What this is
I am preparing for the UPSC Civil Services Prelims on Sunday 23 May 2027, from zero, while working full time in Singapore. The preparation is run against a written master plan, and a study coordinator keeps the plan honest: it checks the daily log, carries unfinished work forward, re-cuts the week when the hours did not happen, and reads the news for items that could become exam questions.
Everything the coordinator writes lands in the Notebook tab of UPSC Today instead of in a private chat. The notebook is private: entries are encrypted before they reach the repository and open only with a passphrase on my device, so visitors see the dates and the count and nothing else. Nothing is edited after publication except for corrections, which are dated. If a week went badly, the notebook says so, to me.
What gets published, and when
- Morning brief, around 06:25 Singapore time every day: the countdown and phase, what is due for spaced revision (1, 3, 7, 21 and 60 days after first reading), the day's new chapters with a time estimate, the day's question set, and up to three current-affairs items with the static syllabus topic they attach to and a primary source.
- Evening check-in, around 21:20 every day: whether the day was logged, what carries forward, any deadline inside the next week, and the first task for tomorrow.
- Weekly review, Sunday morning: hours done against hours planned, chapters done against chapters planned, question accuracy, what slipped and what was dropped or compressed to absorb it, and the next week's plan.
- Current affairs: one running note per month. Each line is the date, the item in under 40 words, the static anchor, the primary source, and whether a primary source confirmed it.
- Deadlines: the notification on 13 January 2027, the application window closing on 2 February 2027, the admit card and travel in May.
- Plan: the master plan and every re-cut, so the trail of decisions is visible.
Progress
A second tab scores exam preparedness from a daily log: hours against the plan to date, days logged, syllabus coverage against the schedule, previous-year-question accuracy, CSAT, and a projected GS-I score, with hard caps when the plan is not running. The score is built to be harsh rather than encouraging.
How to read it
Entries are listed newest first and grouped by month. The chips above the list filter by category. Each entry has its own link, so a weekly review or a particular morning can be shared on its own.
Dates and numbers in the notebook are the coordinator's reading of the plan and the log on that day. Current-affairs items marked unverified were not yet confirmed against a primary source such as PIB, PRS, a ministry release, the RBI or a court judgment, and should not go into permanent notes until they are.
Where the files live
Each entry is a Markdown file in data/upsc/notebook/posts in the site repository, named by date and type. A small script builds the index the page reads. The format is documented in docs/upsc-notebook.md.