Understanding the rushing problem

A student gets a question wrong. He finds that he had missed a piece of information in the question. That caused him to answer incorrectly. He thinks about it and says, “I rushed.” And the solution: “Next time, I’ll slow down.”

Sound familiar at all?

If it does, I have two questions:

1. Have you ever sat down at your study table and decided: “Ok, today I am going to rush”, or “It is ok to rush”?

I don’t think we consciously intend to rush. I don’t think we decide to rush. I think we end up rushing. It’s something that happens to us.

2. Have you ever known while in the middle of attempting a question that you’re rushing?

Mind you: I’m not asking about what you figure out or realise later. I’m asking you do you sometimes realise in the moment that you’re rushing?

From what I have seen with myself and an absolute majority of students, we are rarely aware in the moment that we are rushing. It is not a conscious decision or a conscious action. It is often a post-facto analysis. Something in past tense: “I rushed.” or more accurately: “I might have rushed.” It is a speculation. To realise that “I am rushing” is extremely rare in what I have seen. (Would love to hear your thoughts about this.)

So a solution like “Don’t rush next time.” is useless. I don’t intend to rush. I don’t know when I’m rushing. So, how will telling myself to not rush help me?

Before I go further down this rabbit hole, let me take a step back and define rushing. I want to ensure we agree what rushing means and that rushing is bad. Also, I’m only talking about rushing in the context of attempting questions here. We rush through things at multiple level. E.g. a lot of students try to rush through their entire GMAT prep. And as a result, end up taking even more time than they otherwise would have taken. This post is not about rushing your prep. It is about rushing while attempting practice questions.

What “rushing” really means

I’m defining ‘rushing’ a specific way here. Rushing, for me, doesn’t mean going quickly. Rushing, the way I see it, is going too fast. Not very fast, mind you. Too fast. They’re different. ‘Too fast’ means going faster than the situation safely allows.

If I’m on a highway with a speed limit of 100 km/h, driving at 90 km/h isn’t “too fast.” But if I’m on a narrow, winding road with a speed limit of 20, even 30 km/h could be too fast. What’s a fair speed to drive at would be determined by three things:

• My driving skill level
• The speed limit in the area
• The road conditions

If I’m not a skilled driver, the speed that other cars are driving at could be too fast for me.

If the road conditions are bad – a lot of traffic, rain, fog – I would need to be very deliberate, patient and attentive with my driving. In such a situation, even driving at the official speed limit could be driving too fast.

So, again, rushing doesn’t simply mean going fast. Rushing is about going faster than you should have gone.

If you’re giving yourself less time than you need to properly handle the question, you’re rushing.

And so, I wish to establish one point that I’d like for you to agree with:

Rushing is bad.

Let’s get this out of the way: rushing is never the solution.

Yes, yes I know that GMAT is a timed test. Moreover, the time limits are quite stringent. So, yes – we need to work fast. But, I I’ll never prioritise speed over accuracy. The goal is to go at such a pace such that I’m able to manage the time well, yet I‘ll not compromise on accuracy while doing this.

Even in a timed test in which the time limit is quite stringent, rushing is bad. The real aim is to maintain accuracy while working within the time limits. Rushing is what happens when our pace doesn’t match the demands of the problem – that causes accuracy to dip. I don’t want that.

e.g. Of course, the ideal situation is that you do all the questions within the time limit in a smooth manner – no rushing. But, if it is about choosing between

• doing 15 questions properly
• or doing 20 questions in a rushed manner

I’d rather you choose the easiest 15 questions and do them well with a chance of say 80% accuracy than do 20 questions in a rushed manner with a chance of say 50% accuracy.

So, I hope I have convinced you:

Rushing doesn’t help in a timed environment.

But I didn’t even need to go that far, actually. Practice exams and timed environment all come later. Before that your goal to learn. To try to improve. To get better. And to get better at any skill, we don’t focus on speed. Speed is not a skill. Speed is an outcome of getting skilled. Therefore how long a question is taking should not even be a factor to consider during learning phase. The way to learn to drive is not to focus on speed at all initially. Who learns to drive thinking: “I eventually need to drive on roads with speed limit of 60 km/h, so I even need to learn driving at 60 km/h.”? No one. When your goal is to understand something deeply, you take as long as it takes. Ten minutes on a question? Fine. Thirty minutes? Also fine. There is no upper limit. Speed is a consequence of being skilled. It’s not a skill in itself.

