The Best Way to do Math (Or Anything Else That Seems Hard)

I was fortunate to have quite a few good teachers back in high school. One awesome teacher was my math teacher. (How often do you hear that?) She once told us that one should aim to do an hour of math everyday rather than study long hours before a test. She said that one should aim to be so familiar with the work by the time that the test comes around, that one should take it easy the day before.

This is arguably the best study advice you’ll ever receive. Unfortunately, I didn’t always apply it. Consequently, I had a hard time with math (and other science courses) at university. I always ended up cramming the night before a test. There’s absolutely no way that you can hope to pass university math tests by starting to study the day before. I had way too many days of cramming and studying late during those years. And way too many fails. The consequence was a lot of self-inflicted pain and suffering. Turns out that this consistency thing is really important.

Doing math everyday is the best way to become skilled at math. It’s the best way because this consistency builds the mental math muscles much more efficiently than a single cram session. It gives you time to integrate various perspectives on the problems, and also reflect on things that might not be immediately apparent.

So, doing math everyday, is the best way to do math. But it’s also hard. Really, really hard. And I don’t mean it’s cognitively demanding hard. Math can be cognitively demanding. Sure. But that’s not what I mean here. I mean: doing math daily is hard because being consistent is hard.

Math isn’t easy but we make it harder than it needs to be because our approach is wrong. It’s hard when you cram. It’s hard when you expect to understand difficult concepts and procedures the day before a big test. Math, like many other things in life, requires practice and consistency. It involves applying yourself for an hour or two of focused effort every day. The hard part is learning to be consistent. But it is the best way to do math. And from what I’ve seen, the best way to do math, is the best way to do many other things. Learning an instrument. Learning a language. Finishing a book.

But even if being consistent is hard, we can still do it. We can start now; we can start small. We can get back on the wagon and try again. We can get a spreadsheet and log our hours. And if we have a math test to pass, we might spare ourselves the suffering of trying to understand large sections of the textbook the day before a test.