hello aspirant welcome to the exclusive webinar on Art of answer writing in upsc Mains exam in today's session we have manut jindel an accomplished is with rank 53 currently serving as joint MD msrdc Maharashtra with mcrill he has authored the book master answer writing over to you sir thank you um good morning everyone I hope all of you can uh hear me and uh welcome to the session today um so I thought why not have a very detailed session for all the students for all the aspirants in which we can go into details of a few things number one we can talk about how you can prepare yourself for the next year's exam for 2025 or even if you are a student who is thinking of writing the exam in 2026 how can you go ahead and systematically prepare yourself systematically devise your preparation in such a way that it becomes easier for you see at the end of the day you have to put in all the hard work but my job is to guide you in a direction where you can for all the serious students and this is for all the serious students that you can actually understand how you can divide your preparation in small small chunks so that it can become much easier for you to prepare for upsc so today I will be going through a presentation I will be giving you pointers and uh eventually maybe we will have some questions so so that we can have a comprehensive session in which we go through this and number two apart from that I also want to discuss with you all a little bit about answer writing because see lot of you um you know you prepare for upsc you prepare for prelims in your mind but you forget that the real Tru at the end of the day is making sure that once you are through prelims in Mains you're able to write good answers you have good writing skills unless you have that then you will not find it easy to actually score well and do well in the exam because the entire rank is dependent on the kind of answers the essay writing the optional writing and the answer writing you're doing in the Gs 1 two three and four papers so that is almost or that is two each paper if you take that is thousand marks so that's a lot of marks that are at stake just from the writing skills uh in the Gs papers so I will also discuss that a little bit in the in the first hour first half an hour we'll discuss uh the 2025 2026 plan how you can approach the optional how you can approach the essay writing a little bit and this will be an overview so you will get a good idea for a beginner you will get a very good idea on how to go about this all right so first of all you all of you must know if you don't know this is a very quick overview I will give you you know there are three stages of the exam upsc civil service exam the prelims the mains and the interview now it is important to understand the requirement of each of the stage of this exam because you going to spend almost one one and a half years two years of your life doing this so you better understand what is the requirement of each of the stage the first stage the prelims where almost s eight lakh people are appearing 15 to 20,000 people will go to the next stage from there so in prelims prelims is more of an El mination stage where they're eliminating a large number of persons aspirants and only taking serious 15 20,000 people to the next stage so here the exam paper is a is a is a objective type of exam paper where you given four options and out of those four options you have to choose the right answer so here in prelims it is very important that you understand the format is where you have to actually um read the question within a time limit understand the four options and figure out which option is right or wrong so it is more of an elimination based exam rather than a selection based exam in which you are looking for some skills from you here they're just looking for whether you have the requisite knowledge whether you have the uh requisite um basic thinking skills critical thinking skills so that is how upsc structure that particular reper now lot of you know lot of things keep happening in Social Med media over the last few um over the last few years years you might have heard oh this year upsc exam was very hard then next year the upsc exam was doable next year the upsc exam was factual next year the upsc exam was very easy so like this every year something changes and this is the nature of the upsc exam in fact this is the nature of any exam question papers are changed so that they you know you are not just uh depending yourself on coaching institutes and the same thing if the same thing is asked every time same kind of questions are asked every time obviously everyone will start getting 100 marks you know everyone start getting full marks so it is important for them to have some S surprise Factor now here I want to give you a little bit of a secret like little bit of a tip don't go after these reports of the media of the social media yes the exam sometimes is hard sometimes it's comparatively easy I'm not saying that but it is important to understand understand one very simple fact that there are some basic things that are always the same always the same so I I wrote three attempts before that I analyze the paper 25 years papers of previous year papers of upsc and you will see that if you look at the papers of five six years in a band basic things always remain same the topics they're asking the questions on kind of way they frame their questions there will be at least 40 to 50 questions out of the 100 questions in Gs prelims that is that are always coming in a similar way so what upsc does is very smartly change a few questions 10 15 questions and those 10 15 questions surprise you and then you think oh the paper was very hard or the paper was very easy if you keep your cool it is very important if you be patient if you keep your cool it is definitely possible if you prepared well it is definitely possible to track that particular prelims see that when the prelims paper came hard the cut off also went really down correct so sometimes the cat paper becomes very hard so then the cut off goes down it can definitely affect some aspirants can definitely if you're not prepared holistically for all the subjects it can definitely affect some of you but overall in the large scheme of things at the end of the day if you have prepared everything little by little properly every portion of the exam definitely you can clear the clear the prelims I can tell you that with confidence so in prelims the most amount of focus you should put on is number one after finishing the entire syllabus start doing a lot of multiple choice questions start revising the pyqs and doing the pyqs and focus on the key areas see there is something called as the at20 rule okay something called as the at20 rule and I wanted to tell you about this rule because um a lot of times we are focusing on the wrong things so in the 820 rule what it means is that 20% of the things the things decide the 80% % of the outcome or 20% of the things are impact 80% of the outcomes the most in upsc also you can apply this rule there are topics which are much much important than other topics pretty consistently year over year if you see the papers so you should focus on these few topics you should make sure that you are a master of these topics you should not worry about the sources you should not worry about things like you know I read this book or that book but you should focus on mastering those topics and the way you can Master those topics is uh you know I will tell you how you can look for the right sources over the course of this presentation today so so the key areas what are these key areas where you have to really Master number one is economics number two is environment number three is polity and then number four very important is current affairs that are linked to static portion of the upsc so economics environment and poity are self-explanatory in polity there is one very important book the lakshmikant book everyone reads that book so I think you should also get that book and read that book that is the best book I think most of you probably have it make sure you understand that book and know that book Inside Out few chapters definitely you can skip there is other video that I