GMAT Focus gives you three real tools. Each is worth points and each needs a decision made before test day rather than in the moment.
You choose the section order. Quant, Verbal and Data Insights, 45 minutes each, in any order you like. Pick the order in practice and keep it: most people do best leading with their strongest section, because a confident first 45 minutes settles the other two. If one section reliably exhausts you, do not put it last.
Bookmark anything, and edit up to three answers per section. At the end of a section you may review your bookmarks and change up to three answers. This changes pacing completely:
- A question that is not yielding after about ninety seconds gets an answer, a bookmark and a move on. You have lost nothing — you can come back.
- Bookmark deliberately, not defensively. Twelve bookmarks and three edits means you will spend the review time choosing which bookmarks to look at, which is time you could have spent answering.
- Aim for about four or five bookmarks in a section. That is a review you can actually use.
Never leave a question unanswered. There is no penalty for a wrong answer and there is a penalty for questions not reached. Answer, bookmark, move.
The clock discipline. Roughly two minutes per question in Quant (21 in 45 minutes), a shade under two in Verbal (23 in 45) and a bit over two in Data Insights (20 in 45), where a multi-source set spreads its reading over several questions. Check the clock at fixed points — a third of the way and two-thirds — not continuously.
Check the edition of everything you study from. A great deal of GMAT material still on sale prepares for the retired format: sentence correction, geometry, an essay, a 200–800 score. If your book teaches any of those, it is teaching an exam that no longer exists.