Hello Friends
Amazed to see your excitement and energy by being part of coveted ILP 2018 journey.
Before you start with ILP, we would like to share few very important aspects related with this preparation.
We have shared the Full Plan of ILP 2018. There are few minor changes from the sample plan given for 3 months. Kindly go through full plan very carefully.
Remember
"To start is easy but to finish is difficult"
To achieve any target and to improve every day, one needs to cross a certain threshold. For example, if a person says that he aspires to be a body builder and is very consistent in his exercises but what he does is ‘one push up every day’.
Do you think he would be able to get into desired shape despite of him being consistent?
So, despite of him being consistent, regular and motivated, he is not crossing that minimum threshold. Similarly, while preparing for UPSC even if you are consistent and motivated, to get the desired result, you need to get out of your comfort zone and break the sweat to improve.
Let us decode each and every aspect one by one!
About Full ILP 2018 Plan
Look at the full plan first and then read this further.
Now answer this question!
What would have been your strategy, planning and way out for this preparation if you were not part of ILP 2018?
ILP has many things that will reduced your effort to prepare quality content yourself like Babapedia for Current Affairs, Value Add Notes for Prelims and Mains both and Tests for Prelims and Mains both.
On top of it, you have Baba with you. :)
If you feel this plan is hectic then you have not gone through the ocean of syllabus and you are not aware of what it takes to be in that coveted list.
Irrespective of you being a fresher or a veteran or a working professional, UPSC doesn’t differentiate. There is no gender differentiation either.
So, all my dear freshers and working professionals, kindly understand that you only have one distinction and that is being part of ILP (if you utilize it with the best of your capability)
You have nothing to worry now. The only requirement is to have faith in your mentor and blindly follow this plan. Take our words that if you consistently and honestly follow this plan, will witness growth in your learning curve very soon.
Perquisites to follow ILP for the desired result
- Stop everything that you were following till now
- And stick to ILP Plan and its demand.
"He Who Begins Many Things Finishes But Few"
Very Important Suggestion
Not everyone's capability is same. Some may take more or less time/effort to finish the same target and vice versa. Make this plan your soul of preparation and live with it. It doesn't matter if you are taking more time to understand something. Focus on Final Examination. You should be equipped well by the time you sit for the final examination. The whole process and planning is to make you do sincere and consistent effort.
Just stick to the process and keep working hard without any expectation. Sometimes it takes little more time to feel the change. But it will surely be there if consistent effort is made.
You may also prepare in advance using the Value Add Notes and Plan sources of upcoming SETs and Blocks. If you are a veteran, may also focus more on Mains topics and simultaneously prepare. It is just that one should always align the process as per their need.
Let us address some of the very important aspects or say issues we have received through emails and comments regarding note making, current affairs from Babapedia, time management and related issues.
Current Affairs from Babapedia
Note- Some of you asked whether to also cover previous available content of Babapedia for tests?
Na..Na..Na..Na..Na..Re .... :P
It is given for you reference only. Its Search Engine can be used to check all the interrelated content. UPSC has started asking few questions from past 2 years. Having Babapedia’s old content will help you here. It’s your discretion to read them or not J
Since many aspirants failed to understand the importance of note making, constant revision and relevance of content we had to come up with Babapedia.
Without Babapedia
- You would have navigated through various newspapers and sources to prepare current affairs.
- Would have spent ‘n’ number of hours preparing the same.
- Doing less revision in the process.
With Babapedia
- No need to worry about current affairs for Prelims
- It covers all important topics of current affairs.
- You just need to follow it regularly and keep updating in your notes
Note Making from Babapedia
- Reason we disabled copy paste in Babapedia: You would have created your own drive from Babapedia by copying pasting (not exactly the notes for revision). Do not give reasons like “I cannot highlight texts or copy paste relevant points”.
- By forcing you to make notes from there, we actually want you to follow and learn smart method of note making (as explained above) and spend more time in revision (remember without babapedia- your effort would have been more and less output)
- Write in Keywords and generate your story for easy revision purpose.
- You will thank us for this before the Prelims exam :)
Daily News Analysis from iasbaba.com
- In DNA we cover two issues on daily basis (Forget about Must Read articles)
- In a month, around 50 issues
If you start consolidating and revising only those issues, will end up internalizing at least 50 issues by heart per month. How many over the period of 1 year?
Current Affairs evolves over the period of time. You need to understand that any issue when gets completed will be covered sooner or later. But lack of patience and habit of overloading of content from here and there puts you off the track. And you end up rushing for everything at your disposal.
Do not run after covering everything from here and there. This will only kill your time and will give false satisfaction that you are preparing but actually you are not. You are just having inputs as coverage not learning and output.
Remember: The question is not about how hard you are working. But it is about how productive you are in the given time?
You effort needs to be result oriented. All that matters is your output!
Aspirant’s Question: The issues are very long and elaborated. How to make notes from them?
