Quality versus Quantity

Recently in a conversation with a very good friend of mine, he mentioned something about knowing your limits and that people should learn to do things in great quality and not in great quantity. Though I have heard of this sentence for many times, do we ever really bother to heed the lesson that the sentence is trying to tell us? I'd think that due to our very human nature, we are never satisfied with what we have learnt. Instead we continue learning the same thing not because we are really interested, but because we really want to score well for exams. Then i realised that this practice has only brought about negative consequences in my academic life and that it is something we should all learn to stop.

We all know that the key to strengthen our weakest subject lies in the art of long term practicing repeatedly over and over again so that we can familiarize with the theories behind the chapter and thus being able to excel in it. However, has anyone of us ever considered that the more we study in a day the more we begin to lose focus? After all, nobody ever told us that 'long-term' meant great amounts of time at one go. We should all begin to realise what we as students can absorb in a span of time, and understand our limits. I understand that limits are something that prevents you from soaring into greater heights, but you have to know that life is cruel; the more you struggle to get something you want, the harder you seem to get it.

Until now, even I myself do not really understand my limits. All I really ever do is to study last minute and end up getting mediocre results. Never let yourself go over your limit, because one must know how to control yourself to be studying efficiently and effectively rather than struggling to absorb everything from the textbook that eventually becomes an unconducive waste of time and effort. After that chat with my friend, I begin to realise the fact that practicing for three hours a day may be better than studying for ten ours a day. It all lies in one key factor - focus.

You can brag all you want that you can study and focus for two hundred and seventy seven hours a day, but i believe that one will sooner or later be distracted by other activities be it physically or mentally. I think that nobody can ever force themselves to focus, because focus comes naturally once you learn to prioritize, like what i have mentioned in my previous post. However, focus can never be forever. It only is effective for the first three or four hours of your revision/study. Once that runs out, your body will signal you to stop and take a rest. If you decide against it, what ever you study after that period of time will actually be futile. It is an often experience that i get when i go to my tuition and it feels like just giving up on studying for an hour or two to relax. Although during exam times this feeling may cause even greater frustration because you really need to study to get all the facts in your head, but get this right - Studying and revising should be done long ago at home.

I know i sound like i'm bragging but i'm not. I myself is a victim of the quality versus quantity syndrome and I still cannot find a way to balance all of this together. The reason I am writing here is to share my experience with you people, and hopefully get you to share your experience with me, be it whether you agree or not. I need to balance my work and leisure properly to get myself up and going, ready all the time.

I need to get started on my homework. It isn't much but i still have to do it, apologies if i haven't been writing very often lately. I just went back to school and things need to buffer.