No, No, No. No politics or history here. Keeping the core idea same, I just flipped the coin to see a positive side of this DnR policy.
I have been actually using this technique for quite some years now. Be it any exam, I always devoted much of my time to planning my study schedule and pattern. At times I feel like replacing the word devoted with wasted, because my planning went on and on till the exam day. Surprisingly, the only thing I used to do in that big planning period was – to divide the number of pages to read by the number of days left till exam to know how much I had to read every day. I also used to divide number of pages to read every day by number of study hours per day. The purpose was clear – to know how much I needed to study then and not in two months. To keep this text simple, I am not even mentioning the calculation I did for the revisions.
Recently, I (almost) joined a gym. On the very first day, a not-so-built-up guy told me that I was lucky that the owner himself was not in that day. He apparently had a rule to check a perspective member’s stamina with 300 push-ups and 100 sit-ups before taking them in. That was obviously the last time I hit the gym because till that day I could just about go through 50 push-ups in 3 sets of 20-15-15. To me even 100 seemed a little far-fetched, let alone 300. But the part that stuck with me was “to check one’s stamina.” I was feeling kind of embarrassed. So I started with my normal stamina aiming 50 push-ups in single set in a month and 100 in two. Fair enough. For a week I tried but the count increased barely from 20 to 25. I nearly gave up at times but then, I utilised the simple policy of dividing. One extra push up and sit up each day starting with 20. I started on Dec 1st and managed 50 by New Year’s Eve; something which was too tough task to do a couple of weeks back.
Lessons learnt so far:-
*Your initial growth chart motivates you more. Don’t stretch things at the very beginning. Start small.
*If I would have increased two push-ups every day, I believe I would have been exhausted after a fortnight. Keep your ambitious calculations practical.
*And lastly, the day you sleep without achieving your daily target, you have an excuse for the coming days. Be honest.
*The smile at achievement day wipe all the sweat you were soaked in so far. Be patient.