congratulations!  that's an awesome increase 😊

Yes I took them timed but in the first 10 weeks of studying I never took more than 1 PT per week. And I went like a month early in the game only doing sections, some of them untimed

Did you time 30 practice tests? I feel I don’t have enough time because I’m a slow reader

I also have this problem so I had many techniques to deal with it! Some of it for me was honestly also making peace with the fact that you will inevitably zone out and lose focus sometimes over 2.5 hrs and you can still test very well even if that happens.
- taking over 30 practice tests so they began to feel more and more routine for me
- for some of these PTs I felt very tired (I work full time and would test after work) and I learned that I could still do ok on a test even if I wasn’t feeling 100% sharp. The more you study the less your performance will hinge on variables like how many hours of sleep you got the night before (although that’s obviously also important). You can get to a point where you’re literally recognizing the classic LR errors in your sleep hahaha
- take active steps to engage yourself with the content. sometimes I would read the LR questions that have 2 people arguing to myself in my head in a weird voice to spice things up. 
- jumping jacks and energy boosting 

Hey, I feel I’m losing focus and getting tired while doing practice exam ….how did you focus on 140 minutes exam without getting tired and lost focus?

I think my reply to the other commenter here addresses some of this (aka >30 timed PTs, accepting that moments of focus loss happen and being able to recover and move to the next question without dwelling on whatever bad thing just happened) but I can offer some more specifics for each section here.

- not everything in an RC passage is crucial info. Keep track of the viewpoints in each passage and if you don’t fully understand a concept, start asking yourself why that concept is being explained in the first place. What’s the point of that paragraph? How is the author using a particular sentence or new viewpoint to prove an argument? Sometimes information is actually there for no reason and it’s not worth wasting time trying to understand every single thing in a passage. 

- for LR, you need to understand the classic flaws backwards and forwards. drill sufficient/ necessary, part to whole flaw, correlation is not causation so that you are never missing those. They are really easy to sp

How did you increase your RC AND LR score? What techniques and skills do you use?

Thank you for the response! I am encouraged to hear that you never went over 20 hours a week. It sounds like as healthy a schedule you can have while still working full-time.

I was studying consistently 10-15 hours a week; I never went more than 20 even towards the end of my studying. In the last month I began doing 3 practice tests per week (2 per weekend, one shoved into a weeknight somewhere) and anytime I wasn’t taking a PT I was basically reviewing them. I also drilled logic games constantly because that was the section that i felt could possibly cause me a meltdown while testing. And I tried to always take a day off per week, or at least a day I was only doing like 30 mins.

Congrats!! What was your study schedule like / how many hours a week were you studying? I work full time too and you give me hope!

I am proof that a 17 point increase from your diagnostic is entirely possible! I used a lot of different study resources so feel free to comment or dm me anything u want :)

diagnostic mid150s-> first take 17low in <6 months working full time