Problem with Motivation...

Smoke86 · December 2014

Hi All,

I graduated from college in Network/Systems in 2011, so I'll have been out of school for about four years this spring 2015 coming up. Anyway....

So, been having kind of a rocky start in the field and would like some advice, wondering if maybe I can benefit from anyone else's experiences. It's been almost a year since my layoff in February from the last job and I am a little worried to say the least. I have been pretty burnt out since and have not worked another job in that time. I decided to take a break while I collected unemployment, and focus on what I really want. I toyed with the idea of becoming a writer, but then I lost focus due to life circumstances and didn't end up producing anything of value, other than a whole bunch of incomplete, barely-started manuscripts. Well, anyway, this is probably more of a self-discipline problem, but here it goes.

I have this very deep need to devote myself to something, yet whenever I get motivated by something, it doesn't last and I end up falling off of whatever it is I'm aiming for. I actually have the intelligence to go for some certifications, but I lack the drive. I'm 28 and I'm already burned out. I come from a helpdesk background, so I guess this probably doesn't surprise some of you according to what I've read from other professionals going through the same thing.

For years I thought, I'm probably just way too lazy, but recently got diagnosed with adult ADHD-PI. So while I am 'lazy' in the traditional sense of the word, it's not because I want to be, it's just the lack of dopamine in my brain. if I take my Adderall (which I am prescribed), then I get a real jolt of productivity and can get some damn things done. Problem with that medication though, is if you're like me, you develop a tolerance super quickly and then you gotta take a break from the drug to restore effectiveness, and let me tell you, I am far from productive during those periods.

So, it's been a month since I've been off the medication (except today since I had a job interview for a sysadmin position) and right now I'm trying to do what everyone else does, but without drugs. I'm basically trying to make something of myself without any shortcuts or tricks, but damn, how do some of you guys do it? The other day I tried reading some CCNA material, and what's nice is with my industry experience so far, I can actually grasp it, unlike my college days where it was all very alien to me at the time.

So some questions:

- How on earth, do you retain all that certification material? That's one of the main things holding me back, I constantly wonder why even bother getting a certificate if I don't have the job to put my skills to use and how will I remember every single thing I learned? I did some Cisco subnetting a few months back when prepping for the CCNA and actually knew what I was doing, but few months later, You couldn't pay me enough cash to remember what the steps are, it's like another person did it. I have the memory of learning it, but I forgot it. How much do I need to repeat and practice until it permanently burns itself into my memory? This is what is frustrating me. I want to learn and grow, but it seems like I don't recall things easily enough and this holds me back because it makes me not want to study, knowing in the back of my head that I'm just going to brain **** what I've learned in a matter of time. I almost feel like my diploma is just a nice piece of paper at this point and doesn't really mean anything anymore.

- Recommend any websites I should be frequenting? Any books I should buy? While on that note, I find it's hard to keep on reading a book, I just get way too bored and it feels like a real chore, even though all I have to do is read and absorb some knowledge. Is there any kind of a trick you guys use to push through this?

- Do some of you have photographic memories? Seems like some people I speak with are packed with knowledge, so much that I feel almost like an idiot in comparison. How are some of these people learning so much at such a rapid pace? Are some people just that talented and quick to absorb knowledge than others? If I learn a skill in IT, give me a few months and I completely forget everything on that subject pretty much other than the high-level overall concept. Maybe I'm just stupid or something, it did take me literally years to understand what a main function does in source code. (kindof a repeat of question 1)

- How do you stay motivated knowing that in a year or two that your knowledge will be obsolete by some newer, more efficient platform? I want to learn, but I feel like it's like a futile effort to stay "up to date."

- Do any of you find certification material dry? I love IT, but learning new things has always seemed like such a major drag on my mind, even though I know what the rewards are, it's not enough to get me through that process of reading and reading and reading, and then practicing on some virtual machine.

That's all for now, but if anyone could provide some insight I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Danielm7 · December 2014

I'm not sure that medication for (from what I understand) is a chemical imbalance in your brain should be considered a "trick" or a "shortcut" Have you talked to your doctor about different medication perhaps?

With that out of the way, lots of people deal with motivation issues. I feel like IT has more of a push to stay current than most other fields. When you aren't working with the material is can be very difficult to stay on top of all of it. There are tons of things I knew when I passed exams that I'm nowhere near as fresh on now because I don't use that software/system/etc day to day. I work with a number of guys who can do amazing things in a Cisco core switch but know almost nothing about servers or other hardware. Sometimes when you see people online who seem to know an insane amount about a topic it doesn't mean they know everything about everything. Also, consider that you're fairly early in your career, you aren't supposed to know everything yet, and you never will.

