Second-guessing yourself is a common trap in IELTS Reading. Many students change a correct answer to an incorrect one after overthinking — here is how to know when to trust your instinct versus when to double-check.
Why students overthink in the first place. Under time pressure, doubt creeps in easily: "Is this really the answer, or am I missing something?" This anxiety often leads to unnecessary answer-switching, especially on True/False/Not Given questions where NOT GIVEN can feel like an unsatisfying choice compared to a definite True or False.
When your first instinct is usually reliable. If you found your answer by carefully reading the relevant sentence and directly comparing it to the question, your first answer is usually correct. Changing it without a specific, concrete reason (like noticing a keyword you missed) is often a mistake driven by anxiety, not logic.
When you should reconsider. It is worth pausing to double check if: you answered very quickly without reading the full sentence, you are unsure whether a word in the passage means something different than you assumed, or you now notice new information in a sentence you skipped over the first time.
A simple rule of thumb. Only change an answer if you can point to a specific new piece of evidence in the passage that changes your reasoning — not simply because of a vague feeling of doubt.
Build confidence through practice, not guessing. The real fix for overthinking is trusting a strategy you have practiced enough times to rely on. Reviewing explanations after every Readlify practice passage — right or wrong — builds the pattern recognition that makes your first instinct more consistently correct over time.