While coaching helps pace your preparation, if you can afford to not take coaching, it is advantageous as it inculcates originality and sets you aprt from the crowd. By ‘affordability', I mean that you:
- are a fast learner. You can grasp new concepts quickly,
- can teach yourself and
- can use various online resources effectively and efficiently.
Since I had prepared Geography optional all by myself, without even coaching notes, I have some tips for you:
- Go through the syllabus daily for at least first one month. Be religious about it. You need to grasp the entire scope of the syllabus.
- Finish your NCERTs as fast as you can. Keep going through previous questions to understand what is important and what is not. Highlight your NCERTs accordingly. This will make your revision easy and quick.
- Go through Indian Express daily. Read only relevant portions. Initially it could take up to 3 hours but within a month or two it should come down to 30–45 minutes.
- Keep Google handy. Never shy away from googling any term you don't clearly understand, whether in books or newspaper. If necessary, make notes of them.
- Read and highlight and revise any one monthly magazine. VisionIAS or Vajiram.
- If possible, use online tools like Evernote to organize your notes and use PDFs of NCERT. It makes your life much easier.
- After about 5 months of preparation, start attempting Prelims test series extensively. Learn from the solutions given for them.Click here for Prelims 2020 Online test series
- After about 6 months of preparation, start answer writing practice. Both for GS and for Optional . 3–4 answers of varied nature daily should suffice.
- If you find any topic or subject really difficult to understand, you can get help from online coaching like NeoStencil or Flavido classes. I have heard good reviews about them
- You must enroll for mains test series somewhere. You can do it after Prelims too like I did.
Additional inputs for Optionals
- Go strictly by previous years questions first. Pick a question and read the relevant part in standard text books and/or class notes.
- Once you have covered them extensively, fill the gap by covering remaining topics in the syllabus.
- If your optional requires maps and diagrams, practice them like your life depends on them. They will fetch you marks and also help in conceptual understanding.
Best wishes.