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HI Everyone.

 

I seem always to be doing at least 2 IT courses at the same time. The reasons are many but I can enumerate a few: One I enjoy IT 🙂, Two I am worried about getting behind, Three I want to get ahead, Four I am addicted to getting the course completions certificates and certifications because it makes up for my years of goofing off in grade school and all but the last year of High School. Back then teachers were not very politically correct so I was called a moron, a pain in the a, imbecile, lazy, annoying and many other attributes which in today’s world would land the teacher in court 🙂 . This obviously inflicted me with deep impostor syndrome whenever I find myself sitting at a table with smart folks 🙂.

So I am always doing courses. Now no one really pays you do do courses so you have to somehow fit them in with the boring stuff. i.e. work. 

I have a few tricks but wanted to know if you had any as well. For one thing on most courses you can turn up the speed of the lecturer. Often there is simply too much talking anyways (look at me) so you are not going to miss much and you can always stop the playback to write something down or go back over it you did not understand something.

My second tip is I write tid bits of info into a text file, anything that sticks out or I find to be a key in understanding the knowledge. Our brains work in funny ways. One genius music composer said that he saw the notes as different colours and this helped him play and memorise tunes. I find one word can be the key to many big chunks of info lying behind them.

 

What tips and tricks do you have for being able to study IT effectively without getting fired from the day job? :)

For me during the day with work is difficult and then in the evening it is family time so there really is not much to do, but I do schedule time in my day 1.5 hours for lunch where it lets me step away to actually eat lunch but then also work on training, courses, labs, etc.  This gives me at least an hour a day to do this which I find right now is the best way.

That is when I am not using that time to write my third book also.  🤣

I’ve really gotten used to watching training videos at least at 1.5x speed. Sometimes 2x. It’s gotten to the point where I get really impatient with the sites that don’t allow faster speeds. I also find that I have way too many things I’m interested in learning so at least once a week, I list them all out and then prioritize. It’s still a work in progress. Multi-tasking is a myth. We context switch quickly but it comes at a price. So I’m trying to schedule time to have focused studying while also trying to have something I can study on my phone or tablet so I can learn something during short breaks (e.g. commercials during a show/sports).

technological watch is part of my jobs for continuous innovation on my areas of expertise. In fact, I don't necessarily have the time and I do it on my own time.

Love your second tip :)

I try and have a decent amount of knowledge on a subject BEFORE I take a course so I can take more away from it and not be overloaded learning. I’ll write down the things I don’t know and need to work on.  When I take a VMware or Veeam course now there is always 1 to 2 things I really focus on and ask a few questions on, where as someone who has never seen either product would be overwhelmed. 

 

Having a lab to keep skills up between course/studying and exam is really helpful.

 

Your second part hits home. As a drummer in 2 bands I am learning material constantly. I actually name sections of songs and write it down on paper when I am learning them.   It’s a lot easier than reading 7-12 names on a piece of paper from top to bottom than 10 pages of sheet music while playing at 200BPM.   Similar to above, I have to listen to the song and know what the part sounds like already or the name would be useless, but reading “fast part with a ton of fills”  is allows me to not have to stare a a piece of paper which is imposable to read at that speed.

 

Trying to write a few words on a paper when studying to jog a memory instead of word for word is useful. Similar to when giving a speech. 

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