What

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

What are you doing to achieve your goals? The What idea talks about decision or indecision. Are you moving or not?

It is also talking about your way of doing things, your method if you will. Write your plan and tell others. Accountability helps.

What I’m aiming for my study week is to reach 30h/week, with a mix of theory/ anki flashcards and lab practice. Around a 30% of the hours of the week are going into lab practice, many times that would be around 40% of the time.

Lab practice is key for information retention and to start to understand the things, then you confirm the theory in the lab. In the past I made the mistake to only study theory but I was not remembering much after a few months, practice is very important. Most of the time I can practice an hour in the lab, sometimes 2h a day.

What tools I’m using frequently:

• Study books are key to a successful journey, they give you the knowledge and the deep understanding. I have O’reilly subscription for that.
• Other blogs/Video platform: Other people point of view of the topic most of the time helps you understand it. Youtube is full of good content.
• Excel: as a tracking tool, where I track hours, books, budget for the trainings…If you don’t track it, it didn’t happen.
• Anki: by doing your own flashcards and later testing yourself your memory. This is a free app that you should try!
• Note taking: I’m using OneNote and Notion lately, both are very good. Notion was a great recent finding.
• Writing in the blog: when I write about technical subjects, it is a good documentation/study process.

Other things:

• Attending webinars from vendors that are free to access, most of the time you can find it in Youtube or O’reilly. Good thing is that you can ask questions live.
• Using twitter to build little by little a small community of people to interact with, I’m keeping the twitter for professional only topics.
• LinkedIn is another great tool to increase your network and interaction. That will give you visibility for finding a job in the future as an extra.
• Joined several study groups through Discord, but I don’t interact much there for now. Also I joined Routergods which is a very famous study group.

Conclusion

It is important to have a goal written and also in mind, but you have to account every day in some tracking place. An excel, a notebook, a blog…

You can refer to my monthly reports, for a deeper insight of these tools I use of my daily study.

What about you? Are you moving towards your goals?