Multitasking on Analytical Section

Multitasking is doing more than one thing at the same time. It is inevitable and not always bad in the real world. For example, I am pretty adept at walking and chewing gum, or even walking and talking at the same time. Neither of the tasks in these pairs uses the same skills or the same part of the brain; only one of the two requires much (or any) concentration. Now imagine you had to do two tasks simultaneously, both of which required the same mental resources. Could you recite poetry while reading the newspaper? Maybe, but only if the poetry were gobbledygook, or you didn't really pay attention to what you were reading. The same problem arises when you do two tasks that both require concentration. You can walk and talk, but could you walk on slippery ice while closing an important business deal?

On the Analytical Reasoning section, every task uses the same part of the brain – they are all logic based – and every task requires a decent amount of concentration. Doing more than one task at a time on logic questions means that you'll do each task slower and less accurately than you would normally. Multitasking doesn't save you time, it slows you down. Multitasking is a great Analytical Reasoning sin, and it comes up in a variety of ways, such as thinking about what you are going to do for the next step in a question before you've finished the step you are on, or in trying to combine a rule with other rules while you are still writing it down.

Not knowing what to do

It's perfectly OK to look at a question and not know what the answer is. Finding the answer takes time and working through a process – you don't get answers just by looking. However, given that there are a relatively small number of question types for the Analytical Section, and each type is always answered in the same way, there is no excuse for not knowing the next step to take at any given stage of the section.

This doesn't mean that you have to be able to look at a question logic and know exactly how everything fits together. It doesn't mean that you have to look at a question and know what the answer is. You are going to have to work through a system; you are going to have to figure things out slowly and carefully. But, you should know exactly how to do that, and you will, because I'm going to teach you.