Staying Focused and Managing Time During UPSC Exam Preparation

Aug 1, 2020

When aspirants think about the long and tedious course of UPSC examination preparation, their worst fears are staying focused until the end and time management to cover the vast syllabus. Well, the good news is that both these factors are interlinked, making it a single problem, and the better news is that we have some simple tips, diligently practising which may keep such fears at bay.

One line answer - If you focus on time management, you stay focused and your time is managed.

Tips –

  • - Prepare a Timetable: Make a timetable and paste it at a place that is visible to you at most times. This helps in reminding and motivating you to accomplish your studying plans.

  • Try to Reach One Small Goal at a Time- Trying to reach distant goals can cause frustration. It is better to set small and achievable goals each day and move on to the next upon its completion.

  •  - Create Milestones: When you know your starting point, and you have an end goal, plot your journey to the end. Divide your path into regularly spaced milestones so that you know your trajectory is on course. This will alert if you lose focus and help to bring you back on course by adjusting and working on your goals and time management.

  • - Analyse and Understand Your Mistakes:  It is difficult to acknowledge mistakes without properly analysing your performance. Well, if you’ve been using SprintUPSC to practice and revise the syllabus regularly, it comes in quite handy here. The super high-tech, Artificial Intelligence based, metrics-driven analytics engine is something you can rely on. It gauges your performance through various metres and points out your weak and strong areas, helping you focus on putting your time into studying rather than figuring out what you need to do.

  • - Rearrange Your Time Table as Required:  Depending upon the performance analysis, revisit your time table to adapt your study pattern, focussing on the required areas of preparation to meet your goals and milestones and to keep you on the right track.

  • - Have a Subject Strategy: Having a strategy for each subject helps you gauge the boundaries and gives you quantifiable areas to track your progress and performance. It’s kind of perimeterising the scope of each subject to keep you on the right path. A concrete strategy of what all you need to cover gives you the range of that subject, which can be visually comprehended, unlike the myth of the boundless syllabus for the UPSC exam. You can check out our subject strategy in the resources section of the SprintUPSC website to help you with that.

  • - Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle:  Staying fit and healthy through the course of your preparation is extremely important to stay focussed on your goals and milestones, and consequently, it will lead you to your final destination. A healthy body facilitates a healthy and fresh mind, which is important to stay on the right track.