We’ve been talking about Common Mistake #3 Six Sigma exam candidates run into; Trying to Study Everything at Once.

Last time we talked about how hard fictional Six Sigma student John was working…. and how ineffectual it was… and how close he was to giving up.

Now it’s time to come to John’s aid.

Mistake #3 Solution

Several of you have guessed already; the solution to working everything all at once is to ….simply not do that.

Pick one topic, master it, then go over to the next one.

Some of the most crucial learnings of Lean Six Sigma are about how to achieve flow. You know; kanban, Little’s Law, Work in Progress (WIP Limits). All of that fun stuff.

Or, if you want a catch phrase, try this one.

Stop Starting and Start Finishing.

It’s as simple as that.

The antidote to trying to do too much is to break the whole into small, manageable pieces.

Instead of trying to study all of Six Sigma, break it down into cognitive groups. Getting stuck on an entire Phase (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, etc)? Break it down to subtopics or even techniques.

I promise that if you focus on mastering all of the ways the exam makers can possibly ask you questions on one small topic before moving on to the next one, you’ll save time AND you will score higher.

Aim small, miss small. (And miss out on all of that useless context switching, self-loathing, and other nonsense.)

But It’s All Important!! Where do I Start?

Good point. It is all important. But in terms of the exam you only generally need a certain percentage to pass. So, let’s go with that.

Let’s say you need an 80% on the exam. And for sake of this example, let’s say that there will be 100 questions on your certification exam. (Thus you need to get 80 questions right.)

Does it matter which questions you get right?

No. No it does not.

It only matters that you get at least 80 of them right.

The Math Behind This

This is really just the Pareto Principle applied to exam prep, the same 80/20 pattern that shows up everywhere in Six Sigma work: a relatively small set of weak topics accounts for most of the points you’re currently losing, the same way a small number of defect categories usually account for most of a process’s defects. Treat your own wrong-answer list on a practice exam exactly like you’d treat a defect Pareto chart on a real project: find the tallest bars, fix those first, and don’t spread effort evenly across every category just because every category technically matters.

What “Finishing” Actually Looks Like

“Mastering” a topic before moving on doesn’t mean reading about it once and feeling like you understand it, that’s recognition, not mastery, and it’s the trap most students fall into. A better bar: can you explain the topic out loud, from memory, without notes, well enough that someone with no background could follow it? If not, you’re not finished with that topic yet, no matter how many times you’ve read the article covering it. Active recall, not re-reading, is what actually moves a topic from “familiar” to “finished.”

A Sports Version

A basketball player working on free throws doesn’t alternate between free throws, three-pointers, and layups every few minutes hoping it all improves at once. A focused session drills one skill until it’s measurably better, then moves to the next. Splitting attention across everything simultaneously is a worse use of the same practice time, in a gym or at a desk studying for an exam.

Pick the one topic costing you the most points right now, finish it, and only then move to the next. That’s the entire strategy, and it works precisely because it’s simple enough to actually follow under exam-prep stress.

Stop starting. Start finishing. That’s genuinely the whole idea.

Try it on your very next study session and notice the difference.

It costs nothing to test, and most students who actually try it notice the difference within a single sitting.

Best, Ted.

Good luck out there, studying.

Thus the only sane (and fastest) approach is to focus on getting 80 questions right!

There are a few ways to do this. Here’s my favorite:

Take a practice exam.

If you get <50%, start at the very beginning at Define and work your way up. If you’re over 50%, sort the questions you got wrong into groups and make a Pareto chart.

Find the topic you scored the worst on and study that area relentlessly. Study it so well that you are confident that you know it cold and that it’s no longer a weak spot – in fact, it’s become a strong suit!

Don’t worry about any other sections until you’ve mastered that part.

But once you have mastered that part, move on to the next area that you are having issues with.

And so on and so forth.

It’s that easy.

Next Time

The next time we’ll return with Common Mistake #4 and talk through how to handle it.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, leave a comment anywhere on the Six Sigma Study Guide website and I’ll do my best – or just hit reply to this email. I read all emails and do my best to respond to everyone.