made on poity so you can look at that video but that is the Bible for po secondly for environment for environment I believe that uh the some of the sources I have already shared with you there are certain sources out there you can go to the channel and there the sources list is given so you can refer to those sources for environment right now I feel that environment you will have to do a lot of self-work because one comprehensive Source I personally don't believe is out there but you have to do a lot of self workor but there are notes from pmf then there are um you know some old books like Shankar book Etc was there so those are good resources but again you will have to do your own work also when you are preparing for environment for economics now for economics what I would do is I would refer to ntin Sanya s's book which is an economy book it's a good book you can cover all the all the you know macroeconomics and fundamentals of microeconomics and along with that if you are not able to understand some of the topics from that book you can also refer to Khan Academy Khan Academy now there is an American Khan Academy which has lectures on macroeconomics and microeconomics and these are basic lectures you can finish them in maximum four to 5 hours those lectures if you look at your fundamentals your Concepts will get clear unfortunately what happens is lot of people lose out because the fundamentals are only not clear so see what happens in upsc lot of questions are actually asked from uh um you know they asked from current affairs or they asked from ongoing issues but they are coming from somewhere fundamentally related to your syllabus to your the static portion so what happens is when we see this question we get confused because we might not have heard it we might not know it but if you know the fundamental static worken well then you can always try to answer this question your probability of getting that answer is going to be much better so that's why I always say that for economy for environment uh for polity refer to this classic text also make sure that your fundamentals are right so don't shy away don't shy away from finding these sources on YouTube some good lectures on YouTube or uh some you know you Google some topic you can find some good source see when I used to prepare I used to personally find lectures which would help me to understand the topic because sometimes I would get lost but I would also know where to stop because you know you don't want to do PhD in that particular topic also so it is very important that fundamentals that work that you have to do the fundamental understanding of Concepts you have to do that is in your hand and you have to do that you cannot skip that portion that is the hard work required to do for upsc so at20 rule is very important key areas are economy environment poity and finally current affairs related to the static now what I mean by that is see a lot of time what happens is as aspirants we keep doing current affairs from Vision I magazine or whatever newspaper whatever uh Source we are referring to but what happens is that we don't realize that this current affair directly might not come in the exam what will happen is upsa will find something related to that topic that current affair Topic in a a static book like in your you know Normal book book some textbook and then they will give you that particular question so they want to check whether you are conceptually understanding what is going around in the world for example I'll give you an example upsc has this habit of asking one question almost every year one or two questions that um they will ask you you know question like uh this particular country shes border with which particular these countries so they will in option give other options in options they will give other IES options and you will have to mark which of these countries is on bordering one of the bordering countries of this particular country they have given so for example Ukraine they will give you Ukraine and they will give you four four countries and they will ask you if Ukraine borders these countries now why they asking this question they're asking this question because they want you to um they want to check your curiosity that you have heard Ukraine in news for the last two years non-stop so are you a kind of a person who goes from opening that newspaper to okay Ukraine has come so many times in the newspaper it's an interesting country there is a war going on it's so important let me look at the geography let me look at the book uh your Atlas or your online Google search to see where is actually Ukraine located you know what are the geographical features may be around it what are the countries around it what are the cities around it where is it located have you ever done that much work so it is very important to understand UPS's mindset upsc wants you to be a curious individual and and if you're a curious individual you would do that so I want you to inculcate this habit see none of us some of us are born curious but some of us can also inculcate this habit of becoming curious that is I'm not naturally a very curious person but slowly slowly because of my work because of uh you know being an officer in the field I'm able to connect the dots more so I want you to do the same thing I want you to connect the dots I want you to always have this active mind where you are okay I read this newspaper article is there something in that I can do Google Search on and find you know something basic things about that so A Country a river a national park is a news a species of animal new plant species what are discovered or something is a news something about space is in news something about defense some defense uh new technologies in news for example recently AI was in news so much always have this curiosity to find out basic things about that topic and that way uh you will be far ahead of your preparation then lot of people so this is one thing one tip I wanted to give you that lot of people will not tell you okay so that is about overall thing about prelims in Mains it's all about writing skills it's all about how you well write and in Mains there are two ways to write there is one is going to be your short form writing which is your GS 1 2 3 four papers and your optional paper we're writing maximum 150 to 250 words and then there is essay writing which is th000 plus words so you have to develop your capabilities to write well and that is what I talk about in the book as well but I wanted to tell you this personally and I will discuss this more later in the lecture that how you want to go about developing this writing skills now answer writing you have to develop for GS one two three and four papers obviously that I will tell you in essay writing um I would personally suggest the easiest way to do is you uh obviously read a lot because when you read more then you learn writing more but in essay writing what I want to do is subscribe to one of the test Series where you're writing one essay every one or two weeks if you're weak at it try to write one every week if you're good at it you are getting good feedback from teachers write one at least in every two weeks so that way that is sufficient to prepare for essay because you'll be doing so much practice but get it evaluated try to uh see some other Toppers copies don't try to copy the content try to see the style of writing and try to see okay how to de a logical piece of writing that is important so on this I have prepared a document which I will share with you on my community Channel later on so you can access that so where you can get an understanding of what essay writing is all about because it's a long long Topic in itself okay in answer writing see GS 1 2 3 4 are four different papers in Gs 1 2 and three you can have similar kind of writing skills in obviously GS4 which is the ethics paper the writing skills have to be different the speed has to be managed because a very long paper so I will talk in detail about that later optional is more about your expertise see in optional whatever you optional is sociology uh political science whatever economics you should have an expertise you could show that you understand the subject inside