of you are in the same position as my son. You’re swinging for that 705 on every question, and the pressure to be accurate is probably making you miss the fundamental connections.
For the initial stage of your prep, I want you to change the incentive. Your goal is not accuracy; it’s clarity. Accuracy is the eventual outcome, but clarity is the process that gets you there. So, let’s start tracking clarity.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

A training technique for verbal questions
When you are reviewing questions (and not in a timed exam scenario), your goal is to build absolute clarity on every single answer choice. Try this exercise:

• For each answer choice (A, B, C, D, E), make an independent decision. Is it correct or incorrect? State your reason.
• Do not compare options or “park” any for later. Force yourself to find the specific reason why A is wrong, why B is wrong, why C is correct, and so on.
  You might end up thinking three options are correct, or that none are. That’s the point! That feeling of confusion shows you exactly where your lack of clarity is. This exercise, while not a test-day strategy, builds the foundational understanding that makes you fast and decisive under pressure.
  
  A new approach for Quant & Data Insights
  
• For Quant: Before you jump into algebra, try to reason out the logic. Then, as a separate exercise, try to solve the problem using the answer choices (e.g., backsolving). By seeing the problem from multiple angles, you deepen your understanding of how it’s built. The goal isn’t just to find the answer but to understand different path to it so you can then evaluate which one was the most efficient.
  
• For Data Insights: For the non-math questions (like MSR), apply the same “independent decision” rule from Verbal. For math-based questions, focus on the logic behind the prompt before creating equations. What is the question really asking for?
  
  Track Confusion, Not Just Errors
  To make this tangible, it’s time to upgrade your error log into a “Confusion Log.”
  An error log only tracks what you got wrong. A confusion log tracks what you weren’t sure about, even if you got the question right. Add a field to your error confusion log called “Clarity” and rate it:
• 100%: You knew the answer, the reasoning, and why all other choices were wrong. Rock solid.
• 75%: You were confident, but maybe one other option looked tempting.
• 50%: You narrowed it down to two and made an educated guess.
• 25%: You were mostly lost and your choice was a shot in the dark.
• 0%: You had no idea where to even begin.

Any question that isn’t at 100% clarity – even if you answered it correctly – is a candidate to dive deeper on. This is where your real learning begins. Revisit such questions every couple of weeks. See if things are getting clearer. (A good idea could also be to bookmark such questions on GMATClub while you are attempting them – even before you click on your answer to find out whether you answered them correctly.
The point of all this is simple: accuracy and speed are natural byproducts of clarity. As your understanding becomes clearer, you will spend less time feeling confused or second-guessing yourself. You’ll stop falling for “trap answers”.

Have the right incentives in your practice

Along the same lines, do not target a number of questions to practice in a day. Target quality hours. And then in those hours, your goal should not be to practice as many questions as you can, the goal should be to develop clarity in as many as you can – even if that means spending over 30 minutes on individual questions.

Have the right incentives for accuracy and practice tests

Focus on improvement and not distance from your target accuracy or score. If your accuracy has gone up in a section, that is worth celebrating – even if there is room for improvement.

Here are some more key areas of GMAT prep where you can apply the principle of “having the right incentives,” moving the focus from a stressful outcome to a productive process.

Taking mock tests

• The Wrong Incentive: “My score must go up on every mock test.”
• This is probably the single biggest source of anxiety for students. It treats the mock test as a final judgment rather than what it is: a diagnostic tool. This pressure leads to panic during the test if things go badly, and demotivation if the score dips, even for reasonable reasons – like trying a new strategy, changing the order of the sections.
• The Right Incentive: “For this mock, my goal is to execute a specific strategy perfectly.”
• This reframes the entire experience from a pass/fail test of your worth into a scientific experiment. The incentive is now on process, not outcome. Examples of process-based goals for a mock test could be:
  • Timing Strategy: “My goal is to make a strategic ‘guess and move on’ decision on at least two hard questions in the first half of the Quant section.”
  • Endurance: “My goal is to remain just as focused on question #23 of Verbal as I was on question #1.”
  • I should try to be in control of the test. I will get questions wrong. That’s not a problem. I should use the bookmark feature to not sink too much time into questions that are visibly hard and/ or lengthy.
    
    By rewarding the execution of a plan, the score becomes a secondary data point, not the primary measure of success. This lowers anxiety and leads to much more useful data from the mock.

Learning new concepts

• The Wrong Incentive: “I need to finish the Number Properties module by this weekend.”
• This incentivizes speed and how much you cover over understand. The student can read all the pages and watch all the videos but retain very little. Such a ‘checklist mentality’ leads to shallow learning.
• The Right Incentive: “I will focus on understanding every aspect properly. Even if that means taking more than a week. I will not evaluate how much I have done. I will evaluate how clear I feel about the topic.”

Focus on the bat hitting the ball. The fours, the sixes, and your final GMAT score will follow.

You’ll probably find this article on how to set right goals in your GMAT prep relevant: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/struggling-runner-importance-setting-right-goals-anish-passi/

And, I talk more about importance of clarity here: https://thegmatco.com/dont-just-get-it-right-get-it/

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