Hello,

See, first of all taking an optional in UPSC should be something that you have interest in and the availability of study materials too count here ,the reason being syllabus of optional is nothing short of graduation level.

Now,coming to preparation for UPSC,you can go through the steps mentioned below;

You can go through the gradual steps as mentioned below in order to start your preparation for UPSC:


Learn the UPSC Syllabus by heart, that's the most important step in order to crack the exam, by doing so you'll be aware of what to read and what to skip.

Have an integrated preparation of prelims and mains,nowadays what's happening is even in prelims, UPSC frame questions based on Mains syllabus, so this helps a lot.

Read any newspaper like The Hindu, or Indian Express on a regular basis to be updated as well as gaining knowledge, this will help you in prelims as well as answer writing in mains, as you'll be able to provide relevant current details by thinking about it economically,politically,geographically etc. It's good if you can link any answer with the present scenario by providing relevant data, it helps to fetch more marks,

Start with basics, for each subject, you can do with NCERTs for this. As you progress, move on to other relevant books, keep your resources minimum like Polity by Laxmikanth, History of Modern India by Bipin Chandra etc.

You should start practicing answer writing in advance, even in a little way, writing mains is a huge task for nine paper, it requires immense practice along with knowledge. In this case,the sooner you start,the better it is. There are sites which provides you questions,so you can take help of that.

Practice previous year question paper which you can get from UPSC site including mock papers, and test series which you can get it from any of the sites extensively dedicated to UPSC, , it's highly important to evaluate your performance persistently.