out so look at the old question papers and you will figure that out and I will tell you how to select an option also today in and then finally the interview stage obviously the most important things two three things for the interview stages the da preparation the big current affairs topics that are going on at that time and the overall personality how you come across as a person and uh you know it's just a 30 20 to 25 minutes interview be honest don't depend on the interview for your R depend on the prelims and uh sorry the main marks for your rank uh interview is always sometimes it can be hit sometimes it can be missed you could have a very good personality but by chance that day for whatever reason there are human factors come into play you can't blame it because they are interviewing one person after the other throughout the day they're interviewing seven to 10% 10 10 15 persons in a day it is very difficult so don't put all your eggs in that basket try to go so well prepared in your Mains that you know that in personality test in interview if you get decent marks you will be through that is the kind of mentality I want you to go with okay now the key components um the key components for upsc now I have told you the overview now I want you to understand the key components of the exam and I will be going through these key components so that then I will tell you how you can start how you can you know start your preparation Etc so upsc preparation starts from the upsc syllabus understand the upsc syllabus thoroughly print it out put it on your wall in front of you my upsc syllabus you know I used to C take it out and put it on my desk it used to be on my wall all the time I used to refer to it back and forth whenever I was studying if I had any doubt I would go to the upsc syllabus and I would see okay is this topic like this maybe in upsc syllabus this topic is somehow mentioned in a different way so I would always so by by the in three four months you know that way because I was looking at the upsc syllabus every day it almost got imped in my mind I remember the upsc syllabus so always know what you are because that is the best guide for you but there is the road where you have to go so keep the upsc syllabus printed and keep going through it so that you understand okay this is the requirement of the exam uh number one number two is number of hours per day that you should study lot of students ask me this what really matters is how many hours you can study productively it doesn't matter whe see minimum six seven hours you require you will be required because the scope of the exam is so big there are so many things to study but less than 6 seven hours you will not do justice but I think the best formula is at least eight hours full on proper study where you are dedicated you are you know actively studying at least 6 to eight hours active studying at least two three hours additional of uh passive studying and active studying passive studying is basically differences active studying you're actually trying to understand things you are uh you know going through text and you are trying to understand the concepts you're looking through examples you're looking through other uh you know uh you're doing this active study but in the passive study you just revising or you're just going through casually you're just trying to remember points so that it gets reinforced in your mind so for example when I used to study optional I used to find optional very hectic my optional was management I used to find it very hectic because so manyal Concepts was there and you can't remember everything right it's not possible but you have to reproduce a lot of things in the paper so what I used to do was I used to apart from um after the active studies of six hours 7even hours with some breaks obviously with some breaks I used to go for a walk and during this walk I used to try to think about the topics I had studied that day big big thinking like you know I have studied let's say today I've studied about the tribal uh the tribal Rebellion against the British rule in India and so this is the topic would be the freedom struggle in India and the the chapter I studied was about the tribal rebellions so I would just try to remember okay these are the main people so I would imagine in my mind a map of India I would in that map I would imagine okay bad rebellions maybe there was a rebellion in chattis gar maybe there was a rebellion in M madha Pradesh maybe there was a rebellion in South somewhere in the south of India so I will remember that so mental map now I will try to remember okay this particular person this particular tribal leader bam Munda he was leading the Revolt here this particular tribal re reasion leader was leading the revolt here and the name of the tribal rebellion and I will try to remember the approximate year it is very difficult to remember the exact year so approximate this time because years upsc is not going to ask you so just period period remember and what are the reasons for this tribal Rebellion four five reasons are there I remember those uh and how did the British respond I will remember those Bic what you have studiedly during the day you can now make mental notes of it later when you are revising it in your mind and that way promise you students uh I can assure you if you do this with lot of topics what happens is it gets reinforced in your mind and you don't forget it easily so I would do that so that is how you study productively active studying passive studying okay I want you to focus in these things that will really enhance your ability to perform well in the upsc the other thing I wanted to tell you was about the static cabus and the dynamic cabus see in upsc there is static cabus which is like audio textbooks n sing's textbook in economics or in art and culture then you know you can refer to Lan poity you can refer to ncrt books you can refer to all these different kind of books are there okay you know everyone knows you can find the resource list anywhere right but then there are Dynamic sources Dynamic sources are your you know newspaper your current affairs booklet Vision booklet whatever you want to refer to make sure that you choose okay you know I will start studying from a newspaper like let's say I'm starting Indian express it happens sometimes that you get bored after a while after 3 four months you'll be like every day I'm reading Indian Express I'm getting bored with this format so you might want to start a new um something like a newspaper so I used to switch sometimes so this is my personal thing a lot of people don't like to switch okay so I would switch to let's say from Indian Express to the Hindu and I would study those then I would uh switch back to Indian Express there's nothing wrong with that because see information difference there's not much difference between the two the only thing is the format uh and similarly for current affairs let's say you're using vision is current affairs magazine and you getting bored after a while you're getting same monotony everything so s insights is current affair nothing wrong with that absolutely fine the only thing is that is important what time you're spending and it is very important that you are getting the right gist from those things see at the end of the day I always tell the quality sources are what is important once you know these are the quality sources then just study those Master those practice a lot that's how you clear the exam now if you keep changing the sources too much and you're going to the bad sources there are so many books out there in upsc but if you're going to the you know not quality sources then you're going to waste your time so I always say get the book list book list I have provided the book list you can also refer to the book list of some other Toppers mix and match you come up with a nice book list that can work for you and of course one by one one by one you can tackle it accordingly okay now the next point I wanted to talk about is uh obviously you know uh so many things are there but you also want to make sure that like newspapers I already told you a little bit Hindu and the Indian Express are very good newspapers and you can keep switching back