710 to 770 in 2 weeks

Second stab at the gmat and I managed to improve my score 60 points in 2 weeks. From q47v41 to q49v47, total 770. I am very happy with my result!!

What made the difference?
1) I did a lot more math prep using the hard questions on gmat club. This meant I had much more fluidity with the concepts being tested and more familiarity with the question types (I'm 31 and haven't done any math for a long time). This meant I was much more relaxed on test day
2) I redid all the hard verbal questions from the OG guide. There aren't many good sources of 700+ level verbal questions. I really examined where and why I was going wrong and had a better understanding of how to answer the questions.
3) I did the verbal first, when I was more relaxed and fresher due to not taxing or stressing myself with the quant
4) I did the exam at 2pm, so had had 6hrs sleep instead of 4. I'm not a morning person and don't normally get up early so a 9am exam was not ideal for me at all
5) I did 3 practise tests to try and get myself used to the time pressure on quant and increase my mental stamina
6) I finished verbal 8 minutes early and instead of going directly to my break I sat and relaxed (before clicking to submit my final answer). That means I had a 16min break between verbal and quant
7) I the exam in a different test center that was generally better (Apricot towers, Dubai)
8) I think I got bit lucky on the questions this time around. 770 was the best I'd done on any mock test, and that was a repeat of an OG test. I wasn't really expecting anything higher than 760
9) Error logs. It is so important to do this. You need to know what you're doing wrong in order to improve. A lot of my quant mistakes were classic cases of forgetting that variables could be zero or even the same, and I made sure to correct this, and approached every DS involving unknown variables with the 4 horsemen - could be same, could be zero, could be negative, could be non-integer. I also noticed that I had a tendency to skim the questions and misread them and made sure to take more time reading the questions
10) Extra time on RC - as a native speaker and very fast reader, I had a tendency to zip through the RC passages and dive into the questions too soon. I allowed myself extra time on RC this time, as I knew I would finish verbal early anyway (I still finished 8mins early despite trying not to) This time I read every paragraph twice, and then re-read the passage from start to finish, before going on to the questions. It's important not to freak out about taking time on RC questions.
11) Unfortunately I missed the final quant question by seconds - again. I would say if there is 30 seconds left on the clock, stop trying to solve this last question - just submit an answer. Goes for verbal too. Both times I thought I could get the right answer in time and ended up missing the question entirely which produces a significant ding.

I should note that my first verbal score, v41, was not representative of my actual ability in this section, because I was so tired and freaked out from the quant. I "should" have got a v42-44 the first time, so I don't have any magic tip to boost your verbal score by 6 in 2 weeks

My total prep time was 7 weeks for first exam, 9 weeks for second. 80-90% of study hours were spent on quant. I had to put in a lot of time because I was so unfamiliar with the maths (either it was new, or massively rusty). Total study time was probably around 180-200 hrs, and I'd certainly recommend any "oldie" to allow more time than average.