Make a list of things to remember in the midway
This is a really tough road and it’s important to always keep in mind certain “rules”. While you are still fresh it’s a good idea to make a list of things that you want to remember when you might be tired and confused in the middle of the study schedule. You can find lots of these key concepts at the beginning of many books (Eg: First Aid, Kaplan QBank, etc.), but I will mention some that were really important to me:
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This is a perfectly possible project. It is also perfectly normal to feel exhausted and pessimistic halfway, learn to question your own feelings and pessimistic thoughts and think that what is happening to you also happened to many people who finally got a high score. I cannot tell you how many times I felt that I was bound to failure.
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Remember that nothing’s more important than the final outcome, it’s perfectly fine to do things differently to the advice you get (even this one) as long as you can still get to your target that way. The most objective feedback you can get about it are your USMLE World Qbank score and the NBME forms; getting a high score in them is the best way to know that what you are doing is right.
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Don’t delay doing question banks, it is strongly emphasized everywhere that all good study plans require making lots of questions in the random timed fashion. Start doing this ASAP, if I had to take this exam again I would start doing UW much earlier in the schedule than I did. I know many cases of people than despite having read tons of books, delaying the practice with question banks was quite detrimental to their performance. On the day of the exam you should not be worried at all about the format or type of questions in the examination. Doing practice questions should be an essential part of your whole study plan.
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One of the most important things: ACTIVE LEARNING. Try to avoid passive reading or semi-effective study, your time is really important and you should also wisely spend it in having fun and healthy activities. Once you have decided to sit and study, try to keep in mind that everything ends up with a set of multiple choice questions, so try to conceptualize every possible piece of information that way. Paraphrasing, making diagrams and doing many multiple choice questions are some of the best ways towards active learning.