How Do You Even Know You’re Practicing Correctly for Bar Prep?

They tell you to “study,” but do they ever teach you HOW to study? Are you studying correctly? Of course bar takers get lost when there are so many different ways to go about preparing.

You could try everything yourself, or you could find a few trustworthy sources and ignore the noise. You could pinpoint insights rather than cobble together information from random people with their own views (bar prep is personal).

Why?

  1. Too much conflicting information actually STOPS you from doing anything.
  2. I want the right insights, not just information. The information doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as it makes sense to me and gets me to do something about it.
  3. The more I respect the insight, the more likely I am to do something with it.

How do you know whether to trust someone? Trust yourself to know.

Some resources and advice will work for others, and some will work for you. Big bar review courses cater to the lowest common denominator. It’s like Olive Garden’s menu where there’s something for everyone but also the primary ingredient for everything is butter.

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How to Craft Your Own Study Schedule with a “Macro-managed” Plan

You’re filled with determination to study and get this thing over with… but how? Where do you even begin?

You may be lost and not sure where to start heading from here. Like you just ran into a dead-end in an unfamiliar part of town and your phone’s about to die (which is why I finally got a charger for my car after months of denial about how good my phone’s battery actually is).

Just as what’s enjoyable is personal, bar prep is also personal. Your study plan and schedule are personal.

Here’s a first step that will narrow down your routes and simplify the sudoku of choices…

First, you need a study plan. Plan before you need to. If it’s not in your bar study plan, it’s not happening.

Sample 4-week study schedule for bar prep
Sample 4-week study schedule from Passer’s Playbook. This should be a template that’s flexible to YOUR needs and without strict hour-by-hour timing.

I’ll show you how to craft a flexible timeline that works for you. Not the other way around. Not a strict preordained prophecy you must realize to open the iron gates into the bar.

Because if a study schedule is for everybody, then it’s for nobody.

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The Courage to Enjoy Your Mistakes Now

Our first date ended with her car getting towed.

She was the type of person to schedule her showers by the minute because of her absurd rotation schedule in med school. Yet she had taken three hours out of her life to meet me again for a second date.

I wanted to hold her hand so bad. A perfect pretext to see how she felt about me… that I ruined because I lacked three seconds of courage.

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How Do I Get Motivated to Study?

Man… I see this question more often than I want to. And if you look closely, it’s basically people just complaining that they don’t want to study.

How did they graduate law school? If finally becoming an attorney doesn’t entice them, I don’t know what to say. More like I hold back on giving a huge answer every time I see the question!

HOW do you get motivated? How DO you get motivated? How do you get MOTIVATED?

You don’t. Asking about it is just going to get you into a pity party with other people who also “don’t have motivation.” The blind leading the blind.

To be fair, it’s a gray area. Who wants to study for the bar exam?

You might as well moisturize your outlines with sandpaper because this exam is one of the driest, most boring things in existence. It’s natural to be uninterested if you’re looking at this huge, seemingly insurmountable goal—even if it is a high-stakes exam.

If you’re asking about motivation, though, don’t count on it to come to you first. “Motivation” and “inspiration” are fleeting. It comes and goes based on the situation, difficult to summon at will.

Keep reading to find out:

  • My answer to the titular question (or what doesn’t get you motivation)
  • 3 approaches to getting my own work done (and how you can apply this to your bar prep)
  • 5 productivity tactics (that don’t require you to give up on sleep)
Continue reading “How Do I Get Motivated to Study?”