The Structure vs The Content | Crack Civil Services in First Attempt by Divey Sethi, IRS - UPSC PDF Download

 Page 1


The Structure v/s The Content
“Various exams have different contents; how to clear  
them is the structure.”
Lately, I have been wondering what core talents or skills I possess, 
and among a few others, the skill that is insanely imminent is 
clearing entrance examinations! Starting right from 2003 to 2013, 
I devoted this whole decade to ace the competitive examinations in 
India and bagged IIT JEE, AIEEE, CAT, GMAT, GRE, GATE, SSC – 
Technical, and SSC – CGLE, UPSC IES, and finally UPSC CSE into 
my kitty of achievements. The only exam I could not clear, despite 
being absolutely sure of my best attempt toward it, was the CEE 
(common entrance examination of 2003), which was a gateway to 
the prestigious Delhi College of Engineering (now Delhi Technical 
University). From the year 2010 onwards, I ended up clearing 5 
government services examinations from 2011 to 2013, some more 
than once, the last one being UPSC Civil services. Now that there are 
no more exams left to clear, I ponder over, and more so introspect, 
what the fundamental characteristics of my mind are that helped 
me crack such a distinguished array of examinations in a span of a 
decade. Can there be some fundamental traits that my mind followed 
for every different paper? Can we elicit some common principles that 
would create apt conditions for the mind of any aspirant to adjust 
as per the requirements of any entrance competitive examination, 
irrespective of vastly different patterns? Well, it seems that there 
are some patterns that my mind followed, though without knowing 
it consciously, which somehow increased my chances of success at 
various exams drastically.
These patterns, these fundamental traits or qualities or characteristics, 
I put as the structure – to be more precise – the structure of mind 
Page 2


The Structure v/s The Content
“Various exams have different contents; how to clear  
them is the structure.”
Lately, I have been wondering what core talents or skills I possess, 
and among a few others, the skill that is insanely imminent is 
clearing entrance examinations! Starting right from 2003 to 2013, 
I devoted this whole decade to ace the competitive examinations in 
India and bagged IIT JEE, AIEEE, CAT, GMAT, GRE, GATE, SSC – 
Technical, and SSC – CGLE, UPSC IES, and finally UPSC CSE into 
my kitty of achievements. The only exam I could not clear, despite 
being absolutely sure of my best attempt toward it, was the CEE 
(common entrance examination of 2003), which was a gateway to 
the prestigious Delhi College of Engineering (now Delhi Technical 
University). From the year 2010 onwards, I ended up clearing 5 
government services examinations from 2011 to 2013, some more 
than once, the last one being UPSC Civil services. Now that there are 
no more exams left to clear, I ponder over, and more so introspect, 
what the fundamental characteristics of my mind are that helped 
me crack such a distinguished array of examinations in a span of a 
decade. Can there be some fundamental traits that my mind followed 
for every different paper? Can we elicit some common principles that 
would create apt conditions for the mind of any aspirant to adjust 
as per the requirements of any entrance competitive examination, 
irrespective of vastly different patterns? Well, it seems that there 
are some patterns that my mind followed, though without knowing 
it consciously, which somehow increased my chances of success at 
various exams drastically.
These patterns, these fundamental traits or qualities or characteristics, 
I put as the structure – to be more precise – the structure of mind 
to learn how to learn & adapt quickly to various diverse patterns of 
the examination. The subsequent questions of when to study, from 
where to study, what to study, and how to study are examination-
specific issues, which I call the content. The former part, that is, the 
structure of the mind, is more of a static thing for the broad topic of 
clearing the competitive examinations, and the latter part, that is, the 
content, will be dynamic, that is, it shall change as per the needs of 
a particular competitive examination. To observe the structure of a 
particular thing, here it is the generalized patterns a mind follows for 
success at entrance examination, is a tremendous capability, which is a 
consequence of profound introspection and contemplation developed 
rigorously through the practice of mindfulness, that is, you go inward 
looking by watching yourself as a third person and observing minutely 
for eliciting some common patterns for a particular task at hand. Having 
said that, I do not expect that you, being an aspirant of UPSC Civil 
Services, start doing mindfulness introspection and contemplation 
instead of the task at hand, and that is why I have tried my best to lay 
bare to the best of my capabilities, the structure we need our minds to 
resort to for cracking civil services. The first part of the book covers 
the various aspects, concepts, contexts, and topics of this structure of 
mind I have referred to. The second part of the book covers the content 
of the UPSC Civil services, which takes up all the questions related to 
when, where, what, and how. Upon studying both the parts and going 
through the process of preparations, you shall realize that part one, 
which dealt with the structure of the mind required for preparations, 
is tremendously hard to imbibe and achieve and will show you the 
sheer power of creating the right structure of the mind to succeed in 
the entrance examination.
Before I actually delve into the different structures required for the 
above task, I would like you to further realize, to some extent, the 
fine demarcation between the structure of the mind and its content 
through some examples. Let me first tell you that the structure of the 
mind, in this book, refers to the process of how your mind is thinking 
Page 3


