Continuing my series of posts about study tactics I use I’d like to offer this one to you all. As usual in this case I’m going to base it off of an I.T. related topic but it can most certainly be expanded to any topic/studying scenario.
Unless you are blessed with eidetic(idetic)/photographic memory (if you are I’m jealous) a lot of us take notes as we study. Of course many of us are taught “Write it down, you’ll remember it better” or similar throughout our growing up and education. The question becomes more of what do you do with those notes?
Personally, I have a certain skill of forgetting about them in a long lost world of chaos and just running around like a toddler. So the other night falling asleep I came up with an idea (Okay, no surely I’m not the first one but passing it along). The purpose of notes is to look back at them. Sure, I may remember about something at a point and write it down but this post is in the nature of studying for some sort of practical situation/exam or written exam.
My idea to force myself to look back at them is this, make a quick reference/cheat sheet based on your notes. Here are my thoughts behind this. First off, it makes you look back at those notes. The concept of quick reference/cheat sheet is it’s the key pieces of information. To build one means reading through your notes and picking out highlight items. This first has you reading your notes again, second getting that highlight item out of it, third maybe going off “I forgot all about that section/topic” which leads you to revisit it. Fourth, you build that sheet.
So now, you’ve revisited everything, found out things you forgot and went back to, but now you also have a nice quick reference for the day(s) before/of your scenario of practical/written situation as a fast refresher on key items.
This is just an idea I’m using and trust me some of my ideas are flawed 🙂 However, I wanted to share it as it may be a good tactic others can use to assist in their learning paths. Below is an example of a quick reference/cheat sheet I’m building off my notes for AZ-700. Please let me know if you have any other concepts/ideas/tactics for learning and if you’d like to share as a guest post.
Okay sorry about that! The title is (but also isn’t) misleading. I’m going to write this from an I.T. perspective but in all truth it applies to anything you may be studying.
In the field of I.T. it’s a given…You will always be studying/learning new things. Only always as some would say. Things move so fast, and tasks, technologies, plans, procedures, etc are always changing. It’s really the same in any field to be honest.
One thing I was taught well back in early elementary school was to write it down because writing it down helps you remember it. Well in my case two things, I’m a south paw (aka left handed) and yes I have that stereotypical left handed writing that even if I write the word “the” on a piece of paper odds are tomorrow I can’t even read it 🙂
The second thing is it’s such a digital world and well, I’m kind of a technology guy so I choose to type out my notes. For a few reasons such as be able to search them, and the ease of sharing them with others. Or even collaborating on note taking. And as noted above to be honest, so I can actually read them later!
I’m going to write this as my strategy for note taking using a specific platform/software, as well as based on a self paced course. At the end I will outline at a high level the same(ish) strategy for things like exams or specific technology or books. I’m hoping to get a guest write up from someone that still prefers to hand write their notes because I think that’s a super fun way to do it I just can’t because my handwriting looks like I gave PacketPup a pen and piece of paper.
In my case I prefer to use Microsoft OneNote. For me it makes it simple to share across devices, collaborate, organize, and search. Also allowing me to export to PDF’s or whatnot for storage/archive purposes. I’d like to hear from others what platforms/software you use for digital notes and how you use them. If you’d like, we can set up a guest post to share.
My outline for this is going to based on the (currently) free Junior Cybersecurity Analyst self paced course on Cisco’s Networking Academy (NetAcad).
One of the first things I do is create a new OneNote notebook titled the same as the course (etc) I’m following. This helps because then I have a notebook for every Topic/Course/Book/Exam/Technology I study.
I won’t bore you with the first step of creating a notebook in OneNote as I have a hunch I can put a Benjamin on a bet you all know how to do that even if you don’t use the application. So we’ll start with my process of organizing.
First thing is first I peek at the courses outline or (exam blueprint/book chapter/topic structure). Usually (not always) the self paced learning plans anywhere are organized into a hierarchy of the course as a whole, with sub courses and within the sub courses modules (whatever term they use) and within a module topic areas.
That’s how I like to organize my notes. I build a notebook, within the notebook I create what Microsoft OneNote calls section groups for each course in the learning path in the case of this Cisco NetAcad course. Then within the section group I create a section for each module. In the section I then create individual pages for each sub section within that module. At that point I use bulleted notes on the individual page for the sub topics. That sounds complicated but can be modified/adjust for the different types of studying as mentioned above with book chapters/topics, exam blueprints, days of instructor led training etc. As an example look at the screenshot below outlining the notebook/section group/section/page/bulleted notes hierarchy. (Note titles based off Cisco NetAcad course not my own)
I’m curious to your organization structure while note taking. I would also as mentioned enjoy a handwritten note taker to do a guest post. I know some like individual notebooks for every topic/course/book and some like to use those adhesive flags to separate sections in said notebook but would love to share those strategies as well but as I said…..I have Dr.s handwriting being a southpaw so I can’t read what I wrote down yesterday 🙂
So glancing through various social media a few weeks ago an industry friend posted this:
After asking he was okay with me kind of stealing this topic to make this post. Of course please follow Rowell. He’s a great asset to the community, always sharing topics and advice to everyone and overall just a nice dude. https://rowelldionicio.com/
I’m going to take a step back from his post for a minute. I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where my father spent his entire career working for the telephone company. That kind of gave me a head start. We were early adopters of computing and due to his employment at the telco we had early access to dial-up internet. Also, albeit just fun and games when we’d go out on a fishing trip we’d often stop at the central office’s as he knew of issues and while he fixed them gave me wire and a punch down tool with an empty block to play around with. Kind of gave me a spark later on.