or if you don't have them available in your area you can go for the PDF versions online you can go for E newspaper if newspaper is that you're finding struggling with trust me it will take time to get hold of the newspaper but 90 70 70 to 80% of the newspaper is useless then there will be news about crime there will be news about politics all that news is not required what you need to go through is relevant sections like the economic section is important the sports section is important some of the sports section not all some of it is important then International Affairs SE section is important then some news come where they tell you about you know know uh new species or some you know some art or culture kind of things so those kind of things are important so newspaper I have another video on my YouTube specifically dedicated to newspaper so you can look at that also so that's something you it will take for time to M for you to master but definitely get into the habit of newspapers now optional optional I will talk to you about in in next slide also so I will skip this for now it's just an overv over overview then apart from that you know what the other websites Publications papers you can refer to I will tell you that also um one of the things I wanted to tell you about get into the habit of creating cheat sheets now what are cheat sheets cheat sheets are but nothing it's just a name given to it but it's nothing but like a sheet where there is a summary of the topic okay for example naxalism for example there is a topic on defense uh missiles certain missiles that are being produced by India uh like AG missile or something right so you have I used to what I used to do was I used to have these A4 paper sheets I bought the whole bundle and in these paper sheets I used to write down just overview of those topics just pointers man and that really helped me to revise later on so I had a nice and thick kind of bundle of cheat sheets from different papers for different topics but once you're revising it becomes very easy because you know okay this sheet is referring to this topic F say you can review those points and it will help you really in the main exam a lot so for example example let's say the topic is education now in education there is top primary education there is secondary education then there is higher education in primary education India what is the enrollment ratio in India how many students children go to school in India what are the Dropout rates you know what are the problems with primary education in India what are the problems with teacher teacher hiring or teacher retention in India or teacher quality in India what are the problems with primary education quality in India what is the problem with uh you know then what are the problems that are being addressed by the new education policy NEP that came out just recently this you don't need to have notes and notes of this you can literally summarize these things in points in two to three pages for one topic and this will become like your B to go to when you're appearing for the exam because you can always go to the cheat sheets revise quickly and you know the topic well and that is how much you will require it for the actual exam so those are big help I would do I would say that to do that okay obviously I told you about writing skills mastering answer writing or writing skills is very important we'll talk about that and I will also give you some ideas about keeping yourself motivated consistency Etc later on now I told you upsc syllabus print it out keep it in front of you that is the starting point number two pick one topic or one subject from syllabus and start by reading about it so how to start that is one of the biggest problems you know today you sitting here you're listening to me and uh you know it is already what like 25 almost 30 minutes and you're wondering start start start just pick one subject I would advise you pick one of the important subjects like poity or economy pick one subject and start try to start just reading it without applying too much mind just go through it get the big picture so for example I'll tell you so this is the um in my book shelf here I have a few books so here I have this ancient India book okay this book I recommend to a lot of candidates because this is an ncrt book a very nice book to get an idea of the ancient India history now in this book what I do I I do I used to do was if you start reading this book page by Page you know sentence by sentence very Aram say and you want to understand each and everything it will take you years to understand this book what I would do is I would go through this book quickly okay I would go to the table table of contents first I would first read the table of contents okay the first chapter is the importance of ancient Indian history the second is modern historians of ancient India the third is type of sources so really if you look at the table of contents I have made another very detailed video on this but actually the first three four chapters are uh not required you can skip them also but you can read them later what really the real thing starts from the chapter fifth so once I start reading from here chapter 5ifth try to just get an overall idea of what this book is trying to tell you about ancient India overall idea it is giving you about ancient India that there were these different ages the Stone Age the cholic age the haran culture age then the Ric age so these are the four five categorizations of the ancient India and beyond that also obviously the moras and guptas and all that so one number two under that then further you can subdivide this particular period so like this study systematically so I always say that when you're starting a particular uh subject always get a overall big picture first of the topic and then next reading you will always have to do two three readings next reading you start going into the to details and in the back of these books there are always these questions given so you can go through these questions and try to understand a you know uh this is the main things that trying to ask in the back of the book that means they must be important things so like this I would go through these books and it is and this is true for any book you know I just don't want I this book was just lying in front of me here so that's why I kind of went through it similarly like if you know I have this book here on Indian economy by nitin sing s very nice book I went through it even though this book was not available when I was appearing for upsc but this is a very nice book so in this he um similarly you know I would go through the table of content first so table of contents here you will get the basic concepts basic concepts uh the types of e economies main problems of economy sectors of economy then national income then he talks about economic growth poverty inequality so like this first try to get a basic idea in your head okay what is economics all about what am I going to study and then you read one the book once try to understand the topics whatever topics you're not understanding in the book I always suggest always go and Google it on YouTube or somewhere where you can maybe look at a lecture that is explaining because sometimes reading book is not enough you have to have some teacher tell you and lot of you are appearing from home lot of you don't have teachers uh whom sometimes you have teachers but they're not good right so you want to always refer back and forth to understand what is going on in the book and that YouTube is a great source for that so okay so try to get a big picture don't make notes in the first reading go over the book NCS I would really highly suggest see NC it doesn't matter matters ISC because it will help you so I always suggest go do ncrs or the Tamil Nadu uh board textbooks are also there they are available in PDF online download them they're also good so that will fun clear your fundamentals and then you can go into the more heavy books which are required for the preparation okay the next point is it is always good to finish one of the GS topics first okay one GS topic meaning one uh like GS like economy or polity finish one GS first and then go to the optional okay