As a boy, I used to watch “Yan Can Cook” on PBS, marveling at the speed and accuracy with which Chef Yan could butcher a chicken or sous-chef vegetables. The faster he went, the more I cringed, waiting for him to make a mistake and chop off a finger. Yet he never did. Why? He used one sharp, simple, multi-purpose tool - a butcher's cleaver - to do everything. He had mastered it because he used nothing else. And because he was master of it, he could adapt it to any task.
So what does this have to do with test prep? Well, it's important to remember how the test is scored - 1 point per correct answer. You certainly get penalized for being slow - if your techniques work, but take too long, the game is over before you have a chance to score. Yet, students often worry so much about saving time for the difficult problems at the end, that they rush through and give away easier problems at the beginning. It's understandable, but it's also penny-wise and pound-foolish. Simple questions count just as much as complex ones, and careless errors cost just as much as clueless ones. The point is that content is only one-third of the challenge. The test mostly punishes you for being slow and sloppy. You will be slow if you use inefficient methods or consider too much at once. You will be sloppy if you use complicated tools, especially if you don't use them that often. Fatigue and stress make complex tasks exponentially harder, so on a 3-4 hour college entrance exam, basic is more reliable.
I keep things simple, because simple tools are better than complex ones. They are easier to learn, easier to use, and (because they are general-purpose) more broadly applicable. To start, that's an efficient use of your prep time. Stacking simple tools to solve complex problems also leads to increased pattern recognition, lightning-quick processing speed, and high precision. It uses your "mental capital" more efficiently - keeping you sharp throughout the test, shrinking the distribution of your scores, and increasing confidence. Finally, it boosts your ability to improvise and adapt to unfamiliar challenges, since the only way to use fewer tools is to combine them, and combination leads to innovation.