Resolutions FAIL. Training Plans Don't.

Tonight, somewhere around midnight, a lot of busy professionals will raise a glass and say it out loud: "This is the year I take the Executive Assessment." Some of them will even mean it. Then January hits. The inbox fills up, a big project lands, the kids get sick, and the prep book that looked so promising on New Year's Day becomes a very expensive coaster.

I'll bet you've seen this movie before. Maybe with the gym. Maybe with a language app. Maybe with the EA itself, last year.

Here's the blunt verdict: "Study for the EA this year" is NOT a plan. It's a wish. Wishes don't have dates. They don't have start times. They don't tell you what to do on a Tuesday night when you're tired and the couch is calling. A training plan does. And the good news is that you can build one in under an hour, starting tomorrow.

First, know the event you're training for

You can't train for a race if you don't know the distance. So here's the Executive Assessment, or EA, as it stands today. It's made by GMAC, the same group that makes the GMAT, and it's built for Executive MBA programs. It runs 90 minutes, split into three 30-minute sections:

• Integrated Reasoning: 12 questions. These ask you to pull facts out of tables, graphs and several short sources at once, then make a call.
• Verbal Reasoning: 14 questions, mixing Sentence Correction (fix the grammar and meaning of a sentence), Critical Reasoning (pick apart a short argument) and Reading Comprehension (answer questions about a passage).
• Quantitative Reasoning: 14 questions, mixing Problem Solving (regular multiple choice math) and Data Sufficiency (you decide whether the facts given are ENOUGH to answer a question, without always solving it).

Each section is scored 0 to 20, the total runs from 100 to 200, and all three sections count the SAME. There's no essay. The test is adaptive section by section, which means how you do on the first part of a section shapes how hard the rest of that section gets. You can read the full breakdown on GMAC's assessment structure page.

Stop for a second and look at that list again. Three sections, equal weight. Now ask yourself: which one were you planning to ignore? Because most people have one. And that's the first crack in a wish.

The forced choice

You have to decide what you want MORE: a few free evenings this winter, or a strong EA score and a real shot at your program. You can't have both at full strength. That isn't a punishment. It's just math. The people who hit their goal score aren't more gifted than you. They made the trade on purpose, in writing, before the first hard week showed up.

Turning the wish into a plan: four pieces

1. A test date. Booked. Not "sometime in spring."

A deadline you haven't booked is a suggestion. Go to the EA registration page, look at the dates near you, and pick one. Then work backward. Once the date is real, every week has a job, and "I'll start next week" stops sounding reasonable.

2. Days and times. Specific ones.

"I'll study a few nights a week" is how a few nights become zero. Pick the actual days and the actual start times. Put them in your calendar like a meeting with your boss. And be honest about what that calendar can really hold; if you've ever believed you had more free time than you did, read Your Calendar Is LYING to You before you fill it in.

3. A question type for every session

Sitting down with "I'll do some EA stuff" wastes the first 15 minutes deciding what stuff. Every session gets a target BEFORE it starts. Say you're up early on weekdays. A week might look like this:

Your days and times will be different. The point is that NOTHING in the plan says "study." Every row says WHAT.

4. Practice tests as checkpoints, not training

A full practice test is a measuring device. It tells you roughly where you are and where you're leaking points. It does NOT make you a better test taker. The review afterward does that. Space them out, never more than one a week, and spend more time reviewing a test than taking it.

The mistakes I watch people make every January

1. Starting with a two-hour marathon on day one. You feel heroic, then you're wiped out and skip the next three days. INSTEAD: start with sessions short enough that you'd be embarrassed to skip them. Grow them later.
2. Studying only the section you like. The Quant person does Quant. The reader does Reading Comprehension. All three sections are weighted the same, so a section you skip is a third of your score left on the table. INSTEAD: every section gets at least one session a week, and your weakest gets two.
3. Doing new questions forever. Racing through hundreds of questions feels productive. It isn't. INSTEAD: redo the ones you missed until you can explain WHY the right answer is right and why each wrong one is wrong.
4. Working in your head. You're a smart professional. You do math in meetings. That doesn't matter here. Little mistakes live inside the work you didn't write down. INSTEAD: take notes on every question, every time, in practice, so it's automatic on test day.
5. Letting one missed session kill the plan. A bad week happens. Quitting because of it is a choice. INSTEAD: missed a session? The next scheduled one still happens. No guilt, no "make up" marathon.

Try one, the way you'll train

Here's a Problem Solving question in the EA's Quant style. Notes on paper. No mental math.

Notice what happened there. No fancy algebra. Clear notes, then test the answers, then a quick check. That's the habit your sessions are supposed to build, one question type at a time.

Your challenge for tomorrow

Not next Monday. Tomorrow. January 1st. Before you check email or watch a single bowl game, do these three things:

1. Open the registration page and pick your test date.
2. Open your calendar and block your sessions for the next four weeks, with a day, a start time and a question type in every block.
3. Do ONE short session. Twenty questions of anything, with full notes, then review every miss.

That's it. By tomorrow night, you won't have a resolution anymore. You'll have a training plan that's already started. Which one do you think is still alive on February 1st?