Make This Your Last Time

Here’s something that people who pass the bar exam never say:

“All I had to do was listen to all the bar course lectures and take a lot of notes. Just complete the course and you’ll pass!”

Sometimes we think “doing whatever it takes” to pass the bar exam means exhausting yourself and throwing 1000 hours and even more dollars into a black hole. (But it doesn’t have to be expensive.)

Or following some unsustainable cookie-cutter schedule that doesn’t care if you have a job or a family. Good luck if you fall behind by one day.

Or letting a perfectly fine morning slip through by religiously sitting through 4 hours of droning lectures. Worse, pausing lectures to fill in all the notes.

Then not even remembering 99% of it.

Rewinding the video for the 5th time because you can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire

I remember those days. All of those things above are things I stopped doing on my second attempt at preparing for the bar exam.

Let me guess. Is this your idea of bar prep?

• Listen to lectures while sitting still like a statue
• Pause to take notes and fill in the blanks (doubling the time it takes to finish the lectures)
• Re-read giant outlines you highlighted last week (osmosis didn’t work) before falling asleep with the lights on

It’s like you’re experiencing the most annoying part about traveling—sitting for hours next to someone who takes up the armrest even though they got the window seat.

And repeating this every day. Is this what Limbo is like?

You’re drained and demoralized because you’re trying to “study” but aren’t feeling a sense of progress as words and days pass by you.

But why are you trying to do this the hard way?