Last Saturday I passed the PMP-exam on first try, with the PrepCast and Exam Simulator as core elements in the preparation. Initially I started with reading the PMBOK Guide, but to be honest: it got me nowhere.
For anyone interested, the following approach proved to be successful for me as a digital learner:

1. First, I watched all the core PrepCast episodes at 1,75 times the speed (sorry Cornelius ) and took screen shots to paste into my OneNote.


2. Then I used an AI tool to transcribe and summarize the episodes and added that information to my screen shots - reviewed carefully to make sure that I understood it all. With this, I had a good summary of the entire scope as well as a good overview of the relation between all the aspects in an easy to read format in my OneNote.


3. Then I took the questionnaire, and applied for the exam.


4. As recommended by the PrepCast, I used Rita Mulcahy's preparation book to work though the details - merely one chapter every two days, making summaries in OneNote again, and using pen and paper to do the exercises from the book.
   Every now and then I took a few exam questions in the Simulator, but I was of the opinion that I'd like to take those questions when I felt prepared, rather than rushing into it and ending up with 20 points of improvement every time.


5. After working my way through the People Domain and the Process Domain chapters in Rita Mulcahy's book, I started to take longer sessions in the Simulator of 80 or 100 questions. Scores after 10 or 20 questions are not really good indicators and next to that, I wanted to get an idea of my pace, which was consistently around 80 questions per hour.


6. In the last week before the actual exam I took 3 full simulator exams with one day in between to evaluate weak points, and to repair gaps. Most beneficial turned out to be reverting to my notes from the PrepCast, and to use NotebookLM, to combine the information from all relevant sources (check out that one, really useful) and to get information on very specific topics that I was not good at, or took way too much time to get my head around.
   That really saved me tons of reading while capturing the information from all the documents.
   One of the things I noticed, was that taking a break after 60 questions was not the best approach for me during simulations: the breaks came 'very soon' and I found a drop in my performance in the first 20 questions after the break. On the final simulation I took one break after 130 questions and that worked well, and with three simulation exams scored between 74% and 79% I felt ready and also relatively stress free. (However, on exam day it turned out that the different environment and the inevitable distractions did make me want to take the quick breaks after 60 and 120 questions...)

So in short: I just used the PrepCast, the Simulator and Rita Mulcahy's book to prepare successfully, and next to that some AI tools to access and summarize the contents of the reference material without having to read those all as well. OneNote was the repository in which all information was condensed.

The exam questions were quite similar to those in the Simulator, although sometimes phrased with a bit different wording, but nothing major. For me, the big added value of the PrepCast was initially in the structured overview that the episodes provided, and secondly in the accurate exam simulations.