You’ve done this, haven’t you? You’ve sat down at a piano or picked up a guitar and tried to play it. After a couple of notes, you think, “Hey, I sound great!” Then you try to play your favorite song and realize that you sound terrible.

Most of us lose interest pretty quickly at this point. Some people decide to take lessons. But imagine a beginner who just keeps trying to play Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, or a concerto by Bach, over and over, day after day, hoping that some day she will get it right. She might eventually nail it, but any music teacher will tell you that this isn’t the best way to learn an instrument.

Without realizing it, this could be exactly how you’re trying to prepare for the LSAT. It’s common for people to make full PrepTests the main focus of their prep plan. If this describes you, and aren’t seeing much improvement, don’t be surprised.

Preparing for the LSAT is similar to learning a musical instrument. Playing a concerto or a killer guitar riff requires an array of fundamental skills that allow you to combine individual notes and chords into a beautiful and complex piece of music. To do well on the LSAT, you will also use an array of fundamental skills, like identifying the conclusion of an argument or finding the important inferences in a logic game, to get a beautiful score. You will first need to learn these individual skills, then perfect them through practice, before you can combine them effectively to answer the different types of questions you’ll see on the test.

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