Do you want them badly enough?

The following had been done by me over last 3–4 years while preparing for (Indian) Civil Services Exam and clearing some exams along the way: Choices minimization!

I removed unnecessary choices from my life actively. For example, in my entire preparation in 2016–17, I slept at 3:30 the entire year and woke up around 10:00 AM. This was the time when foundation of my civil services preparation was laid and spent entire day on study-table/around studies. My mind worked on auto-pilot to the extent that I knew how much “true study time” I could get by 3 PM, 5 PM, 8 PM and so on. And it was largely constant. I didn't give myself any choices, I didn't have to decide between going out or not, studying or not. My books/sources were largely fixed and I didn't allow noise. I had to study, that's all.

Only other sources of investing my time was on internet/watching football or talking to friends sometimes/family. I had no external commitments outside my hostel, I did not travel that often.

Other examples in later life (2019 attempt) were: choosing to study and sleep in the same room so that I could wake up and immediately start studying months before exam. I didn't have to juggle between study room (or library) and bed room and what not. I had a rule to not study on bed, you can't study there, you can't feel sleepy. No choice again!

Just before exam, I would lock up my phone in a cupboard and only open it 10 hours later after studying intensely. (When exam was far away, this time might become 2 hours). Want to use Reddit or check football Twitter? Good, guess what? You can't. No choice. (My only companion for entertainment was the yellow stress buster ball which I could throw around and catch in the room; below).

I didn't use any social media platform during study life as it didn't serve any purpose for me back then. I didn't have to decide between using social media or studying, it spared me the trouble.

I have a whatsapp group of close friends which I regularly used to leave before important phases of exam as I wanted to be by myself (with full focus) and save time. I didn't give myself a chance to waste time even if I picked it up because I had no messages on Whatsapp. Thank my friends for the understanding and letting me back in when the task was done.

(Of course it goes without saying that quality of studies is important but I will trust your judgement. Besides first step is to take back control of your life and start working hard for as much duration as you want).

I'm not saying I never wasted time (I had to battle gaming addiction many times) but if I intend to be with myself for say 12 hours and removed my phone for 6 hours, you'd still get a lot of time. It was my method, others can do differently. But there's no other way around discipline, it's not easy, you might hate it and hate studying. But a lot depends on how much you want those results.

Do you want them badly enough?

-Shubham Bansal, IAS, EX-RBI