The Structure v/s The Content
“Various exams have different contents; how to clear  
them is the structure.”
Lately, I have been wondering what core talents or skills I possess, 
and among a few others, the skill that is insanely imminent is 
clearing entrance examinations! Starting right from 2003 to 2013, 
I devoted this whole decade to ace the competitive examinations in 
India and bagged IIT JEE, AIEEE, CAT, GMAT, GRE, GATE, SSC – 
Technical, and SSC – CGLE, UPSC IES, and finally UPSC CSE into 
my kitty of achievements. The only exam I could not clear, despite 
being absolutely sure of my best attempt toward it, was the CEE 
(common entrance examination of 2003), which was a gateway to 
the prestigious Delhi College of Engineering (now Delhi Technical 
University). From the year 2010 onwards, I ended up clearing 5 
government services examinations from 2011 to 2013, some more 
than once, the last one being UPSC Civil services. Now that there are 
no more exams left to clear, I ponder over, and more so introspect, 
what the fundamental characteristics of my mind are that helped 
me crack such a distinguished array of examinations in a span of a 
decade. Can there be some fundamental traits that my mind followed 
for every different paper? Can we elicit some common principles that 
would create apt conditions for the mind of any aspirant to adjust 
as per the requirements of any entrance competitive examination, 
irrespective of vastly different patterns? Well, it seems that there 
are some patterns that my mind followed, though without knowing 
it consciously, which somehow increased my chances of success at 
various exams drastically.
These patterns, these fundamental traits or qualities or characteristics, 
I put as the structure – to be more precise – the structure of mind 
to learn how to learn & adapt quickly to various diverse patterns of 
the examination. The subsequent questions of when to study, from 
where to study, what to study, and how to study are examination-
specific issues, which I call the content. The former part, that is, the 
structure of the mind, is more of a static thing for the broad topic of 
clearing the competitive examinations, and the latter part, that is, the 
content, will be dynamic, that is, it shall change as per the needs of 
a particular competitive examination. To observe the structure of a 
particular thing, here it is the generalized patterns a mind follows for 
success at entrance examination, is a tremendous capability, which is a 
consequence of profound introspection and contemplation developed 
rigorously through the practice of mindfulness, that is, you go inward 
looking by watching yourself as a third person and observing minutely 
for eliciting some common patterns for a particular task at hand. Having 
said that, I do not expect that you, being an aspirant of UPSC Civil 
Services, start doing mindfulness introspection and contemplation 
instead of the task at hand, and that is why I have tried my best to lay 
bare to the best of my capabilities, the structure we need our minds to 
resort to for cracking civil services. The first part of the book covers 
the various aspects, concepts, contexts, and topics of this structure of 
mind I have referred to. The second part of the book covers the content 
of the UPSC Civil services, which takes up all the questions related to 
when, where, what, and how. Upon studying both the parts and going 
through the process of preparations, you shall realize that part one, 
which dealt with the structure of the mind required for preparations, 
is tremendously hard to imbibe and achieve and will show you the 
sheer power of creating the right structure of the mind to succeed in 
the entrance examination.
Before I actually delve into the different structures required for the 
above task, I would like you to further realize, to some extent, the 
fine demarcation between the structure of the mind and its content 
through some examples. Let me first tell you that the structure of the 
mind, in this book, refers to the process of how your mind is thinking 
and making decisions. It refers to the procedures, checks, and balances 
your mind is following and why it is following after it has made a 
decision. On the other hand, the content would refer to what decision 
has been made and what, how, and when such procedures and checks 
and balances have been applied after the decision is made. Let us 
take another example, a very basic one: the structure of the mind of 
a religious fundamentalist is the same regardless of the religion. Why? 
Because in all such cases, the mind is locked into the dogma that only 
a single CORRECT narrative exists for viewing a world. However, that 
single correct narrative has myriad processes, rules, and procedures 
accompanying it, which are different for every narrative. Here, we 
realize that the structure is the thinking process of the mind itself, and 
the content is what the mind is coming up with during that thinking. 
Although the above is a very simple example that gives you an idea 
of how to delineate between structure and content, in reality, the 
mind comes up with more nuanced distinctions between structure 
and content. But going through part one of this book, you will slowly 
realize the sheer power of this when the structure of a mind to clear 
entrance examination is laid bare in front of you. If it is imbibed into 
you, then it becomes easy to upload different content that is relevant 
to the requirements of a particular exam. Let us now begin the journey 
to discern and enlist some fundamental structures that I have found 
in myself and what I have not found in those who could not clear civil 
services, most of them having better knowledge than me, both in-
depth and width of the subject.