I used to make a plan every January.
It always looked great on paper. One hour every morning before work. Weekends for practice exams. By March I’d be ready to schedule something. By February 15th I’d already abandoned it.
Busy season doesn’t care about your study plan. It shows up, it expands to fill every hour you thought you had, and then it takes the hours you didn’t think it could reach. And if you’re in public accounting, you already know this. You’ve lived this. Possibly multiple times.
So here’s what I stopped doing: I stopped trying to study normally during busy season. I stopped treating it like a regular month with more work in it. It isn’t. It’s a different season entirely, and it needs a different strategy.
The shift that actually helped
Busy season isn’t the time to learn new material. It’s the time to maintain ground you’ve already taken.
If you go into busy season with zero foundation, you’re going to struggle. But if you’ve already got some coverage — even rough, early-stage coverage — busy season becomes about reinforcement, not conquest.
5 questions keeps the material alive in your brain. It keeps the habit alive. And it keeps you from having to restart from zero in April when busy season ends.
The myth of the perfect study session
Every piece of CPA advice assumes you have two uninterrupted hours in a quiet room. That’s not most people’s reality in January. It’s definitely not mine when I was working 60-hour weeks and still trying to make progress on FAR.
The hard truth is that one focused five-minute session actually happening beats one imaginary two-hour session that keeps getting pushed. A small rep that occurs is infinitely more valuable than a big rep that doesn’t.
What to actually do during busy season
Drop lecture videos entirely. You don’t have the bandwidth to absorb new frameworks when you’re mentally maxed. Use that time for multiple choice only — specifically, topics you’ve already covered.
Keep a rotation tight. Pick two or three categories and drill them. Don’t try to cover everything. If you try to cover everything during busy season, you’ll cover nothing.
Let weekends be variable. If you get a good Saturday morning, use it for a longer session. If you don’t, don’t guilt-spiral. Guilt-spiraling during busy season is how people quit entirely in March.
The real goal
The goal during busy season isn’t to make massive progress. The goal is to not lose what you had.
That might feel like lowering the bar. It isn’t. Staying in the game when life is actively making it hard to stay in the game is one of the hardest things about this exam. Most people don’t lose to the material. They lose to the interruptions.
Don’t let busy season be your interruption.
Keep the material alive today.
Five questions is enough to stay in the game when work is winning.