and then you do this in the first three four months or maybe five months one GS GS one or two or three or four I would suggest do GS two or three economy or polity so either finish economy or polity or environment first along with the optional whatever your optional is in the first four five months and then you go to the other GS topics and then sat you all along side you also keep revising the old option that you have studied that is the best way to kind of uh form your preparation if you wait for option till the end moment you do optional too early that is not advised do one gs do the optional together maybe if possible finish those and then next GS then next GS like so let's say you are doing economy and your option is history so you're doing this together then you will come to let's say gs1 so you will come to history and freedom struggle all that you come to and culture sociology soci Society then you can go to environment you can go to um you know polity you can then go to geography so like this you can create a nice uh way to study that it it just helps you better if you do it this way of course if you have some other way which you shoot you can go for it uh I would say that after you have done that so the next point is after you have studied that GS topic and let's say an optional or a GS topic after every 30 days of studies set 10 to 15 days to just revise them but I'm not saying that just revise revise revise for 15 days is a lot of time so I'm not just saying device device during those 15 days also do current affairs because current affairs to see concurrently current affair because every day you're studying newspapers or you're studying the current affair magazine so you're doing the static GS you're doing the optional then you're taking the next GS alongside you are doing the optional also then then after you have studied one particular GS let's say for one month now you are all you know information all that is there you want to revise so set approximately 10 days 15 days to be honest I WR set approximately 8 to 10 days to revise this particular GS topics I would do that and alongside keep doing the current affairs so what will happen is it will be very good for you to get an overall understanding of what you're studying revision also you can post the questions on the chat so I can it'll be easier for me to answer you can just post the questions and then um sh will read them out to me and then I will answer them no issues okay now regular so regular testing is a must do the pyq do the mcqs do the answer Writing Practice it is very important to do answer Writing Practice but when to do that I will tell you in the next uh 15 minutes or so then we will come to the questions so 36 minutes next 10 15 minutes we will wrap it up then we will have your questions okay now how do you select the optional see optional selection basically it is the combination of three things number one what you like number two what you have studied in your graduation or your undergraduate number three what material is available there out there in the market if all these things three things are fitting for you that you like let's say for example you really like political science you have studied political science in your studies in graduation or undergraduation and material is definitely available in the market so if these three things are all working fine then definitely that's the best choice that is the best choice go for it now if the optional you really like is something you have not studied in the college like let's say you really like history but you have not studied the history at all in college okay this is a new subject but you like it and you don't like it superficially you know I want to tell you this optional egg is important to recognize it's like it's a very important thing because you need to really like it otherwise you will regret taking it so if you do not like it then definitely try to avoid it so basically elimination point option if you don't like it eliminate it don't go for it if you have studied in your college but you don't hate you hate it you're like I don't like this subject don't take it I don't think it'll be advisable because you will be wasting your time but if you like it um and it is a new subject for you you have not studied look at the material available out there look at if there are classes of teachers available if there are good teachers available if there is good material available see I took management the reason I took management because I it was a subject for me in my college so I knew about it I also liked it but the problem was material was not available in out there at all so I had to prepare all the material myself and I think that's why I wasted one or two one attempt at least also I would say material availability is also very important don't go for an option where you have no idea material also one of the ways to get material is if some topper you know who has got very high marks in that optional in the last one three four years five years try to reach out to them try to see if you can get that material okay um try to finish the material in Max in five to six months along with one GS subject like I told you do a lot of pyq P you can do do them okay and do polity and economy like I said do polity and economy along with that so uh you can always start with polity and your optional like that okay now um in the next thing is the newspaper like I told you if you spending more than 30 to 45 minutes in your newspaper you're wasting your time avoid making notes from newspapers and one current affair magazine you should definitely refer current affair magazine comes at the end of the month so April May maybe 15th they all available for free online like insights is vision is whatever you download them then you study them I recommend that go for either insight is or go for vision is or go for GK today one of these three two three go for vision dedicated M you can go for that also it is also very nice so go for one of these and go for the newspapers don't focus on the political news try to connect current affairs with the static portion also okay that is very important current affairs for the sake of current affairs don't stud one of the things I tell aspirants it's very important is buy only one book one at a time okay buy only one book one at a time you don't want to buy these 10 books 15 books and over overload yourself with all this material you will regret that book let's say deci history go buy the ncrt book go buy whichever book you want to buy economy then you buy that book wait byy if you stay away from Delhi away from Amazon is delivering everywhere so you can always get get it from there okay so buy one book finish that diligently then go for the next plan first execute technically plan don't overload on materials okay next is um now 2025 how would I do planning today is 14th of July 2025 exam you have to qualify in 2025 exam you have 365 days approximately obviously plus minus whatever maybe 30 days plus minus 30 40 days it's okay not a big deal in a 365 days is a lot of time lot of time you have so many hours available to you okay how do you plan for those two 365 days number one for those 365 days like I said first few months go for optional go for one of the GS subjects after that alongside you're doing current affairs so your current affairs is also getting strong after that after those four five months start getting into the Zs subjects finish the vs 1 2 3 4 me whatever topics are there finish topic by topic keep timeline monthly timeline and weekly timeline for yourself make a calendar for yourself for monthly and weekly that okay this month I'm going to study this subject I'm going to finish this subject I have to read this book for this subject this is my speed every day see I used to have my calculator every day I study 4 pages of this book let's say this book is the Spectrum I know I can study 4 pages per day so I know 233 say 261 this chapter I would finish that chapter and then I knew that today's goal is met let me study another subject or another optional whatever you're studying right or current affairs that way I used to plan my plan was not not like that properly and then you finish that topic