I cleared the Punjab Police Sub-Inspector exam with Rank 2, 713 out of 800 marks, by self study. No coaching, no secret notes. People ask me for a trick in almost every live session, and my honest answer is always the same: keep your sources few and your revisions many. This post is how I actually did that, day by day.
My situation when I prepared
I was not working during my preparation. I studied full time, normally 8 to 10 hours a day, and on some days up to 12. I am telling you this not to scare anyone who has a job, but so you can scale the plan to your own hours. The method below works at 4 hours a day too; it just takes longer.
My daily routine
- 9 am: wake up.
- 10 am: sit down to study. No phone scrolling first.
- Study blocks: 1 to 1.5 hours of continuous study, then a 30-minute break. Then another 1 to 1.5 hours, then a break again. I kept repeating this pattern.
- Evening: a 2-hour break every day for the gym.
- Night: back to the desk, studying until 12, 1 or sometimes 2 am.
The gym was not a luxury. Sitting for 10 hours a day for months drains you, and the physical test comes after the written exam anyway. Two hours of exercise kept my mind fresh for the night session. If you skip everything else in this post, don't skip some physical activity.
The 1-7-30 revision rule
This is the single most important thing I did:
- Day 1: study the topic.
- Next day: revise it.
- After 7 days: revise it again.
- After 30 days: revise it once more.
Each revision is short, often 15 to 20 minutes for a topic that took 2 hours to read the first time. But by the third revision the topic is yours. Without revision, you forget most of what you read within a few weeks, and you end up reading the same chapter "for the first time" again and again.
A simple way to run it: keep a notebook page per day. When you finish a topic, write it under tomorrow's date, the date 7 days ahead and the date 30 days ahead. Every morning, start with the revision list for that day before you open anything new.
One book per subject, and why
The biggest mistake I made early on was reading too much irrelevant material. When you study on your own, the market looks endless: dozens of books, channels and PDFs for every subject. Trying to read all of them leads to confusion. You don't know what to keep and what to drop, you try to cover everything, and you can't revise any of it properly.
So pick one source per subject and read it again and again. These are the ones I used:
- Polity: Laxmikanth. It is the best book for quality, but you do not need to read all of it. Only some topics are asked in Punjab government papers like Punjab Police and PSSSB. Read those chapters thoroughly.
- Reasoning: there is no book that teaches you reasoning. It is self study and practice. I practised from Arihant.
- Maths: R.S. Aggarwal.
- Punjabi and English: Punjab School Education Board books of class 10, 11 and 12. You don't need anything beyond these.
- Punjab GK: there is no single source. I read many books, searched a lot on the internet and made my own notes. I am uploading those notes to House of Aspirants step by step, so you don't have to repeat that search.
Which subject is hardest, and where the marks come from
For me the hardest subject was GK, simply because it is so vast. You cannot cover all of GK at one time, and even inside the GK section you cannot score full marks. In my own final result, most of my marks came from Punjabi, English, Reasoning, Maths and Computer, and fewer came from GK.
That is the key insight: those five subjects have a limited syllabus, so you can score well in them with practice. Your selection really depends on them. GK should be prepared smartly, not endlessly.
Inside GK, these areas were asked the most in the papers I sat:
- Modern History
- Indian Polity (a lot of questions)
- Current Affairs (a lot of questions)
Indian Economy, Geography and Environment had far fewer questions. Divide your GK time accordingly.
How to practise Maths and Reasoning
Most doubts in my live sessions are about Maths and Reasoning. My answer is practice, and a specific kind of it:
- Finish a chapter.
- List every type of question in that chapter.
- Solve as many questions as you can of each type, not just the easy ones.
- When the chapter is complete, solve 100 to 200 questions on it. The topic-wise quizzes on this website are built for exactly this step.
Exam-day lessons
- Don't study on the day of the paper. Keep the books away before the exam starts. Last-minute reading only makes you panic.
- Attempt what you know first. Go through the paper and answer the questions you are sure about before touching the difficult ones.
- Never spend more than 1 minute on a question. If it is taking longer, mark it and move on.
- Rehearse the real conditions. At least a month before the exam, give mock tests at home at the same time as your paper, whether it is in the morning, at 12 or at 3. Papers often come in summer, and sometimes the AC in the centre doesn't work. So practise without the AC too. Then heat or an uncomfortable room on exam day can't become an excuse.
The only trick
There is no shortcut that saves time in the exam except this one: minimum resources, maximum revision. Choose your books, follow 1-7-30, practise Maths and Reasoning by type, and rehearse the exam at home. That is exactly what took me to Rank 2.
If you get stuck, bring your doubt to the weekly live session or ask in the Telegram group. I read them.