 Hello aspirants, welcome to Shankara SA Academy's YouTube channel. This is a short video and in this video we are going to see one of the most asked questions by the UPSC aspirants. How do you know or how do you find out whether your studying is effective or not? See we all want to know whether a studying process is effective or not because if it is not effective then what is the point, right? So today I am here to address this question and share with you some of the tips that I know to evaluate yourself and to increase the efficiency of your studying process. See the first tip is try teaching the topic that you study to someone else. See how do we study a topic? We read it once or twice, we revise it again and we move on to the next topic, right? But when you try and teach that particular topic to someone else you will find out that you will get a lot of doubts. What does this indicate? It indicates that there are gaps in your understanding. See only when you understand the topic better you will be able to teach the other person in the way that they understand, right? So obviously this is an indicator of the effectiveness of your studying process. See sometimes you can try and teach other people also. Other people in the sense people who are not preparing for UPSC. This is because the doubts asked by them will be entirely different from the doubts asked by the UPSC aspirants. Now let us take the topic Gawana. What all we have in that? We have the constitutional provisions, functions, powers, appointment, eligibility criteria and so on, right? So when you try and teach this topic to a common person they will get a lot of doubts which are entirely different from the doubts asked by the UPSC aspirants. So by the way of addressing those doubts you will have a clear understanding about the topic Gawana. But be careful here because our aim is to have a clear understanding about the topic Gawana and not the teaching. So do not indulge too much in it. Use this only as an indicator to evaluate the effectiveness of your study process. Okay now let us move on to the next step. The next step is solve as many question papers as possible. You can solve previous question papers and you can get mock test from different institutes also. See solving question papers will help you in two ways. One is you are revising the topic again and again. The other one is you are assessing yourself. What are you assessing here? You are assessing your understanding. You are assessing your level of knowledge. And there is this one more thing. Have you ever felt the difference of reading a particular topic in a book and solving that particular topic through questions? There definitely exists a difference right? Because when you read it in book it feels like you have covered everything. But only when you attempt a question you will realize that you have missed that one particular aspect of that topic. So to bridge this gap solve as many question papers as possible and get a suggestion from a qualified mentor for further improvement also. The next step is try and come up with different perspective questions. What do I mean by this? I will tell you. See while solving question papers what you have to do is you should not just solve the question additionally you have to try and come up with different sets of questions that can be asked related to that topic. By doing this you will have a holistic approach. Let us take an example here. We all know that in the year 2021 there was a question related to preamble. The question was what are all the provisions added to the preamble through 42nd Amendment Act. So while solving such a question what you have to do is you have to try and come up with different questions related to preamble other than this particular one. So in that way you will cover everything about preamble and it will be a exercise for your problems also. So this will increase the effectiveness of your study. This is one another tip. Now let us move on to the next one. The next tip is discussion with your peers. See we all know that each and everybody is different right and in turn their viewpoint about everything will also be different. Let us say you are discussing some topic with your friends. You will realize their viewpoint about that particular topic is entirely different from yours. See only after you start discussing with your friends you will find out what all you are missing while studying and it also serves as an opportunity for you to learn about different perceptions that are there. See it is very important here because we have to cover a lot of perceptions while writing mains especially the essay paper. We have to cover the social perspective, economic perspective, political perspective, environmental perspective and in some cases we have to cover the legal perspective also. So to cover all these perspectives discussion with your peers helps a lot. It helps in critical thinking and even in problem solving also. So slowly start discussing with your friends and find out what all you are missing and fill those gaps with the perspectives that you learnt from them. See discussing with your peers will serve as an indicator for you to identify where you are standing and evaluate yourself and even to improve the efficiency of your studying process. Now let us move on to the next step. The next step is analyze the counter facts. Analyzing counter facts here means let us say an issue or event has happened. What we usually do will study the event will study the consequences of it. Instead of just doing that we should analyze the probability of the event not happening in the first place or even better we should analyze the consequences of the event happening in some other way. Let us see an example here. We all know our constitution makers opted for the parliamentary form of government. Here instead of just studying the characteristics of the parliamentary form of government you should try and come up with questions like compare between parliamentary form of government and presidential form of government or even questions like is it the right time to shift from parliamentary form of government to presidential form of government in India or even questions like what are the reasons behind our constitution makers opting for parliamentary form of government. By doing this we are covering each and every aspect of this topic so that if such a question is asked in mains it will be easy for you to attempt that question. So that is all for this step. In this short video we saw five tips. The first one is teach someone else the topic that you are studying to have a better understanding about that topic. The second tip is solve as many question papers as possible to evaluate yourself to assess where you are standing to assess the level of your knowledge. The third tip is try and come up with different perspective questions so that you do not miss out anything on that particular topic. The fourth tip is start discussion with your peers so that you will bridge the gap that you leave while studying and the fifth tip is analyze the counter facts. So that is all for this short video. I hope this helps. If it does subscribe to Shankar Iyer's Academy's YouTube channel. I will see you in another short video like this. Until then it's me signing off. Stay tuned for more short videos like this.