Aspirants should develop the habit of reading newspapers, and make it a routine to dedicate an hour to study the newspaper thoroughly. That, however, does not mean reading all newspapers! Let us look at the important principles to follow while preparing for current affairs in order to prepare current affairs effectively:
Principle 1: Know the syllabus
Glance through the newspaper and mark the news headlines that are relevant to the UPSC syllabus. For this, you are required to have a complete understanding of the syllabus first. Hence, always keep a list of micro-topics for UPSC CSE at your study table.
Principle 2: Limit the Resources
There is a deluge of reading materials, especially with daily current affairs. We have plenty of newspapers, websites, monthly magazines, yearly magazines at our disposal. Hence, aspirants may get confused about what to refer to. Hence, it is important to identify the most useful resources for the UPSC exam. From what we at Career Launcher have gathered by analyzing the previous year papers, you should rely on just the resources mentioned above to cover current affairs holistically.
Principle 3: Know What Not To Read
It is very important to figure out what you do not have to study when preparing for current affairs for UPSC. not everything in the newspaper is worth current affairs for UPSC. You can refer to our previous year current affairs questions to better understand what needs to be studied.
Principle 4: Check Time Allocation
You must read only the relevant news articles thoroughly. However, while doing so, make sure you are not spending more than an hour reading newspapers. You should finish reading daily current affairs within 2 hours. Freshers may take a bit longer in the beginning. However, make sure you limit the time to two hours per day during the weekdays. During the weekend, make sure you revise your notes at least once! And then, at the end of the month, go through the monthly compilation of Career Launcher for a quick revision.
Principle 5: Leverage online tools to make notes
While it is advisable to make small handwritten notes from important editorials for answer-writing, you should avoid doing so for all the current affairs as it is extremely time-consuming. However, you can leverage the benefits of online tools like Evernote, google docs, etc to prepare notes online. All you need to do is copy the content from the website and paste it into your doc. Make sure you organize the content according to the subject so that it is convenient to look for them when in need.
Principle 6: Keep Revising the Current Affairs
Revision is extremely important when it comes to current affairs. While the static portion of the syllabus is limited, current affairs get piled up by the day. Hence, if you haven’t indulged in constant revision, it will be extremely difficult for you at the end to look up the current affairs for an entire year. Hence, keep revising the current affairs constantly so that you never lose a track of it. Incorporate them in answer-writing and keep referring to the current affairs even while preparing the static topics.