Overwhelm, burnout, spinning plates. We all have it to varying degrees. How does anyone do it all?! (if this is you then please let me into your secret!) Add to all of this a CIPS qualification and it can all become a little too much.
The majority of our students were sitting CR exams in the last series and I heard the same refrain from student after student… “How am I ever going to remember all of this, it’s impossible!” and my response as always is, “It is possible, you just need to take it step by step.”
I can read your mind, dear reader, you may be thinking that doesn’t help the student who is stressing out, take it step by step what does that even mean?! Essentially it is similar to my mother’s response to me whenever I tell her I am stressed, she always without fail replies don’t be stressed it will all be ok. My brain instantly shouts but what if it’s not Linda!
However much I may be my mother’s daughter, in this specific instance I am not acting like Linda and providing meaningless platitudes, in fact, I have designed our CIPS Training at Business Academy Online to help students take it step by step. Here are a few tips to help those CIPS exams feel more manageable.
Stop focusing on all of the tasks
If you focus on all the tasks in your CIPS module at once your head will start to spin. Break it down into learning objectives, then further into learning outcomes and then into individual parts of the learning outcomes 1.1.1, 1.1.2 etc. Our resources are broken down into these chunks to aid you in this.
Create a daily revision timetable or study plan
Now you have broken down the syllabus, create a daily timetable, with small tasks on each day, rather than saving this up to do one long day where you sit for hours and get increasingly frustrated when you cannot remember anything. You can’t remember anything because you are putting a huge amount of cognitive load on your brain! We provide daily revision suggestions to students who request this.
Little and often is best with CIPS qualifications
I recommend setting yourself 25-30 mins per day, which you can complete in one sitting or spread it out across two sittings of 15 mins. It can be incredibly difficult to motivate yourself when you work on an hour or two hours. If it is a busy day, by the time you get back, you are most likely ready for bed or at least a nap! Psychologically it is less daunting to spend 15 mins, or 25 mins before stopping. You are more likely to do it. We have supported this with our micro videos, you can watch three or four and make notes in this time.
Plan your timing
Night owl? Early bird? Permanently exhausted pigeon? Find a time that works for you and stick to that. 25 minutes before work, on your lunch break or during your commute can mean that your weekends stay free, meaning that you will feel more refreshed and have a greater chance at remembering what you have learnt. Personally I like to get up early and get any learning done prior to emails starting flying through. The peace and quiet helps me feel less distracted, but this will not work for everyone – find what works for you.
Write strategic notes
Do not simply copy out of the book, or write down word for word what you have heard on a video in great detail. This is not helpful and will lead to 50,000 pages of notes that will add to the overwhelm. Bullet pointed notes on each learning outcome in your own words is the way to go, it will condense the notes and ensure you have covered every area you could be asked about on the exam. We provide this document for every module for all our students in our revision section.
I hope you find this useful, and to add to this, I have created a suggested study plan for L4M1 that can be adapted to any module (the activities relate to our system videos but you can amend them if you are not a student of ours) you can find this here for free!