3-Step Process to “Optimize” Your Economics Studying
I won’t lie. Economics is hard. The complicated language and complex models make it difficult to understand at times. However, we can make it a little easier by breaking the process of understanding certain concepts into baby steps. I recommend a 3-tier-approach:
Take out the mathematical terminology and graphs and first understand the fundamentals of the concept. You should approach the concept intuitively. Take some time to understand the definitions on a fundamental level and make sense of the theory in isolation.
Once you have the logical understanding down, you can advance into the next stage: understanding graphically. Many general shapes on the graphs (curves, inversely proportional lines, etc.) are repetitive, as the relationships tend to repeat themselves. If you are able to understand the general pattern of these shapes in isolation, applying them to the first step (understanding terminology at core) becomes easier. Once you are able to combine these two parts, you can go deeper into how units may work and where they should fall respectively on the axes.
Finally, you can finish by contextualizing mathematically. If you have a good hold on step 2, this stage should not be particularly difficult, as you should recognize some generic functions (quadratic, exponential, logarithmic, etc.). From there, you can get into calculating derivatives and all that fun stuff!
While this 3-step-process is not universally applicable and may not work for everyone, I find that it is a fairly simple approach that works for me. Check it out next time you find yourself stuck on a difficult problem, and let me know what you think of it!
