sachindia wrote:Hi Ron,
You have been saying that we shouldn't burn our mind out while studying as it doesn't help build lateral connections needed for success on GMAT , especially on CR and RC sections.
How else do we prepare for the 4 hour marathon GMAT?
ok, i see what you're doing with this question, but you're confusing two different pairs of concepts.
1/
you're confusing a large volume
in a single effort with a large volume of
total preparation.
perhaps ironically, your own choice of the word "marathon" helps to explain why this confusion matters. in particular, the marathon is a really, really long running race -- about 26 miles, plus a little bit -- but even world-class marathon runners don't even come close to logging that many miles every day. (even though the marathon is over 26 miles long, most world-class marathon runners only run about 50 to 100 miles per week in training.) if they actually tried to run 26 (or more!) miles per day, they'd be headed for surgery, not the finish line.
also, marathon runners do with their bodies exactly the same thing you should do with your brain: they reduce their training as the big race day approaches, so that they can be fresh. in fact, that principle applies across virtually all human endeavors.
2/
MORE IMPORTANTLY
this is where the marathon analogy breaks down, but the real issue is that you are confusing two completely different mental tasks:
learning and
doing things.
* when it comes to
learning -- as in actually absorbing concepts that the mind will be able to manipulate, not unthinking memorization -- the adult human brain burns out pretty quickly.
with the exception of certain people with very unusual brains, adult humans can't effectively learn things for more than a few hours in a day -- usually up to 4-5 hours in a day. and that's a figure for people who are perfectly well-rested and have essentially zero stress in their lives (in other words, people who can focus all of their mental energy on learning); for people who are sleep-deprived, tired, or extremely busy, the figure is lower.
* on the other hand, when it comes to
doing stuff, people can basically do
that until they drop from exhaustion, with surprisingly little decrement in performance until you get to the point of epic sleep deprivation (like, the point at which people fall asleep even though they are standing up). so, for instance, even though you can't spend more than a couple of hours a day
learning NEW chemistry, your brain is perfectly capable of spending 16 straight hours on that lab report you've put off until tonight that is due tomorrow. you can't spend more than a few hours a day learning how the tax code works, but you can totally spend 20 straight hours doing your taxes before you rush off to the airport post office to postmark them at 11:59 p.m. on tax day. etc.
the simple fact is that taking the test itself isn't a learning task; it's a "doing" task. therefore, the length of that task is completely independent of the number of hours you spend trying to learn, since learning is a whole different game. in other words, even if the gmat were 10 hours long, you would still not want to spend any more time studying than you would for the current incarnation of the exam.
--
on the other hand, there is one sense in which this thinking
is valid, and that's the sense of
practicing purely for the sake of endurance/timing.
when your exam is decently close -- say, a week or so away -- if you find that timing is a major issue, you should take a couple of practice tests for the sole purpose of practicing and cementing your timing strategy. (if your timing is already good, there's not too much of a reason to do this.)
when you take these tests, you should spend very little time reviewing them; after all, the test is only a week away, so the whole "learning" thing is just about wrapped up at that point. instead, the point is simply to become accustomed to the actual time management involved in the exam.
So life's pretty gr8! 