go to the next topic like that plan for 30 days plan weekly and then execute that plan man and measure yourself how do you measure Yourself by testing yourself let's say you are reading the Spectrum book Spectrum book let's say you have read the chapter about uh this one emergence of sist socialist ideas let's say this is the chapter emergence of sist social ideas revolutionary activities and other new forces this is chapter number 17 chap after this chapter try to do questions on this chapter how PQ multiple choice questions maybe not that day same day but after while at the end of the week when you have some time free try to test yourself okay am I getting some questions from these topics right sometimes question what you can do is almost 30 40% book so you know you have done 30 40% of Freedom struggle go to the history paper of the old years like preq books my old papers are there try to do some of the questions from that from that particular portion so you will know this kind of testing yourself is very important will study everything and they will try to test themselves and then they're like oh you I did not study properly I did not study the way I was supposed to study why because so try to figure out how the question is asked also that is very important so that is how I would plan for 2025 and keeping all these things in mind I would plan for 2025 or 2026 2026 according you can have a slower approach where you can plan it out now in addition to this I wanted to talk to you a little bit about answer writing see answer writing the main Crux of answer writing the main Crux is that it's practice it's knowing what questions are coming content won't matter content you have to master obviously which you will be mastering for prelims anyways but representation of that concept on the paper is very very important and that is what I talked about it in the book also Master answer writing book that I want you to learn how to write an introduction conclusion body of an answer I want you to learn the technique of doing brainstorming for those particular topics but the way you do that is by first understanding the fact that it is all about practice it is all about practice the more you practice answer writing the better you you will get at it but it is very important that you have a reference point or a benchmark point what is the benchmark point the benchmark point is Nothing But The toppest papers and that's what I do in the masterer master answer writing also I compare I give you example from The Toppers Toppers themselves that this is how they wrote or This Is How They you know Express themselves so that way you get an understanding that you know particular question what are the good things what are the like you know maybe maybe he drew a map to explain it well maybe he wrote some points that were very clear and nicely written so all that you have to do when you have to uh kind of uh you know when you're doing the answer writing thing so the first thing in answer writing to remember is that is uh no one is born with the writing skills you know you have to learn those writing skills so when you first time putting a pen on the paper it will be impossible to move the pen when I first time started writing in fact my writing skills were very bad you know writing I was like yeah I can't write more than two lines how do I write a full and whatever let's say even if I was able to write like a full paper a full answer of 150 words I was just writing something something and I you know I went back and Sol my old papers first attempt papers question papers seriously they were bad you know there were like just some things I have just wrote what Spilled Out something and the third attemp that had improved leaps and bouns so how did this Improvement come number one of course knowledge knowledge you have to study you have to get this content in your mind number one okay number two once you have this good knowledge of things now you have to put them to practice the way you put them to practice is fearlessly sit down and start writing answers even if you're not able to write them try to put yourself into it have these questions you can go online also all these questions are there or question just try to write because you have already studied start to write something like 100 words 150 words on that portion let's say you are able to write 150 words then go back and evaluate it go back and see number one have I written the introduction conclusion and the body number two if I have written the introduction how long is the introduction is it three four sentences sum points how many points have you WR have you written one point only and just explain that point or have you written multiple points because upsc you will see questions that are coming ask you for multiple points Dimensions they wanted to think on a broad level on a big level so broad level are you able to come up with points that are answering the particular questions for example I will tell you one question came why is the Indian why is India as a country is called as a subcontinent very simple question geography question normally what I would suggest is always try to define the main concept of the question so why is India known as a subcontinent it's called a subcontinent concept the main concept we asked is subcontinent what is definition of subcontinent so you read that in the introduction a subcontinent can be called as this this this so write a very ke line definition of what a subcontinent is now then you move on to why is India known as a subcontinent so introduction why is India called a subcontinent then you will write the points number one geographical reason play tectonics how the Indian plate collided into the Eurasian plate Himalayas were formed so India is a conically it's a separate plate all together right now like this you will give reasons for why India is sub continent climatic Reon climates India defined climates climate geograph specially located population massive it's like you know in Europe there are languages spoken in certain countries in India there different languages spoken from one place to another different culture all these different points you have to let's say you give the point about plate tectonics and you spend the entire time writing about plate tectonics then you're not going to get m even though you have good knowledge you're not going to get marks you will get marks when you write all the different points in small small points so that you can write it within 150 200 words Max and then you write the conclusion that is how you do answer writing and all that I have of course discussed in the book but these skills you have to develop over time in order to do well in the exam and answer writing is one of those things that you have to just you know develop but if you study and you apply this on paper keep putting in the hard work that obviously it is totally possible now you know finally I think I've talked for almost an hour finally what I want to tell all of you is that um I will be taking questions after this but what I want to tell you is that first of all if you want to be an is Officer lot of controversy is going on everyone knows it for me what matters is if you really want to be an officer first search your own heart and your own mind okay first search your own heart and mind whether you want to be an officer or not if you don't want to be an officer for good reasons then you getting into the wrong profession because today you're here you're watched by everyone it is your job to go and deliver for the people you should do that you should come with that mind otherwise you will be unsuccessful officer you'll be a good successful officer you come into the service you are never fired you are doing you know your job Aram say and you know slowly slowly you're promoted Al you will not be known as a good officer no one will really look up to you you will not get the exposure people on the top the people who are serving in good positions the Home Secretary the defense secret that these are the best of the best so if you want to be there you have to really come with good intentions okay and so search your own heart search your own mind whether this is something you want if