The Holidays Will EAT Your Study Plan

Here's a scene I watch play out every single December. A working professional looks at the calendar on the first of the month and says, "Work slows down over the holidays. I'll get a TON of studying done." Then the office party lands on a Tuesday. A cousin flies in. The kids are home from school. Someone needs a ride to the airport at 6 a.m. And on January 2, that same person opens their notes and can't remember how to set up a simple rate question.

I'll bet you've already made that promise to yourself. Maybe this morning.

So here's the blunt truth: "I'll study over the break" is NOT a plan. It's a wish. December won't take your study time in one big bite. It nibbles. Twenty minutes here, an evening there, until the whole month is gone and you have nothing to show for it. The good news is that this is fixable, and the fix is smaller than you think.

The holidays don't steal your time. They steal your RHYTHM.

Missing one day of study is not the problem. Missing nine days in a row is. The skills you're building for the Executive Assessment (the EA, the test GMAC makes for Executive MBA programs) are not facts you memorize once. They're habits. Reading an argument and spotting the gap in it. Setting up a word problem on paper before you touch the numbers. Those habits work like a tennis swing. Stop swinging for three weeks and the first few shots in January will go into the net.

Stop and think about this for a second. When was the last time you had a quiet, truly free three-hour block in December? Not a block that's "free if I skip the thing." An actually free one. I'll bet you can't name one from last year. Which means a plan built on big blocks is a plan built on something that doesn't exist.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It's the same problem we wrote about when your routine breaks earlier this year. Life changes shape. Your training has to change shape with it, not disappear.

Why 30 minutes is the magic number

Look at how the EA is built. According to GMAC's page on the test structure, it's 90 minutes long, split into three sections of 30 minutes each:

Your total lands between 100 and 200, and all three sections count the SAME. That last part matters. Integrated Reasoning (questions that make you pull facts out of tables, charts and short passages) is worth exactly as much as Quant. You can't skip it all month and hope.

Now notice the number: 30 minutes. One real section of the EA is 30 minutes. So a 30-minute session isn't a "lite" version of studying. It's the exact length of the event you're training for. You can get one done before work, at lunch, or while the turkey rests. Rotate them: Quant one day, Verbal the next, Integrated Reasoning the day after, then start again.

What a good short session looks like

Thirty minutes only works if you use them like a trainer, not like a tourist. Here's the shape:

1. Pick ONE topic. Not "Quant." Something like word problems with two items, or assumption questions in Critical Reasoning.
2. Do 5 or 6 questions, with notes on paper for every one. No working in your head because you're on the couch.
3. Spend the last 10 minutes on WHY. For every miss, name the cause. Did you misread? Solve for the wrong thing? Rush the last step? Then redo it from scratch.

Being right is not the goal. What you DID to get the answer is the goal. Here's the kind of question a December session should be full of.

That one takes about two minutes. Three of those, plus honest review, is a full session. Do that most days in December and you walk into January with your setup habits sharp.

5 ways December wrecks your plan (and what to do INSTEAD)

1. Saving it all for the "big free week" between the holidays. That week fills up. It always does.
   INSTEAD: Put 30 minutes on your calendar every day, like a meeting you can't move. Treat it the way you'd treat a call with your boss.
2. Studying at 10 p.m. after the party. You'll be tired, you'll miss easy questions, and you'll decide you're "getting worse." You're not. You're just exhausted.
   INSTEAD: Study early, before anyone else in the house is awake, or at lunch. Fresh minutes beat leftover minutes.
3. Taking practice test after practice test to "make up" for lost time. A practice test is a measuring device. It tells you roughly where you are. It does NOT make you better, any more than stepping on a scale makes you lose weight.
   INSTEAD: Take one full practice test at most, near the end of the month. Do all 90 minutes in one sitting, test-like, then spend real time reviewing it.
4. Doing the work in your head because you're on your phone. Short sessions tempt you to get lazy. Lazy habits in practice become silly mistakes on test day.
   INSTEAD: Paper and pencil, every question, even in a 30-minute session. If you test online at home, which has been an option since this spring, you still need that habit cold.
5. Quitting the whole month after missing one day. You skip Tuesday, feel guilty, and decide to "restart in January." That's how a missed day becomes a missed month.
   INSTEAD: Follow one rule: miss one day, never miss two. And don't wait for January 1 to make a resolution. Resolutions fail. Training plans don't.

What do you want MORE?

You have to decide what matters more this month: a few extra hours of "I'll get to it later," or showing up in January ready to keep climbing instead of starting over. You can't have both. And honestly, 30 minutes a day is not a sacrifice. It's one episode of a show you were half watching anyway.

If you don't have a test date yet, that's part of the problem. A date makes the training real. Pick one for after the holidays so December has a job to do.

Here's your challenge. Before you close this tab, open your calendar and block 30 minutes for every day from today through December 31. Then do the first one TONIGHT: one Quant topic, six questions, notes on paper for every single one, and ten minutes naming the cause of every miss. Not tomorrow. Tonight. December starts eating your plan today, so you start guarding it today.