So it became time to graduate high school and go to my local community college. Plenty of degree options but they had one they called “Network Administration”. However, as you looked at the outline of courses involved it was more basic computers and networks. Which in hindsight I’m happy about.
Of course during college I had all the odd jobs: construction/roofing/lumberjack/sandwich shop/etc but they way the degree was structured was this. Microsoft computing foundations, courses build around CompTIA A+, and courses built around CompTIA Network+. Aside from MS foundations it wasn’t really built around any vendors. It was build around the ideas and concepts of computer and networking technology to lay out the fundamentals.
This was great. As a natural progression of those courses I of course took up studying for those exams which helped build study strategies for learning and ultimately obtaining certifications to try and help spark my career.
So where does that actually take me. Well, after building up from those courses and studying those basics for the CompTIA exams it eventually got me into an EasyTech roll at Staples. Eventually I moved away from my parents house and over time got a help desk roll at a healthcare company. It was a small team of 2 helpdesk/deskside support people (one of them me), 1 guy that ran the network, and a couple app analysts for the EMR apps. Slowly I started to get involved into the networking and eventually was able to get sent to a CCNA class. Let me tell you sideways to none knowing networking basics from the Network+ studying/coursework/exam made learning the Cisco way so much easier.
Overtime I ended up working for VAR’s/Consulting and began to learn more and more vendor deployments. To Rowell’s point in his post. Knowing the networking basics made learning that so much easier. While they all might do things a little different the base of technology follows protocols and concepts.
Overall a route is a route, an IP Address is an IP Address, a VLAN is a VLAN. Sure every vendor might call it something different or have some fancy marketing name for it but if you get the concept the only hard part about moving on is memorizing the nuance marketing. Hello in English is different then hello in German but if you understand a hello you can get going.
I learned a lot about this at one VAR I worked at when SD-WAN was a big push. Some customers wanted vendor A, others wanted to use vendor B. So I had to read up and understand them. When it boiled down to it the basic concepts were the same and you know what never truly changed other than implementation? The basic networking concept of routing.
I’m following the same logic as I choose to chase Microsoft Azure Networking AZ-700 but thought to myself, start with a foundation first. So the first thing I did was study the Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 and take that exam. Glad I did. The Fundamentals outlined Microsoft’s Azure VNets which are literally a huge foundational concept as part of all of the Azure Networking. As I study I learn how these basics are key. Funny enough, general networking basics play a huge role as networks/routing/subnetting/IP addresses are all pivotal to know and understand.
Understanding the basics helps you in troubleshooting issues as well. As networking folk we often get pulled into trouble situations. Knowing how to diagnose the core concepts of networking is important in helping rule out network issues vs client/server and application issues. I’ve used those basics all the time to verify end to end connectivity so we could collectively as a team lean on the app or server or workstation to figure out what was causing the issue.
People do it, just go head first into things like CCNA/CCNP and other vendors exams, but in the long run. Understanding the basics aids you first in troubleshooting and verifying, but as to Rowell’s point, makes learning a new technology easier since they are built on those foundations.
We Information Technology folks (e.g. Network Engineers, Security Engineers, Cloud Engineers, Software Engineers, etc. the list goes on) are always in a predicament. I can’t speak for everyone but a lot, if not most of us, kind of do it to ourselves in a sense. What is that predicament?
Well, I guess it has multiple elements to it in my opinion. To start as technology changes, grows, expands, whatever you want to call it we often get geeked out about the new. It’s kind of in our blood. The problem is we have to maintain what we already know while keeping up with and learning whats new.
This maintenance comes in a few forms. One is keeping up with the environment we work in. It’s elements, configurations, upcoming changes, etc. Another large thing is keeping our credentials up to date and valid. Some things stay the same which gets tedious to go over again and again and constantly paying to uphold certifications. These change over time, but often hold onto a lot of technology that gets tiresome to re-study time and time again to put it back in your brain just for an exam. As time goes, new elements are added yes, and that’s a fun part of repeating these exams to re-certify but that is the same reason I got burnt out allowing expiry of a lot of credentials I’ve held.
Now there is learning something new. This is exciting and a lot easier to maintain focus and a study schedule. No, I’m not saying you have to study for an exam or certification but I find using those as outlines a good way to organize forward progress and small achievements/goals covering broken down topics that fall under a “section” or “category”. For me I usually do this and take the exam/certification because if I break down studying using those as outlines I might as well attempt it.
So whats with the “I’ll take two or more” thing. It’s an idea I use to keep from the burnout. The thought process is to study for two or more (obviously allowable open/available time based) things at once. Personally my plan is to pick one credential I want to maintain/renew (or in my case obtain again from having it active previously) and pick another that is something new to spark that excitement back into learning/studying.
This allows me to work a bit on that tedious task of going over the same content again and again so when I get that study exhaustion I can bounce to the new and more fun to me thing I’m studying.
This takes some dedication as you can imagine. Organization is also key, not just in note taking and planning time, sections/category breakdowns, but most importantly keeping things separate in your head as well. This is different for everyone but I like using OneNote for note taking and utilizing the training books/videos/course/exam blueprints sections and categories as an outline.
This strategy isn’t for everyone but I figured I’d share it in hopes it can help someone. Also, don’t think this is limited to Information Technology. It could certainly be used in other arenas or even as a way to break away from the doldrums of the field you are maintaining knowledge in. For instance, maybe you are an electrician and need to maintain journeyman statuses but are burning out, you could pick up learning a new language as your second topic as a getaway, or maybe a good getaway is picking up culinary or BBQ skills.
Let’s keep the train wheels moving in this exciting, constantly changing and evolving landscape we call life. High fives and best of luck!
