I'm going to share my study plan and let you know what worked and what didn't work. Of course you need to recognize your learning style but perhaps you'll have a similar experience as I did.
1) I did the Prepcast Start to Finish
2) I read the PMBOK
3) I did an Exam Simulator Exam - failed - and realized I still had no idea what I was doing!
4) Bought Rita's book and went through it start to finish
5) Did another Exam Simulator - passed
6)Did 3 more exams, raising my marks each time by going through all wrong answers in detail, focusing on areas I had trouble with and going back to Rita's book to review those knowledge areas.
What I would have differently:
1) Read the PMBOK first. Everything else is someone's interpretation of the PMBOK. Start with this as the source material and all learning you do after will make more sense
2) I thought the prepcast content was good. And I thought the Rita's content was good. But of all that material, the thing that helped me the most were the Activities in Rita's book. If you do all the Activities you have a pretty good command of the basics.
3) The Exam simulator was invaluable. I didn't realize this until late in my studies, but you don't have to do full exams all the time. It's worth doing at least one to get a feel for the scope of the exam. It's a bit of a marathon. But the Timed / Learning Quizzes let you do as many questions as you want. This I found to be my greatest study aid. Especially in Learning mode. I would read a question, answer it - then immediately to check to see if I had the answer right, if my logic for choosing that answer was sound, and if my logic for ruling out other answers was also sound. This process really boosted my confidence, solidified understanding, and pointed out holes in my knowledge. (Thanks to the moderators for putting up with a few of my questions along the way!)
4) I memorized table 1-4 fairly late in my studies. I made sure I could recreate it from memory and walk through it in my mind easily. I should have done that earlier. That was a game changer for me. It seemed daunting at first but it really isn't that hard