We cover them in a manner so that you need not spend much time in basic understanding of the same using google. Your notes should be smartly made. They need to be precise and coherent in a way that they are easy to revise and you can make complete sense out of them when you read that topic after some time.
Recall the last movie you watched? Say X movie before a month
Since you last watched it before a month, logically you shouldn’t remember anything about it. (The same is your logic when you are asked about your study, right?)
Are you able to connect with our point? Exactly!
You remember almost everything about that movie and can easily explain it and make someone understand the plot of the movie. But same is not the case when you study something or some issue.
Why is it so?
It is because of the disconnect between your thoughts and visualization of what you study. Movie was visualized and you connected with the story so that it is in your mind for long time. Can you do same when preparing? Yes you can.
Start visualizing issues and make very crisp note. Your notes should be understandable only by you no one else. It should be the raw script of the issue in the form of key words and mind maps, looking at which you should be able to narrate the whole issue just like the movie.
If you learn this art, it will become very easy for you to retrieve information provided you practice this with lot of revision. Enough of Gyan :)
Now DNA is done. Let’s talk about AIR and RSTV
AIR and RSTV
We don't cover too many issues here since it is already covered under topics of DNA. Can’t you prepare them well? These issues directly covers Mains topics.
Yojana/Kurukshetra Magazine
To the point and relevant content for exam is given to ease your burden on monthly basis. Hardly 30 pages of content can be condensed into 5 pages by you with multiple revisions. Try to do it.
Value Add Notes
- VAN should be consulted only after you are done with all the standard sources given in the plan. Or if VAN is uploaded before go through it in cursory manner and then pick standard texts. But do not skip standard texts at any cost.
Importance of Tests after each Block
- We will also cover many important concepts in current affairs (not part of Babapedia) in Block Tests. Why?
- So that you do not get overconfident by great scores in tests :P
- So that you are not left with any important issues or concepts
- UPSC examination is very unpredictable and our job as a mentor is to make you prepare for that unpredictability as well.
- Your intention should be learning in the process from Babapedia as well as Tests.
For those who think they won’t be able to catch up with the Plan
What if you were not a part of ILP?
- A false satisfaction that you are preparing?
Our suggestions
- At least you have quality content at your disposal.
- Prepare from that and revise properly.
- Take up the tests even if it is delayed due to personal issues.
- You can easily score 35 marks
- Do retrospective learning (learning from tests and solutions) and revise all the concepts from the tests
“Inefficiency and lag in following Plan/Schedule leading to procrastination”- Never fall prey to this.
It will always be compounding in nature and you will never come out of it.
Some Valuable Suggestion for Smart Preparation
How are you going to revise from Tests and Babapedia? What will you do 1 month before prelims?
Will you sit again and download the test pdfs and start solving them again?
If you do that, will only end up doing nothing!
We suggest
Make different set of Note Books for Economy, S&T, Environment, History, Geography and Polity- For Tests
Suppose you are done with first Block of Polity Tests comprising of X Questions from Current Affairs and Polity.
X Questions = at least 3-4 associated concepts
Hence 10 such Questions will expose you to at least 40 related concepts.
Retrospective Learning and Note Making
- Write all the concepts that you learnt from that test in your Note Book
- Do the same for all the tests and keep revising
Suppose you kept doing this exercise for all polity tests. In the end
- Revision will become a cake walk for you.
- Since carrying these note books will not be a problem, you can revise from it anywhere and anytime.
(Imagine all those concepts in your respective note books in revision friendly mode)
- Same way make different note books for current affairs from babapedia
“Try to understand the importance of smart work”
The same was communicated to all the successful candidates of last year’s ILP. Trust us, they followed it blindly.
If simple act of joining test series or any program can give you result then you need to introspect your “Dream and Desire”
- Your dream and desire has to be translated through actions and the only thing that will help you – ‘Consistency, regularity and continuous hard work’
There is not a single soul on this earth without a ‘Dream’. And everyone wants to convert their dream into reality. But how many are able to do so? This translation of dream into reality is governed by
Dream- Thought Process- Action- Hard Work-Sacrifices-Continuous Effort- Living with your Dream
“The best way to predict the future is to create it”
As said “You can bring the Horse to the pond but you cannot make it drink”
While conceiving this plan, we thought to revolutionize the learning through our planning, approach and most importantly result. And for that our Team is working day and night. Not only this, everything on iasbaba.com and ILP platform is an effort towards this very goal.
The only thing that motivates us to work tirelessly is your future and dream
Rightly put that we are selfish. We are selfish for your success and accomplishment of your dream. And you need to become positively selfish to gain maximum out of this programme, provided you use it in the right spirit :)
We wish you wake up early and reflect on these words at the earliest.
Your life’s motto should be
“Wake up with determination and go to bed with satisfaction”
Note- And please do not mess the forum with too many similar queries. First read everything carefully and try to find out ways yourself and then check whether the same doubt has been answered by someone on any threads or not. Your last resort should be to mail us or create threads for small issues.
Update- VAN and Booklist will be updated by early morning!
All the very Best
IASbaba