Well I have only been studying CFA Level I material for a few weeks, but it seems that one of the skills you need to develop in order to pass is to process large amounts of information (dense readings with fully packed info, although some readings would definitely benefit from reduced wordings and omission of redundant explanations -_-) in a relatively short period of time, and break it down into digestible chunks to be retained and recalled months later, which I guess would be useful in a field, such as investment research, which basically requires that you go out and dig through large volumes of data and info to serve your intended purposes.
So my question is: what other critical skills/habits did you develop during your CFA journey?
To pass the CFA exam (level 1 at least) is to try to “understand what you doing”, not just memorizing or saving information to be recalled after. The secret is to read everything, do not skip, give the right time to understand, not just read for read, practice excersices between the readings, do not wait until you cover all books to star practicing, the more excersices you solve, the easier you understand what you doing. The advantage of taking the CFA exam level 1 is that it has a well defined type of questions, get used to it. Start in the right time, some times I watch ppl asking: “Is ok to take the exam with 3 months of time?” Well, I would say yes, try it, you will make it better the next sit, that simple. Solve the CFA mocks after you finish all books, and previous years mocks too. Get the Qbank if you can and solve bunch of excersices for every book, the end of chapters excersices. Be disciplined, look for other sources of information, but stick to the CFA curriculum. Eat well, and sleep well. Do not drink alcohol too much, it makes your brain slower…