A Failure to Plan Means… What?

Last Tuesday's post and survey has had enough time to cook, so today I'm going to continue that thread, summarize some of the feedback, and talk about why some of us (me included) aren't quite making the progress we'd hoped to make this year.

First, to the data. As a quick reminder, last Tuesday I asked how you had done this year in your actual progress towards your planned Cisco certs, versus the progress you had hoped to make so far. So, let's start with a general characterization of the data to date:

• Roughly 50% say that they've made less than ½ of the desired progress.
• Roughly 10% say they've made more progress than hoped - quite an impressive percent in my opinion.
• Roughly 20% each were in the other two categories (50-75% progress and 75-100% progress).

I also asked why you'd not made as much progress, with an unsurprising 40+ percent claiming time availability is the most significant obstacle. 2^nd and 3^rd were things that you can't help much with from a blog - namely "don't get experience at work" (20%) and "trouble taking tests" (10%). You can go back to last Tuesday's post for the rest.

Note: I have to share my favorite write-in vote under "other" in that survey: "I'm to lazy". :-0

So, what conclusions might we draw from the combination of stats? Well, statistically, it's reasonable to think that of the less-than-50%-progress group, many have issues of time available to study. So what can we as test takers do about that? Well, certainly making more time available - quit walking the dog in the evenings, don't clean the house any more, quit sleeping - all those things can help. On the flip side, we can try to make that time more productive. Thinking of productivity, now let me make a bold speculation about the link between success and planning:

You should have a written study plan so that 9 of 10 study sessions you can sit down and be learning with little or no overhead time spent figuring out what to do.

My theory is that too many times it takes too long to actually start learning when it's time to study. But I wonder if anyone else besides me gets excited about the goal, gets a book, starts reading, finds that it's looong (partly my fault, admittedly), and then loses steam. I think writing down the plan, with milestones, showing progress, can help.

The plan doesn't have to be complicated - read chapter X, watch video Y, review progress using exam Z - instead jumping right into the study process. Then, when it comes time to study, you sit down, look at the list, and do it - and make noticeable progress each study session after that. It ought to include several major milestones, where you stop and review and convince yourself that you really learned the stuff. And maybe some self-reward thrown in there as well for making a milestone.

Why bother? Well, imagine it's Friday night, and you're sacrificing family/play time to spend 2-3 hours studying. You've not touched it since a few minutes on Monday night. But when you sit down to study, you see the plan says to finish chapter 2 Spanning Tree, and you get right to it. Later that night, you do a few labs about STP on your simulator, and then before you're done for the night, you've made a good start on the next chapter. While you can do all this without the study plan, maybe you spend a little less time getting distracted by what to do next, and become more productive.

So, am I off base? On base? In between? Let's hear some stories about what's worked for passing exams in regards to planning - even if it doesn't support my assertions in the blog today. Also, I wanna hear more generally with a couple of surveys again. I want to know when you've been most successful in studying for cert exams, how detailed was your study plan. FYI, on the last item, the accountability would be someone that checks on your progress, or encourages you, or some reward (Mercedes CLS for passing ICND1, for example).

And finally, credit where credit is due - Arogeon, one of our frequent posters to this blog, got me thinking about the study plan with his comment - feel free to check his post, and link to his study plan.

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