Some people also practice ALL THE TIME. You'll find plenty of people on this forum who probably work all day in IT, then go home, fire up a home lab and test things until they pass out. Someone like that is going to retain a lot more than someone who just wanted to pass a cert if the material is constantly being reinforced.

I know nothing of medicine or ADHD, but like I said, maybe see about changing meds to something that doesn't have to be cycled on and off leaving you productive and out of it back and forth.

snunez889 · December 2014

I have a few certifications and can tell you I prob dont remember more the 50 percent of what I learned. Mostly due to it not being used in my current job. I dont expect many people retain all that information unless the go home and lab all day(which for some is not out of the question).

Even if you study and pass a cert exam and only retain 30% of what you learned, you are that much better. The point im making is you have nothing to lose if you study for a cert, only that much more knowledge to gain. I had a teacher in college once tell the class "If by the end of the semester you only learned 50% of what taught, thats 50% more then you had on day one. "

N2IT · December 2014

I remember maybe 10% of what I studied when I don't use it. If I am actively using the material I can remember almost all of it. That's why I am very anti certifications if you aren't actively using the technology even though a lot of people argue against that point. In the end it's just my opinion.

I think the motivation piece is normal for a lot of folks. I experience ebbs and flows all the time, it's not fun but I have to manage. Adderall is a great drug for motivation but obviously you are experiencing some of it's limitations.

IMO I find one very narrow piece of IT that you enjoy (in fact you want to go back in) and deep dive the material but not going over board.

Good luck you'll pull through.

hurricane1091 · December 2014

Everyone forgets stuff. But you retain the major concepts and a refresher course will bring most of it back, you won't need to study for dozens of hours again since you already learned the stuff. Certifications help advance your career and give you enough understanding to where you can learn something hands on.

JDMurray · December 2014

You need to discover how you learn best. If reading books and Web pages isn't working for you then try watching videos or just listening to audio material. Can't sit behind a desk for long? Put your tablet on a treadmill and see if walking while reading or watching helps you focus. I find that studying in a group of people helps me focus from both the helpful and competitive aspect of collaborative study habits. Get on meetup.com and see if there are any IT-minded groups near you that have people interested in certs. Don't be afraid to try the more off-beat IT groups, like Makers and ethical hacker and even learning-to-program groups. Find what stimulates your learning and makes learning fun for you.

kohr-ah · December 2014

- I have actually forgot a lot about the fine details of certain aspects of the CCNP (Like MST). I go over my notes every once in a while or do an occasional lab to have fun with it which helps bring it back. Like where I am at now they dont use OSPF, they use EIGRP in the Data Center and BGP everywhere else but when I see OSPF my brain clicks in and remembers most of what I learned and what I dont I can find very quickly via a search to meet my needs. Repeat and practice is just part of it but what you need to end up doing is meet the needs of your job and do the certs to further yourself. Or.. At least that is what I did.

- I dont read through the books constantly. Only time I have done this is CCDA and CCDP and that is because I had to. For CCNP, Read one day, even if only for an hour. Then Lab or Lab the next day. So like M W F (READ) T TH (LAB) or MON TUES WED THURS (Read 1 Hr, Lab 30 min to 1 Hr). This helps break it apart a lot.

- Some people are better at retaining info than others. It also helps if you take interest in it as if you are interested in it you pay more attention to it. Everyone learns differents ways at different paces.

- Keeping up to date on what you are doing isn't hard. It isn't obsolete at all. Like if you do VMWare, next version comes out, just look at what the differences were from the previous version. What changed? What was added? what was removed? Are there different steps to get what you did before done. WALLA, updated.

- See 2nd response. Yeah a lot of it is dry. It is a tech book. It is solid data to tell you how to perform a duty. Don't try to do it all in one lump sum and space it out. I space out a lot while reading if it is too dry. I try to do instead of a chapter a day maybe 1/3, or 1/2 depending on my time available. If the chapter is 120 pages, I'll try to do maybe 25 pages (as a lot are diagrams usually).

