# How to prevent doing the same mistakes over and over again?

At the moment I am preparing for the GMAT. However, a phenomenon that occured and has occured in the past is that sometimes I always make the same mistakes at similar problems, especially when doing GMAT problems or collegue homework problems. How do YOU prevent yourself from the phenomenon?

PS.: I would be thankful, if you do not immediately close my open question

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Have you fully understood why your answers to the questions you keep getting wrong are wrong? –  Tara B Feb 27 '13 at 16:31

Practice, practice, practice! :)

Here's one way that I've made use of in the past. Find a bunch of problems that involve the mistake you keep making. Then, when you come across that part of the problem, don't just solve it.

Instead, return to your textbook (not the solution guide to the problem) and look at other similar problems. Follow the process outlined in the book. Repeat until this is overly boring.

At some point, after doing this enough, you will have memorized the correct way of doing the problem. For the next problem, don't look it up in the book, but work from what you remember. Check your work (without looking in the answer book), and then look at the answer. If you messed up, look at the textbook again and try another problem.

Basically, you want to practice doing the right way a whole bunch of times. Whatever helps you to remember to do it correctly for one problem, do it over and over and over again.

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Just note down the mistakes you make on the problems.

This itself is enough to find a remedy for the mistakes, when you see the same problem next time.

Just give a try, you will spot the mistakes you need to avoid from a distance. It has worked perfectly for me.

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