When you see 100m sprinters run, you know the importance of a single second: the difference between the fastest and the last one. Those EU career candidates who have recently done the accuracy and precision tests have learned the same lesson: 9 seconds per question was nearly impossible to do...yet some candidates still managed somehow.

Performing in the middle ranks is easy, and you don't need much practice. If your aim is to answer 5 abstract reasoning questions correctly out of 10 within ten minutes, it's pretty much possible. To answer 6 questions, however, you need an extra five days' practice. But to answer all 10 correctly, you might need three months of intensive practice.

This means that top performers are not just doing a bit better by being one second faster: it means they had invested a disproportionate amount of effort each time they decided to get one more answer right. And that single second, that single extra point may mean that they got in, they were better than thousand others, that they won the competition.

Your success may seem to depend on a single second...but it's the weeks of hard work that actually matters.


(Image credit: Getty images)