How to stay motivated & study everyday for the CISSP that I am taking in early Jan?

mnijhawan

How to stay motivated & study everyday for the CISSP that I am taking in early Jan 2014? Thanks!

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pramin

See the below link.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/isc-sscp-cissp/94857-cissp-resume-gold.html

JockVSJock

What kept me motivated was blogging and tweeting what I learned on a daily basis.

LionelTeo

Here is some advice for me, but ultimately, you have to figure it out what's the best is for yourself.

The most important thing is, don't think, don't desire for it, just concentrate on studying.

Why
You can think of it, but everytime you think of it resulted in a conflicted situation.

Now - You do not have the CISSP in your hands yet
Future - You are thinking of being in the point of time having CISSP in your hands

Having the desire and thoughts of having the CISSP in your hands will resulted in a conflict, the conflict will generates a negative feeling. Prolong desire will resulted in so much conflict of now and future, and causes so much stress to the mind and body, and in return if affects your ability to concentrate well, your life, your family and your work. If your studying CISSP with so much stress, then you won't do well.

If you really want to be a successful person in your life, then you have to discard away your desire, don't think of the outcome, simply study for it. Once you remove one of the conflict, or minimise thinking of it excessively, then there won't be any stress and you can concentrate well.

Next, you got to pick a study plan, for me i spend my time studying while taking the public transport while travelling, so no time is wasted on my family and enjoyment time. 45 mins travelling to work resulted 1 hour and 30 mins of studying time. So I finished Eric Conrad books in 3 months easily.

After that, you got to plan out your study and enjoyment time well. Study is good, but studying beyond an excess amount of time is bad of the body and learning process. Your mind won't be able to absorb more stuff after a certain limit and everything you study become stress and just words rather than learning the concept.

Finally, you got to have a great desire to study everyday, this can be done by waking up everyday and telling yourself the list of things you would want to do. It also works effectively if you also apply it before to sleep. Ever heard of people saying that if you think about failing an exam, then you would really fail the exam? This is an example of the subconscious mind working in effect, if you desire in the opposite way, then you will be feeding your subconscious mind the correct things to tell yourself you would want to study everyday.

Conclusion
- No Desire and thinking of CISSP in your hands, remove the conflict of thoughts of future and accepting now, which remove the Stress, Just Study
- Get a study plan to balance enjoyment and study
- Do not study excessively as it will cause stress, and may result in setback, stress also prevents you from learning anything
- Feed your subconscious the correct mind to study everyday by desiring for it before you sleep and after you woke up

Good luck!

blackberrycubed

I am so unmotivated these days

and not liking to read books aint helping either.

mnijhawan

WOW LionelTeo ...Thank you very very much for the great advice! I will use you recommendations for my study plan and my general outlook for the CISSP Exam. I appreciate the support, time and the advice!

beads

Tell anyone and everyone in your household that this block of time is dedicated to studying. Of course this may be even harder if you strictly live alone or in a hotel room as yours truly does six days a week.

Having others to help motivate you can be of great motivation to help. Doing it strictly on your own can be more distracting - believe it or not.

So, you've set aside some time. Relax, read then digest what you've read. I keep harping on this idea but read for about 20 minutes at a time. Take a quick break and think about what you've just read. Quiz yourself. Write it out if its particularly complicated. How much can you regurgitate? Short term memory is literally 20 minutes. Think your going to instantly put two hours of heavy reading to long term memory? Not going to happen unless you've got a photographic memory - most of us don't. That's why we get bored of studying and feeling like we aren't accomplishing much. Because often times, we aren't. Dog chasing tails come to mind.

Break up the study time into smaller stints at first and keep at it. Keep to the routine of studying in bursts. I break mine several small stints throughout the day with a break down of what I need to study. First in the morning; another stint mid day; last in the evening but usually longer. Keeping up the routine without being routine is the hardest part of the whole deal. Not part but the whole deal. Its tough but has many similarities to fighting depression or burn-out which are in reality the same thing. Keeping the routine.

- B Eads

samurai86

I have to agree with you Beads. I found my best knowledge retention reading for about 20 - 30 minutes at a time. Also, unfortunately, I think re-reading the same material over and over again helps. I don't like to read, but I do believe that re-reading material you are not familiar with really does help reinforce the material.