you don't want this go for something else there are a lot of opportunities in India today but search your own mind and heart and all what said today then it will be good for you it will definitely help you okay the second thing is be consistent it is very important that all of you developed some de uh some discipline some consistency uh because without that without that consistency without that uh discipline I think what happens is uh then we go in different directions so you will need to develop that consistency and discipline and that has to come from internal I want this and I will work hard for this uh but course working hard is not enough going in the right direction so I'm here you know I always guide uh all the students on YouTube that is my job I on the one sign whenever I get free time on Sunday or Saturday like this I do this but apart from that my job is to do Civil Service I'm a civil servant and that I'm doing properly devoting my time that is my priority after that when I get time I do this so I have been consistent because I like do this I like to teach students and this is something that I have loved to do for a lot very long time so I would say that whatever you love to do try to be consistent because this is a battle and in a battle you have to be consistent otherwise become difficult to okay this is what I had to say today uh thank you for going through the entire presentation and any questions you have we have 10 15 minutes we can answer them and uh uh try to solve your doubts thanks Manu for the uh interactive session I think it was a great talk delivered some of the questions I can take is so one of the attendees asking by which month into preparation should we start answer an essay writing practice for a complete beginner in which month okay yeah that is a good question see I always say after finishing one or two GE subjects then you start the answer Writing Practice so let's say economy after finishing one or two subjects then you can start answer writing because that will have you a fundamental somewhere you will know okay in this particular section let's say you finish economy then you can do some answer writing economy if you finish poity start answer writing for po so that is a good way to go for answer writing once you do more and more subjects then you can do more and more answer writing next question is what is the systematic approach of writing the answer in limits as it is sometimes difficult to write important things in small limit also especially for geography how to write important points with diagrams as diagram itself consumes much space yeah good point good question time is distracting watch analog watch or timing watch digital watch you can buy I had a 200 rup watch I used to digital watch I used to use whenever I was AR writing I used to start the watch 0 question I us should read the question and then I knew in my mind every 150 word question I had to do in six six to seven minutes and this all I talk about in the book also okay and every um 250 word question I have to do 10 to 11 12 minutes so I used to write the answer and then I should limit myself to the timer plusus 30 practice obviously plus minus 2 minutes 3 minutes but once you are in a good consistent practice you should try to write this within the time limit so actually words liit don't matter practice you will come to the perfect word limit yourself automatically so50 250 maximum around 15 200 words 6 minutes okay so my strategy was always to use a timer time myself and slowly slowly slowly slowly over a period of three four months it becomes a habit it becomes easy to do and you you natural timer so even in my paper in my upsc when I went to upsc Center I had an analog watch want to lose the of your normally 150 word answer UPS will give you around one page on this side one page on this side okay you might have seen in my online answer writing right you don't have to go beyond those two lines it is enough space to write actually 150 250 words enough space more than enough try to make it smaller don't make it so hug try to make it maximum 1/4 of a page uh try to spend less time on it accent for representation don't spend too much time on it s uh you told that Main's exam is about answer writing skills what can an aspirent with average writing skills do and how to improve see someone with an average answer writing skills remember answer writings but I got probably one of the highest marks in Gs based on my answer writing SKS and I'm very helpful I'm very grateful today W I have to draft letters I have to D notes I have to draft points to the parliament or to the you know don't be fearful of it start somewhere you have to like I said start somewhere even if you are writing average ref see first like let's say you write an answer like I said why is India called as Aon let's say you're writing this answer first answer might be bad write it again write it third time get the points try to read about it try to use your brain try to you know run multiple scenarios in your mind take time first second third time take time 10 times take time 100 times take time eventually it will improve so slowly slowly you will get to a point where you are getting it and then try to do it within the time limit history questions slowly slowly over a period of time two three months you will see massive Improvement so that doing Only You Can Do I can only tell you asking what type of questions upsc asks from current Uh current affairs how to know that it is going to become Main's question topic it is very difficult to know what is going to come what I used to do was I used to look at the old pyqs I used to try to imagine topics for example in geography uh like for example in history they asked about some kind of a temp Temple architecture in history or in geography they asked about the plate tectonics so imagine major topic topic is what that that is one of the most important there chapter on plate tectonics what are plate tectonics ex UPS actually tops so these are these are the important topics topics [Music] obiously is asking how can we Interlink different subjects for Mains answer writing okay interlinking see interlinking it happens only after U studying for a while and U getting a hang of different subjects so for example if you're studying economy then you have studied quality then you have studied environment two three subjects then you understand okay in environment there is also a question of development there is always this debate about environment versus development correct so this inter linking thing that you're talking about comes with a with some maturity with some sort of you have been an aspirant for 6 months seven months then this interlinking will first of all be able to click in your mind because then you can relate topics second try to focus on newspapers Interlink very well so editorial see some editorials are very bad some editorial are very when they talk about let's say you know climate change so climate change what is the importance of how economics is directly linked to climate change and how politics is directly linked to climate change so they so editori IDE they intering these different subjects when you're thinking more broadly about a topic for example let's say I'm let's say today I'm studying about in economy I'm studying about poverty okay poverty what are the reasons for poverty what is the level of poverty in India make particular tops how does it affect the quality of life of a person important envirment pollution because of that the the poor people are the most affected because they don't have air filters they're living in the open sometimes in the slums clean water so now directly environment got connected with economy so like this as you study more as you try to deliberately use upsc topics to relate to each other deliberately mind you will go in the right direction wants to start answer writing from scratch and he wants to do it on his own uh okay he's asking uh for somebody who can't afford paid test series how should he go they go about uh best way to go for it is online up Google online sear inses on IND different webites now question previous questions everyday Writing Practice question choose those questions and write those