In your initial stage of prep, speed should anyway not be a concern. Therefore, you should anyway not be rushing to try to save time.

Rushing causes us to not notice/ register things that I might otherwise do. Rushing causes us to make more mistakes. Rushing causes us to feel unclear about why an answer choice is correct or incorrect. Rushing causes us to not learn as much as we could from each question. Rushing is bad. We should try to get rid of rushing. But a solution like: “Anish, you should stop rushing” is useless. In the moment, I’m rarely aware that I’m rushing. I anyway know that rushing is bad. So, just stating: “Don’t rush.” has no teeth. Zero value.

So, how to get rid of an unconscious act that I anyway don’t intend to commit?

For that, let’s understand: why do we rush?

Why do we rush?

From what I’ve seen, rushing tends to creep in for three main reasons:

1. Things feel manageable

The given information feels simple enough, the path forward seems straightforward, so you just keep moving. No pause to check for nuance, no double-checking.

While the common notion might be – ‘I need to rush. It is a timed test. Moreover, the time limit is quite stringent. I need to rush to maximise my score.’

I don’t agree with this reasoning. I don’t think people rush simply because of time pressure. I think they rush because they think that they’re able to manage.

If I compare,

• attempting 15 out of 20 questions with 80% accuracy
• v/s attempting 20 questions with 50% accuracy

I’d get 12 correct in the first case and 10 in the latter.

But, I think in the moment our thinking often is: I can manage to do 20 questions somehow with 70% accuracy. I think this is one core reason we rush. We don’t think it’s really harming us.

2. You feel uncomfortable

You see a question from a topic you’re not confident in – probability, inequalities, whatever – and your subconscious reaction is: “I don’t want to be here.” The urge is to escape as quickly as possible.

Sometimes it’s not even topic weakness. The question’s worded oddly, you can’t decipher it clearly, and the discomfort makes you want to get it over with.

3. It’s become a habit

Over time, the first two reasons train you into a certain pace – one that’s based on how fast your eyes can read, not how fast your brain can think. You start reading and solving on autopilot, regardless of what the question actually demands.

So, how to tackle rushing

I’ll address the three reasons I’ve mentioned above individually, and then I’ll give a suggestion that I believe should help with avoiding rushing for all three underlying reasons.

When things feel simple

1. Rushing has a significant impact. If the difference between rushing and not rushing were negligible (e.g. 70% v/s 80% accuracy) perhaps it wouldn’t be a big deal. But, it doesn’t work that way. Rushing has a significant impact – a significant negative impact. So, stop giving yourself permission to rush. Stop justifying rushing.
2. Your eyes will always be able to move faster than your brain can process. The trick is to let your brain set the pace. Don’t move on when things feel “good enough.” Move on when they’re fully digested. Basically, after every chunk of information, pause to process it. Then kind of check-in with your brain: “Have you understood properly? Any confusion? Should I move ahead?” And move ahead only when you get favourable answers from your brain. If you move ahead when things are ‘decent’ and ‘manageable’, but not fully processed you might still be able to come up with the right answer. But if you get multiple ‘jerks’ in which there is some confusion that lingers, these confusions will stack on top of each other and compound the problem.

E.g. does the following happen to you sometimes?

You start reading a Reading Comprehension passage. You start off decently well. The initial few sentences make manageable sense. But as you go further and further, you keep getting more and more lost. So much so that by the time you reach the end of the passage, you basically have no clue what went on in the passage.

If yes, that’s a side-effort of multiple micro-confusions stacking together and the confusion getting compounded.

Think of it like mashing food for a baby. When my wife and mother fed bananas to my then-4-month-old son, they didn’t stop mashing when it was mostly smooth. They made sure there wasn’t a single lump left. That’s what you want when you’re reading – no lumps left behind. Everything processed comfortably and to as much depth as you can go.