Just need to find your nitch of what makes you tick.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NonZeroDay

This is a great thread about a good way to look at things. No more Zero Days. Do something every day to better yourself. Even if it is 1 pushup. That is 1 more than you did yesterday. Read 1 page of that IT book. That is 1 page further in.

aftereffector · December 2014

I took a Windows Server cert almost a year ago, didn't touch a server for nine or ten months, and subsequently forgot a lot of the material. Last month I had to get back into server configurations and the knowledge came back - slowly, at first, but it was a lot easier than learning it the first time. The same goes for my Cisco knowledge - I remember the parts that I use frequently, but not the parts I don't, like IPv6 routing from the CCNA R/S or the commands to set up tunnels from the CCNA Security. I can still tell you the basic concepts of each but I'd need to grab the books or look something up on the internet to actually perform some of the tasks that I used to know very well. It's just how I learn... languages are the same way. I took a couple of Spanish classes in college but now, years later, I can't remember more than one or two phrases. If you don't use the knowledge frequently, it will not stay with you as much.

techfiend · December 2014

I passed A+ 3 months ago and remember almost nothing from it and really not using anything from it in my current IT Support role. General knowledge I knew from personal experience has played a big role and learning some other things that I will use most of my career. Certifications are supposed to be verification of experience but so many people forget a lot of the material that I think it's looked at by companies as 'general exposure' and means you can't really jump into the job and do every duty without some training, except maybe with the high level certs you can. I studied CCENT 9 months ago and might remember 10% of it, mainly the more common commands and studied network+ within the past 2 months and have forgotten most of it, including subnetting. But after ~5 questions at subnetting.net it starts coming back and can answer most correctly.

What I do is is read a study book, practice test, go back and study the weak points, more practice tests, and keep repeating it. I try to be test ready and schedule it within 2 weeks of starting to study because I too forget a lot of things and lose motivation quickly. The last couple of days of studying I focus primarily on the test and spend hours retaking as many 'good tests' repeatedly, 2000 questions in a day isn't unusual. I've done this process for A+ and N+, unfortunately haven't sat the N+ yet, waiting a month to save some money. It's been very rewarding and relieving after passing and demands at least a month to clear my head before moving on to the next one.

Meetup.com sounds like a great idea, thanks for the idea! Unfortunately there's only one relevant group in the area, IT security and really a TE meetup in the area would be larger. Is it more popular in other big cities?

N2IT · December 2014

JD thanks for the meetup.com link. I've started reviewing the groups in my local area!

JDMurray · December 2014

Here in SoCal, meetup.com has become the goto place to create special interested groups and one-time meetups too. I found it when my local OWASP chapter decided to use it for coordinating their events. I just found an Orange County ethical hacking group (LETHAL) and will be giving them a try.

instant000 · December 2014

Bottom Line Up Front: You can do it!

If you care to read the rest ...

Smoke86 wrote: »

Hi All,

I graduated from college in Network/Systems in 2011

Since you chose Network/Systems as a major, isn't this an area of interest?

I have this very deep need to devote myself to something, yet whenever I get motivated by something, it doesn't last and I end up falling off of whatever it is I'm aiming for. I actually have the intelligence to go for some certifications, but I lack the drive. I'm 28 and I'm already burned out.

I've been burned out before. I may burn out again. What matters is that you maintain the ability to re-ignite that spark.

I'm basically trying to make something of myself without any shortcuts or tricks, but damn, how do some of you guys do it?

Well, after dropping out of college twice, and spending 15-20 hours a day in online gaming instead of anything useful, I joined the military. I wound up choosing IT, since my second major was information systems, and I enjoyed working as a lab assistant in college.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm not progressing the way I want to in my career, and I finally realize that I've just been going about things in a really mediocre, nonchalant kind of way.

I hit a turning point. At that point, I get away from the strange women. I get rid of my TV. Within a few months, I have finished my bachelors degree. A few months later, I'm at Security+. I join techexams.net. Soon, I'm at CISSP.

Within a couple years, my salary had doubled, even though I wasn't any smarter than I was before. It just took a little bit of effort and work.

Within the past month, I've watched about 5 minutes of YouTube. I realized that it had become the equivalent brain-drain that TV was back in the day for me. Also, I feel like I get so much time back, once I decided to budget my entertainment time.

I anticipate working harder at becoming more of an expert in the coming months. You're free to join us.

So some questions:

- How on earth, do you retain all that certification material?

I don't. I retain the important stuff, and/or the main points of how things work. The documentation is for the details.

- Recommend any websites I should be frequenting? Any books I should buy? While on that note, I find it's hard to keep on reading a book, I just get way too bored and it feels like a real chore, even though all I have to do is read and absorb some knowledge. Is there any kind of a trick you guys use to push through this?

I would recommend this website, for starters. (Be careful, it can be addictive.)

As far as books, have you read the IT Career Builder's Toolkit?

If I get bored reading a book, I try something else for a while. Exercise usually helps, even if it's only a walk, and not a 5-mile run. It is good if whatever you do is less-related to what you're currently doing.

- Do some of you have photographic memories? Seems like some people I speak with are packed with knowledge, so much that I feel almost like an idiot in comparison. How are some of these people learning so much at such a rapid pace? Are some people just that talented and quick to absorb knowledge than others?

