One of the most important concern of every UPSC aspirant is making notes.
Almost everybody makes Short notes for Exam Preparation, but only few are aware of the effective way of making notes.
1) How to take notes?
2) Digital or conventional hard copy method? If hard copy, note books or filing A4 sheets?
3) Only for current affairs or conventional subjects too?
4) How do I update my notes?
5) Is making notes really important? Cant I spend the time in studying another topics?
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Now let us break each and every question to arrive what is desirable.
Every aspirant who have given their exams whether prelims, mains or interview knows the importance of their personal notes. Our notes come handy to revise and re-revise what we have accumulated working day and night burning our midnight oil. Revision is the key to crack your exam and our notes are the Brahmastra to achieve it.
If you ask Tyrion Lannister on the importance of notes he will say
"An UPSC aspirant needs notes just like a sword needs a whetting stone".
So the time consumed in taking notes is never a waste.
The next concern being to go digital or conventional, it all depends on each individual's comfort. People who have attended classes would surely have conventional hardcopies of notes. But nowadays many of the aspirants are using digital platforms like one note, ever note etc. The advantage of digital notes are being you can use it in your mobile, tablets and laptops or pc. Also you need not carry your books everywhere you go. You can utilise even 5 to 10 mins of your time while waiting for a cup of tea , food or bus or while in a commute or a commode (user's discretion) 😋.
Many of the aspirants have the opinion that using OneNote for taking notes of important facts and info is of great importance during revising for your prelims and mains. For eg. Books and authors in history, Committees and purpose, recent govt schemes, space programs etc. We will cover how to take notes efficiently using OneNote separately.
So be it digital or conventional notes, updating your notes is the most important. Never let your notes become outdated. Procrastination is the biggest reason for many notes going outdated. The greatest advantage while updating your notes is you get a glimpse of the topic once more. You become familiar with the current affair pertaining to that topic. This very often helps in eliminating options in your prelims.
Make your notes more interesting by adding maps, diagrams, bars and pie charts for statistics that you can use for mains. This will help you to retain things longer in your memory. Keep revising your notes regularly. According to Jim Rohn ,
"Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced everyday".
Lets make taking notes and revising it a part of those disciplines to achieve the success we desire. All the best.
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