It also helped that I had a colleague who was studying at the same time as me. We would have conversations about certain topics and just talk out some of the concepts.

beads

Well let me clarify when I say 20 minutes or so. A two hour block of study time is really 6 twenty minute blocks of time. Really, there has been enough physiological research on the subject confirming what I learned long ago about studying. My retention while using this technique has been much better than trying to simply gut everything out. Oh that and Monday night football provided me with enough distraction to make me break last night. (*snicker*)

Next up on Thursday: HCISPP. This is looking like a joke.

- B Eads

RanMic

What kept me motivated was the fact that I didnt want to have to retake it.

RanMic

beads wrote: »

Next up on Thursday: HCISPP. This is looking like a joke.

beads, are you saying you’re gonna take the HCISSP? I briefly looked over the domains today and it didn’t look too difficult. Do you know what value (if any) this cert will carry in the Health Care field? I've been healthcare off an on for while, but was thinking about one day going back and never even thought about the HCISSP until now. Any info on it you care to share? You can PM me is you want no to highjack this thread.

beads

Ask me tomorrow, for today we test. Actually the material is very foundational in nature. Know the three rules of HIPAA; some light risk management, mild security etc. Unless I am wildly wrong I'll be primarily bored with the test as I have been with the material.

Haven't seen anyone post on the exam yet, myself. This could be interesting to see what will and won't be on the test. For the record I took my last company to HIPAA compliance in 1998 and kept them compliant for 15 years. So, its not like the material is unknown to me. The rest was brushing up on the "Omnibus Rule" which isn't much of a change as people want to make it out to be but want to sound smart about HITECH rules.

I'll post either later in the day as I get tipsy at a bar or in the morning. Depending on how my energy drinks take me. LOL.

- B Eads

cgrimaldo

I'm interested in hearing about your HCISSP experience, beads.

GoodBishop

RanMic wrote: »

What kept me motivated was the fact that I didnt want to have to retake it.

What motivated me to study for the CISSP was that I would have to pay for the test fee out of my own pocket if I failed.

raybfree

Get a CBT, run it on your iPhone/office desk top non-stop... scream when you've heard the same domain 10 times then move on to the next one. By then, you will have everything memorized. Good luck and may the force be with you.

mnijhawan

Thank All Very Much for the replies and great advice! It truly helps to get the opinions of others that are in the same boat!

RanMic

beads wrote: »

Ask me tomorrow, for today we test. - B Eads

Well? How did it go my man?

beads

RanMic wrote: »

Well? How did it go my man?

Please wait 6-8 weeks for your score... That's how I did. Frankly from what I can see yeah its almost exactly what I thought/said it would be in a test. Much of it was very basic in nature and very international by design.

Will it carry a great deal of weight with Healthcare and Insurance based positions? Most likely it will but its a very entry level certification. Worth 10 CPEs worth of lightness. Its a standalone exam, has nothing in common (by design) to the CISSP or related credentials outside the fact that its also an (ISC)2 exam. Most of the folks who helped write the exam and have been grandfathered in are in the UK from what I have read. Seems clear anyone outside the UK need not have applied. This exam very much shows the international flavor of the exam.

Should I have not passed. No biggee - really. I was lighter on a couple of domains because I prepared for a heavy, detailed exam not the light stuff being asked in the exam itself. I mean really nitty-gritty details. Went hunting mice with an elephant rifle. So, even-though I have spent 15 years in a covered entity type of market my reading of the syllabus was a bit off. Cool with that. Go take it again and blow some doors off the thing - good and proper. There is a price to pay for being a pioneer. You may end up with arrows sticking out of ones hat. LOL.

No worries I had about 20 messages tossed my way yesterday asking about the exam. What's on it to how hard is it? All that. Thankfully, the Brits on the CISSP discussion with the HCISPP came to my rescue and basically shut much of the distractors down by explaining where the exam is really targeted. A weight from my shoulders. Interesting discussion though.

If you have the experience in healthcare or insurance and feel this will be a help - Go for it. If your simply looking for an exam simply to do an exam - don't bother. Its probably too little to bother with at this time. Its a very specific exam meant to cover a great deal of basic healthcare, risk and privacy practices. The ethics questions alone gave me some pause to figure out properly. There were no questions that I saw related to other questions on the test. No aha! That's the answer to question blah, blah. Very little if any overlap. Indicating the exam could have easily been longer than 125 questions.

My only disappointment was in how I broke the syllabus down not with the test itself. Its actually very well thought out for a psychometric test.

- B Eads