I see the standard 250-300 hours of study anywhere when I look for how to prepare for CFA exam. My concern is, does having a break in between study hours included in 250-300 hours of study time? Or do I have to allot the lost minutes because of breaks to compensate my study hours?
250-300 hours is just a rough estimate. I can only speak for myself but I truly have no idea how many hours I spent studying to pass L1. I don’t even think I can ballpark it. But it took up a lot of my free time outside of work and I had to put a lot of other personal stuff on the backburner to get it done… as I’m currently doing now for glorious L2.
You’ll get a feel for it once you get into it. As sdooley pointed out, you’re probably looking into it too much. Open a book and get going. Hitting some arbitrary number, even if given by the CFAI themselves, isn’t going to guarantee anything.
A strategy I’m using for L2 is recording my study hours, and practice questions completed on an excel sheet. I find it keeps me accountable to reaching weekly/monthly goals.
I’m really not sure of the hours I put in for L1 but it was likely around 250. L2 is looking more like I’ll end up in the 400-450 range give or take, based on my average hrs/day over the last few months. Nothing like doing a little analysis on the study process itself!