6 ways to significantly improve your work life balance

Juggling work, revision and home life is the single biggest challenge for many CIMA students.

I was recently counseling a CIMA student who was struggling with getting this balance right. He was a committed rugby player as well as a father of two small children. Combined with a busy job in the finance team of a large multi-national corporation, his CIMA revision seemed like a step too far in his busy schedule. He found that not only was his revision going badly, he was not managing any of the key parts of his life successfully. He was heading for problems!

This reminded me of many conversations I have had with Accountancy students over the 15 years I've been teaching.

Of course there is no simple answer, but there are some steps that can be followed to help students to get the balance right and be successful in their CIMA exams.

Here are my six key tips:

Don't make this big mistake!

I was recently approached by a worried student who was struggling to remember his theory. He was spending hours reading the CIMA Study Text but simply couldn't remember what he'd just read - nothing was going in! He talked me through his revision technique and basically we soon released that he didn't have a strategy. He simply spent hours reading through the CIMA Study Text over and over again. 

His biggest mistake was that he was not taking notes. I suggested that he should spend one hour on a specific subject annotating the text and capturing the key points as he went along. I am pleased to say that he was quickly able to take me through the CIMA subject in great detail much to his own surprise!

Sometimes it isn't enough to simply read through a piece of text - in my experience you have to take things a step further like this student did. Take notes as you go along. The process of reading a portion of text and then translating this into a written note helps your brain to consume and understand the information. It also helps you to remember it at a later date.

To help you do this really well, here are 8 simple but effective note-taking tips:

Model, Average or Disaster Student... Which one are you?

People regularly use the term “The Model Student” within the education industry when describing what the ideal student would do when passing their exams with top marks.

However, the idea of the model student can seem a bit out of reach for some students, as they may think that they will never get to that level.

I wanted to explore the idea of the model student therefore, in order to try and work out what really makes the perfect student within the accountancy world, with the hope of potentially inspiring a few students to reach that little bit further within their own studies to achieve the best that they possibly can.

To start off with however, we need to give the model student term a little bit more context. So let's first look at what makes an average student.

3 tips to make your revision fun and effective (yes I said fun!)

CIMA revision is of course very important - but are we guilty of making our approach a bit too serious?

It goes without saying that all students really want to pass their CIMA exams - so it's important to make sure your revision is as effective as possible. After all, it's a serious matter!

However, there is often a misconception that revision can't also be enjoyable. 

With that in mind, here are three tips that could not only make your revision more fun, they could also make your revision more effective!