When you feel uncomfortable

Step one is awareness. Just knowing that ‘my natural reaction to discomfort is to rush’ will help you resist it.

If you see a wet floor, do you try to sprint across it? Probably not. You walk carefully, making sure each step is steady before you take the next.

A messy, complicated question is a wet floor. Move through it the same way – deliberately and patiently. In my practice, when I come across a question that is from a topic I don’t feel comfortable with,

1. I’ll start with bringing that to my awareness – this is a question from that uncomfortable topic. I tend to rush and often make careless errors in such questions.
2. I’ll then go consciously slower than my regular pace.
3. Along the way I’ll explain things to myself as though I’m explaining to an 11-year-old
4. If I come across a portion that’s confusing, I’ll not assume that things will get clarified later and just move on. I’ll pause to try to resolve the confusion, or at least take a call.
5. (In a timed environment, there’s even a step before these – I might within 30-40 seconds take a call: “This question seems fairly difficult. I might get it if I try. But, I’m already running 2 minutes behind in time. Even to attempt this question will take me over 3 minutes. I think I’ll bookmark it for now, and come back to it later if time permits in the end. If anyway I run out of time in the end, good that I didn’t spend time on this difficult question.”) Note: I’m not asking you to always skip such questions. I’m asking you to take an executive decision based on the situation in the test.

When it’s a habit

Just like any habit, to break it, you’ll need to work on it consciously. The change will probably be gradual and with missteps. Even if you’re trying to fix the issue, you’ll probably repeat the same mistakes. Be kind with yourself. Changing habits take time.

Now, imagine you have to walk across a room. If you can see the floor is wet, you’ll naturally walk more carefully than usual. But what if you’re blindfolded and told the floor could be wet or dry?

Your default way of walking would be cautious, no?

That’s exactly what I recommend for the GMAT – in Quant, Verbal, and Data Insights.

Assume the floor is wet.

Always.

Read as if you could miss something. Solve as if you could make a subtle mistake. It is not about being paranoid. It is about awareness – awareness about how your brain works. Say a student has the following experience:

• ‘I often get questions wrong because I don’t register certain pieces of information.’
• And, ‘I often end up making careless errors while solving.’

The key for the student is to be aware that these are the kind of non-conscious mistakes I make. And so, the solution needs to be such that it doesn’t wait for a trigger. ‘I’ll not start becoming careful after I slip once. I’ll be alert and attentive from the start.’

There’s an ideal pace, and then there’s your pace

There isn’t a one-speed-works-for-all approach. There isn’t a universal pace that’s ok for all test-takers. That depends on your level.

There isn’t a universal pace that’s ok for every question. That depends on the question and the situation. If the question is more complex, you’ll need longer. If you’re exhausted or feeling anxious, you’ll need longer.

You have to figure out the right pace for yourself. A pace at which you consciously ensure that you are registering and processing all the given information, and you are deliberate and conscious in the way you try to solve the question.

Say following these steps takes you 4 minutes per question on average. There isn’t a shortcut to suddenly reach 2 minutes per question. Either you work on the skills to get better and as a consequence faster, or you understand the significant hit accuracy would take if you try to answer questions in 2 minutes each when you know you need 4 minutes to do them well. Putting a stricter deadline will not magically make you faster.

The target is improvement, not perfection.

1. Do not rush. So that you can do the best you can and learn the most you can from each question.
2. Focus on developing the relevant skills. That requires patience.

My suggestion: assume that the question is complex. Give yourself time to comfortably digest all the given information. Give yourself time to systematically think about how to solve the question. Give yourself time to analyse the question once you’ve attempted it.

As you keep doing this, you’ll keep getting more skilled. As you keep getting more skilled, you’ll naturally get faster.

The more you focus on speed, the more you’ll rush. —> Bad!

The more you focus on developing the skills, the less you’ll rush, the better and faster you’ll get as a consequence. —> Good!

What’s been your experience with rushing? How often has rushing been the reason you got a question wrong?