A stitch in time saves nine.

Time can be your best friend and your worst enemy based on how you manage it. Talking of judicial services examination preparation, where the notifications are neither assured nor regular, you'd want to be on your toes and have the syllabus on your tips. 

I have already discussed as to how you can begin your preparation and what you should study. I'll take up only one topic in this blogpost: time.

Much has been said and written abut time and no, I am not going to lecture you on how you should clear your exam on time. I will attempt to illustrate as to how something as simple as a study-plan can help you maximise your study-time and stay productive throughout. This will ofcourse, all be in the backdrop of my experiences and little tricks I used to end the monotony. Since school-time, I love to jot things down, I love to make lists. For my boards, I would write down the subjects on a piece of paper, then I would allocate time to each subject, then I would do it all topic-wise, and in the process I had a realistic knowledge of my speed and saturation level, and the list was modified accordingly. Similarly, with the judicial services examination, there are two things I absolutely loved to do: Make study plans, and make my personal 'notes-copy'. Let me elaborate on this notes-copy a bit here. It was a standard notebook, not bulky at all. It had notes for all the 'light' subjects of the examination, and I made them in such a way that they covered the important cases, topics that have been asked before, concepts I'd like to stress on, and a Smriti-fied version of the Bare Act. Yup! Once I made this master-piece, I never opened the bare Act again. It contained all the elements of the bare provision and was written in a very simple, easy to remember language. But the beauty of these notes was not what it contained but that I made them after multiple readings of the Bare Act, my class-notes, previous year questions, and other resources. Each subject took not more than 20 pages and I would only read this one notebook after I made it. Afterall, it had all I needed. This one thing which was not a necessity and at best, a compulsive behavior, made revision a cake-walk for me. But more on it in another post, I have already deviated alot. Let us get back to the study-plan or time-table, whatever you may like to call it. 

Your study is incomplete without a study plan. Creating a realistic deadline for yourself will push you, it will create the required pressure as well as motivation for you to reach your goals. And how do you do it, you ask? Well, you already know my answer: by making a study time-table. Yes, this is the correct term for what I am talking about. Though wholly unrelated,many great books tell us that the most successful people create a list of things they have to finish by the day's end, in the morning itself. It gives them a head-start. Read Robin Sharma's 5 am Club sometime. He stresses upon this habit too. A study plan is just like that, and serves the same purpose. Afterall, 'the man who is prepared has his battle half fought!'

In this post I said that once you have a fair idea of the subjects, you should time your revisions. The exact time varies with every person's reading speed, level of clarity in the subject, and other commitments. Do make a note of how much time you took to initially complete a subject. This should give you some idea. Then set realistic goals. You can see my time-table below:

There are four features of my study-plan:

1. I allocated time to each subject according to its length. Where Specific Relief Act did not even get a complete day Code of Civil Procedure was allocated three days. Then again, you should not attempt to stick by these time-allocations strictly if your pace is different or you have classes, office or other thing to tend to. 
2. In order to ensure that the day does not become monotonous, I have allotted different subjects to each day. Though I picked a new subject only after the first one was completed, I made it a point to study GK as well as law parallely so than when one would bore me, I could pick up the other. In the May study-plan the months you must have seen in all the boxes refer to the monthly magazine of that month which had to be completed within the time allotted. It wasn't bulky so two days were sufficient.
3. I have stricked some subjects and boxes. Ah! The sheer satisfaction of getting done with a task and striking it off from your to-do list! I think this motivated me more than the actual goal to clear the exam eventually. It gave me the required adrenaline rush to just get done with the task and be deserving of putting that beautiful strike on the table. If I did not complete the task in time then I did not strike the box and that ensued a lot of guilt in me. 
4. I had put it up on the wall in front of my study-table. A time-table left on the back of some note-book is not as helpful, trust me. I have tried that. You can see it in the picture below, standing tall next to my favourite poem.

Smriti on Instagram

It will be your best friend, your guiding-light. Always nagging you and always appreciating you if you complete your task in time. So it's upto you; how many strikes did you draw on your study-plan? Do let me know! :) 

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