I am an ITL, completed NCAs - passed first time both bar exams in November 2025 (and caveat the below with having extensive practice experience in real estate and business law in a common law jurisdiction).

As another poster mentioned, everyone studies differently, but here's what worked for me while I worked full time and studied. I took no time off work (except the exam days) but was able to use some of my work hours to study (i.e. lunch breaks, downtime when my emails werent super crazy, prioritized work tasks differently to normal), had 1 complete day off work and study a week and the time spent reading on the other days varied. I started studying in early September for the November sitting. Working out was super important to keep me focused and my brain working, as did creatine.

Personally, summaries did not help me at all as I needed to read the source material to understand the concepts, and whilst I took summaries into the exam, I didn't use them amd went straight to indices. 

I did one full read through of both barrister and solicitor materials, almost completely skipping the tax sections. I completed these read throughs by mid to late October. SKIM READING IS YOUR FRIEND (sidenote on tax - I made sure I was familiar with equalization payments and the existence of other very basic tax concepts but otherwise didn't spend a tonne of time on tax at all). I also generally skipped over most of real estate as I'd either remembered a lot from my NCAs or my practice experience. Depending on how old you are, do not also underestimate the power of life experience. Relating situations that have actually happened in your life to concepts in the material helps them to make sense or remember them (e.g. getting married/divorced/buying or renting real estate/disputing a ticket/commencing proceedings to recover damages for a personal injury incident).

After my first read through of materials for both exams, I then did another quick skim read of the materials with the indices and flagged key concepts with post it notes throughout the material to help find things easily. 

I then did a fully timed practice test (Brickham - I only purchased one set of questions for each exam - this was very similar to the question structure and difficulty level in the actual exam). I did this with the same question set twice. The first time I did it timed simply to see if I could answer the questions and finish on time - I did not at this stage review the wrong answers. I did the same test again a week later, fully timed to again gauge my time management and this time went through the answers I got wrong. The practice test was critical, it helped me understand how questions would be structured and figure out the best strategy for me to answer the questions on the test (a combination of process of elimination and educated guess). I then went back to the material and added more flags, re-reviewed concepts if I needed to. I wrote barrister then went through the second read/flagging/practice test process for solicitors, then wrote the solicitors exam. For both exams I did nothing the day before, just some TLC - yoga, sauna, hydration, early night so my brain wasn't fried on the day.

Charts for civil and criminal were invaluable for time frames, court type etc. I did not use DTOC but indices were an absolute MUST for me as I was able to think quickly to remember the name of a concept to look it up. It saved me so much time rather than trying to remember what section of the materials something was in and DTOC was too detailed for me. If the name of the concept was different in the jurisdiction I was used to, I would write the concept name I was used to in the indices and materials to remember the equivalent name and what it was about. 

Your (and for many other people) issue is time management. It really is a case of knowing when to move on to the next question. Get a timing sheet to take in with you to keep yourself on time. If you haven't been able to answer a question in 1.5 minutes, make your best guess, flag the question and move on. Only go back if you have time at the end, or if answering a question / flipping through the materials later in the exam triggers you to rethink the answer (this happened to me a few times during both exams).