My memory is actually mostly awful. I can pick up things fairly quickly, but remembering them is the problem.

Due to how wide the IT field is, you cannot expect anyone to have exhaustive knowledge except on a very focused part of it.

Fortunately, there are things you can do, to make remembering things easier. The key is realizing that memories get stronger if you can make multiple associations to them. So, if you find a system that works for you, and pad it with spaced repetition, you're good to go.

Effective memory/study techniques might not matter that much for A+. They tend to matter once the books get thicker, more lines are significant, and more outside reading is required to piece everything together.

You might want to google stuff like mnemonics, spaced repetition, method of loci, etc. Here's a decent website:
Mnemotechnics: Memory Techniques Forum and Brain Training

If you're looking for some studying tips, I believe that a professor has some videos on Youtube about study techniques.

- How do you stay motivated knowing that in a year or two that your knowledge will be obsolete by some newer, more efficient platform?

I disagree. My knowledge won't be made obsolete. It will be augmented. The next iteration of the software is usually just adding another chapter to the book that you already read. It is not as if you have to start over from scratch.

Back in the day, you had this centralized system that ran everything, and you basically did remote computing. The end users had thin clients.

The computing power was insanely expensive, so costs were best controlled by centralizing it.

Then, we progressed to where users enjoyed local computing. (Remember the PC age?)

I remember when the web used to be about following links, and you'd usually memorize URLs (like you used to memorize phone numbers). Nowadays, a lot of people don't even known their own phone number, and likewise they search even to go to their favorite web sites.

Nowadays, a lot of things are going back centralized, and you're basically doing remote computing, and it's suddenly called cloud computing. Wait, haven't we seen this before?

Keep this in mind: history repeats itself, technologies are usually layered, and marketing departments make up acronyms to relabel technologies.

I recall one vendor had come out with some awesome way of bridging some data centers together, but once you looked at the packet capture, it was a generic tunneling occuring.

Heck, I read one article the other day about how Facebook had come out with this awesome way to control routing, by using a centralized controller to push policy, as if this was some breakthrough new thing. If you knew the history, this was just another chapter in the book. Let me explain: Petr had worked on a team at Microsoft (Bing to be exact) where they had basically done the same thing in the past. Then, Petr went to work for Facebook, and now this is suddenly new? It's called marketing. What is old is new again! I mean, seriously old. They used BGP to do this, not some new protocol.

- Do any of you find certification material dry?

Materially is usually less dry to me, if I can figure out a way that it can be useful in some way that I might take advantage of it. Once it is useful, and can actually solve a problem, then it makes a lot more sense to me.

For example, I took some programming classes back in college, but I never much cared about it, since I envisioned a programmer's life as utterly boring. A few months back, I dug into it a little bit, because I realized that those muds that I abused my time with back in the college years were open-sourced, and I could compile them myself. I almost signed up on codeacademy for a course in C, until I figured that I'd just wing it, since it was just a bunch of text files, how hard could it be? ... Since most of the muds had bugs in them, they would crash or had errors in starting. Some useful, and some not so useful. I wound up running gdb and modifying files to get them to work. It was painstaking and iterative, but I was able to get a knack for getting them to run, and also to fix whatever it was that was crashing them. I realized then that I actually enjoyed debugging the code ... I guess I just have a tendency to like to fix stuff. I got to a point where I was beginning to try looking at hex, in order to locate where a problem was coming from. I realized then that I was spending a LOT of time on this. I wound up deleting them and went back to my studies. Probably for the best, since I used to be addicted to those things like ants on sugar back in the day. Still, I was willing to look into C because it was "useful" to me. So, I guess that was the point I was trying to make.

Once you can find a personal utility of something, it'll be a lot easier to get into it.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

Params7 · December 2014

Such great posts in here. You can't be really expected to know every little detail and command from a certification you gave 6 months ago. But at the least you have:
1) Certification proving that you have the drive to know the subject
2) You'd generally be more confident about the subject relative to the person who has never given that certification.

Keeping these two things in mind I don't see how studying for any cert is useless. Any knowledge in a field you're interested in will just help you know more about it. I would expect any (well hopefully most) interviewers will also give some leeway if they're questioning you about intricate topics from chapter 14 of a book you used to study for a certification that you passed a year ago. They would most likely gauge the topics in a general, overarching sense if you can't recall the exact specifications.

fcp4life · December 2014

instant000 wrote: »

Bottom Line Up Front: You can do it!
You're welcome.

best post by far! love this one! helped him as well as me which is the website that you were talking about for beginners?

Problem with Motivation...

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