Hi Tiffany,
This is an interesting question, I can tell you what I did, PMBOK 7 was the latest guide when I did my exam. These were my steps
Step1
I read the PMBOK 7 guide once, I highlighted key areas and made notes.
Step 2
I took a PMP course the 35 hours to get my PDUs and this is where things opened up, I started making notes I started cross checking against the book and most importantly and my hack was AI. (I will example later)
Step3
I started doing tests and exams finding my weak areas then with all my study material downloaded I would find the sections and read them, and then most of all I would cross check with AI.
AI Hack
I used AI as a teacher and a Librarian. For example, project charter, I would ask it was is a project charter, then I would ask it could you make a simple example of a project charter for a medical device company (you could make it for whatever industry). Then I would go to my books and find project charter, re-read and anything I am not sure on I would repeat the process. So Little by little I read all the books, but also in relation to questions I could not ask or section in a training I did not understand. This way it stuck.
So for me I did not try and balance as dont forget even with PMBOK 7 there were the agile guides, process guides etc and more, but if you link this with active learning, tests and AI, it can make the process easier.