questions also students students put their own answers so you can put your answers for evaluation sometimes they get back to you some students so peer toer learning at the end of tow don't go for always so you will get an idea know here I explain too much of something instead of writing more points so like this you can make a good nice evaluation for yourself is asking uh I've heard that for op that opting for literature as an optional subject tends to result in lower scores while I have strongest interest in literature and hesitant to concerns about scoring and is she's correct ly in a Dilma could you please advise my batch stopper he was a Canada literature person she took Canada literature she got ranan there are examples from the past when people have taken malam literature where people have taken different literature and they've got rank one nothing like that but you have to be very good at see literature is one of those subjects India you I'm telling you from a very know Common sensical point of view let's say you're taking PAB how many Punjabi literature experts are there in India 10 professors in India who are experts in Punjabi literature now those experts are teaching in Punjab University one of them will be correcting these upsc papers correting your paper now if he's corre if is Van India's top 10 person in Punjabi literature is correcting your paper you better be very good at Punjab literature if even if you have not taken that subject in your undergrad so if he's correcting you have to be really good and if you're good you're going to give you good marks because thing is it is going to be a little tougher because maybe the sources are less for you the coachings are less for you the direction guidance is less for you so guidance and you have confidence on your literature you have interest and confidence on your literature skills see I also speak Hindi I also speak marati I learned marati but that doesn't mean I can write literature Hindi literature it is not impossible for me so I would say if you are really good at it go for it I don't see a problem think for someone who's enrolled in a coaching they give study material uh and they are saying that it is enough and class notes and you don't need any standard books so they find thems fused for standard books should go along with the materials and class notes provided by if anyone is telling you I have given you this spoon let's say R you eat this you will be not hungry for the entire day you will be fine that is not going to happen no don't spoon feed your don't let yourself be spoonfed like this if someone is telling you believe you have to find the sources you will have to refer to those sources but that doesn't mean that there are hundreds of sources there are limited sources there are limited 20 30 sources for every for the upsc subjects all the subjects so you will have to do those I don't think that's a good advice is asking how to pay for interview okay see the interview is the last stage interview da application form they will ask questions from there okay you have worked here you have done vigre from here you have interest in cricket or whatever right number one that should be thly prepared number two big big current affairs questions let's say right now there's a current affairs question topic about let's say you have a background in Computer Engineering and there is something going on in AI so they might ask because they know computer science so he he must know about AI they might ask you some basic questions on AI so be prepared in the field of your knowledge your domain they will ask you questions from there they might also ask you just questions that you should know things you should know as a civil Serv you should know some current affairs happening in the world so we will ask you big big things like that so see interview is all about how your confidence is when you're talking to them what is the clarity of a thought uh it does it seem like you're a reasonable individual you have to just showcase yourself as a balanced individual if you showcase yourself like that I think decent marks are assured in the inter question by one of the attendee is how to convert reading and understanding the concepts into approaching the diverse questions and giving best answers okay see uh upsc you have to read so many different things anyways so um I think the reading skills I have made a very specific video on reading skills how to develop your reading skills you can look at that but so that you guys can refer to these things but at the end of the day good writing skills come from good reading skills and good reading skills is nothing but sitting down and reading a book properly I give you the I give you the ways in which you can read properly eventually you will definitely see Improvement in writing really good answers wants to understand how to analyze the pyqs and what I must understand from it and supposed to from it and how to use them okay so pyq is nothing nothing to analyze read the pyq whatever like I told you I gave you an example why is India known as a subcontinent if you pick up that pyq try to understand okay topics Dimensions what all Dimensions Can it have what are the main concept being asked here these are what why how where and why these are the questions that should come into why what is this where is this from why is this asked why this concept you know whatever about this concept how so try to answer those particular things around that question so you will reach to a good analysis of that so I think we have asked we've done a lot of questions maybe couple of more and then uh we can yeah yeah sure we'll take one or two more questions in 2025 uh rames is asking the gap between prams and Mains is reduced should I now prepare the notes for Mains before prelims or focus on prels as a beginner as a beginner study for the means study for the mains finish your Mains see Gap is reduced but you will still have some time first prepare for the mains at least four to five months before the prelims start preparing for the prelims but right now study for the mains because Main and prelims a lot of overlap is there like 100% overlap is there except ethics and all except ethics and option that you will not have time later to study correct so what my suggestion is prelims syllabus is all the syllabus study that thoroughly and four months 3 to four months minimum before the prelims focus dedicatedly on prelims question MC mcqs PQ after after PR then you can again switch to minutes uh for the days uh prianka is asking please tell your way of reading and approaching a subject I mean how to evolve from first second and third reading in phases of these reading which we should start highlighting in our books making notes try trying mcqs and answer writing good question I answered this qu I have answered this question in my video also I'll make another video on reading SK actually this is very important uh thing for students uh but see first reading should be overall cursory reading or like a overall overview of that book where you're just understanding the table of contents like story you read it get a picture like bird to get a big picture if you're looking at the Earth's map picture will be okay these are the continents and these are the oceans and these are the big big landforms around the world second view more zoom in more zoom in so more zoom in what you will see you will you can go to each and every country and try to get more details on italogy similarly in the second reading you're going into more details of the book chap players second reading you know the chapter on let's say the g theia age okay this is a important time economic contr eom contr andure every every different rule we divide on these basis only political economic cultural can personalities important important around you don't have to remember all the dates but examples now next reading will be more detailed for the exam purpose now I can write down these notesap important the next thing you will actually write down those in your notes or something go up a l man for this engaging session and I hope uh aspirants took benefit out of it and uh thanks uh everyone for joining and uh have a great Daye thank you bye-bye