Start with what you know, then circle back

Our twins had state testing this week for Algebra, and there was quite a bit of panic in the air the night before. We tried to assure them that they should be fine as long as they'd been keeping up with their classwork, but still felt a bit stressed. 

I thought back to my school days, and remembered a strategy that worked really well:

Start with what you know, then circle back and work on the rest.

If you try to go through a test sequentially, you'll soon reach the inevitable roadblock of the problem you don't know (or don't remember) how to solve. Your brain gets stuck. Without the strategy of skipping it and circling back, you could spend the rest of the allocated time working on that one problem. 

On the other hand, if you start with what you know, you can read the "roadblock" problems without the pressure of solving them yet, and then let your brain keep working in the background while you move on to the others. Going through the rest of the test may even jog your memory so you're able to go back and knock out the ones you skipped.

I see this in real life, too. When we're stretching and growing, it can feel uncomfortable and stressful -- like a high-pressure test. If we try to go through the challenge sequentially (reacting to whatever comes our way next), we can get stuck on what we don't know.

Instead, if we work through the challenge by proactively working on what we do know, then we can move through it faster and more creatively, helping us circle back with more energy to work on what we don't know. God's view isn't linear, and ours doesn't have to be, either.