Civil Services Mains 2020 Results: In or Out ? Way ahead, gratitude and Pain

My suggestion is to work on it slowly. If you can only study for 30 minutes at a time right now, push yourself to study 40 minutes at a time or even 35 minutes. Just make a small increment instead of a large one. Once you can do that more or less consistently, make another small increment to like 50 minutes or something. Keep making these small increments until you are able to study for however long it is that you want to at a time. The key point that has helped me is to make small increments to increase my study time instead of large increments.

Oh.

In my case, it was first attempt for everyone and I know they don't have any "perfect notes" either. We made a list of probable topics, from which many questions came. Maybe that might've helped.

Btw, what's your optional? 

Any opinions on monthlies vs PT365 or Monthlies vs Mains365?

I think mains365 comes too late in the day, maybe a month or two before mains thus hindering the opportunity of multiple revisions. Monthlies are released just within a month (or less than) giving a scope of multiple revisions. Does mains 365 contain any specific topics not mentioned in the monthlies?

Hey man. I stumbled across these newspaper analysis videos by Rau's on youtube once, and I loved them. I thought the videos were extremely well made and helped me cover the Hindu quite effectively. I started doing Focus magazines because I thought they went just a little bit beyond the strict requirements of syllabus in their notes. It was a good thing for me because it gave me more context while I was reading anything, and helped me to internalise the topic better as I would link it with the videos. It gave just the right amount of fodder for an answer, while not murdering any topic with way too much information you don't need and which you can't hope to remember. I personally found it so much better than any other monthly on the market for the reason that it was extremely simple and quite interesting to read. I also thought the layout and the colours were nice.

I'd say that if you have your notes already, trust them. Check mains 365 only for incremental additions which you can incorporate into your notes. Keep revising the notes. If you don't have notes like me, Mains 365 is your best bet in the limited time. It's impossible to revise (cover to cover) all the monthlies after prelims gets over, unless you've read each of them like 10 times before. Maybe you could pick out small portions from the monthlies and save them to read along with Mains 365? Still, would suggest limiting them to around 100 pages or less. Even Mains 365 from the previous years can be really helpful . I'm revising the Mains 365 from last year because I didn't think it was purely a current affairs magazine. It has plenty of fodder even for 2021 mains or even 2019 mains for that matter. My plan is to do less, but do it much better.

Static portion for mains was of two kinds based on sources: the standard books which we use for prelims as well, and the smaller topics specific to mains that I had prepared notes on. For each item of the syllabus the source was either of these two.

The former - Laxmikanth, Spectrum, Ramesh Singh etc - was extremely boring after doing it so many times for prelims. So I just revised these sources two-three times, and made note of what I needed to revise more that would be necessary in mains. So for example I made a separate sheet of basic articles and provisions I just couldn’t remember that I would need to revise before the exam for polity. Revised just these specific things before the exam.

The latter was basically 2-3 pages notes for each topic, collected from different sources, mainly Vision value added material. For things like disaster management, security, governance. Some topics I read directly from the material since I did not have time to make notes. I revised this more as it was a lot newer than the first category. 

10-15 days before the mains I wound up the last of the mocks and focused on revision alone. The idea was to bring it to a stage where I could revise whatever was necessary in the last 3-4 days before the exam. So I re-read each source multiple times, and if anything felt like it could be made more concise, I did that. I reduced my optional notes to some 40 pages. I also condensed mains 365 as much as I could. This really really helped because I was able to effectively revise economy mains 365 in 20 minutes in the car on the way to the centre. That one had taken 3-4 days when I first read it. So condensing + revising was the mantra for the last two weeks. 

I did monthlies for prelims and mains 365 for mains. For prelims it was possible to do monthlies since we had so much time. I must have done them at least 15 times. But even after having done them so often, it was too bulky after prelims as Patootie said. Everyone here was saying that mains 365 would be out too late to be useful. So I tried to make my own notes, but gave up as it was taking too much time and I felt lost. Instead I decided to do mains 365, accepted that I would have less time, and tried to finish other stuff beforehand so I could give it maximum time. I think if you do that it will make up for the delay in mains 365. Besides, after studying current affairs for prelims, nothing in the material is going to be entirely new. That makes it easier.

@SergioRamos Bhai as you listed NCERT in your mains strategy, I think preparing some unsolved questions given in them may also help in mains. (if time permits)

Explain the relevance of intergenerational equity in the definition of sustainable development. - This question is given in Indian Economic Development NCERT.

UPSC asked a similar question:

Explain intra-generational and inter-generational issues of equity from the perspective of inclusive growth and sustainable development.

.

Similar to last year? Oct prelims and jan mains

Anything on IFoS result?

This is really interesting man. If time permits I will surely try to solve these this time around! Thanks! :)