Top Techniques to Tackle Complex Topics
Brad Fletchall
Staff Solutions Architect - Healthcare at VMware by Broadcom | Pre-Sales and Customer Experience Champion | Solutions Engineering - Solutions Consultant - Technical Sales Management
It's often said that the only constant is change and that is unquestionably true if you work in IT in any capacity. Moore's Law marches on, new software languages will emerge, and bad actors will never cease to find new ways to exploit whatever comes down the line. That is why the true nature of working in IT is constant learning.
To be successful over a working lifetime in technology means you are signing up to be a lifelong learner to stay relevant at least until you're ready to rest and vest before you retire. Even then I'd suggest learning new things and new hobbies in retirement is the key to a long and happy retirement and life in general. If you are just getting into the field or are mid-career like me, you have to learn new things all the time. The new product your company releases, new regulation your customers have to adjust to, the new certification you need, or an entirely new technology you just heard about.
The other challenge is to actually learn things and not just study for the test. Here in the US, at least with an over-focus on standardized testing, we're all taught from an early age how to do well on tests. Like so many I've talked to, some of us develop a great skill in being able to retain vast amounts of information just long enough to complete the class or pass the exam and then almost immediately forget most of it. Effectively just holding things in our working memory but not building any long-term memory of the information.
The key to actually learning things is to commit the important bits into recallable long-term memory that you can then use to expand upon.
How do we do that?
Belief
First, you must believe that you can learn anything. Barring any specific physical or cognitive challenge some may have, you can actually learn anything you want. Some will learn more quickly than others, especially if you find the topic dreadfully boring but you absolutely must know the material. That happens sometimes and it's normal. Just know that you can do this and the other techniques will help.
Chunking
Cramming for a test is only effective at filling up your working memory. It's sloppy. It's stressful and most importantly it doesn't build your ability for long-term recall of the material. This is where chunking comes in.
You don't learn to play the guitar or golf all at once. Instead, you break it down into small manageable chunks. This is how you hold the guitar or club. This is a G cord or this is how you stand in relation to the ball and so on. You practice and deliberately pay attention to those small details over and over in each practice session until it's so ingrained you can't get it wrong.
If you are learning a new IT solution that might be learning any new key terms or acronyms. You might make a list of them and their definitions. You may also find or create a diagram that relates those terms to the solution you're learning. Another chunk may be to learn customer use cases related to the solution so that you have context for what or why it does what it does.
The key is small manageable bites that you can learn well and build from and then use spacing to commit to long-term storage.
Spacing
Simply put, spacing is the opposite of cramming. Spacing is breaking up your deliberate study sessions and spreading them out over time. You might review your notes in the morning and then again before you go to bed. These review sessions should not be hours long. Then do it again the next day. As you begin to add new material, you can quickly review the things you previously studied at the beginning of a study session to keep reinforcing it while spending more time on the new material.
Sleep
Sleep is critical for our brains. It is when our brains filter out things it decides are irrelevant and reinforces pathways to things it thinks are important. Our brains are also efficiency machines. Back to our guitar analogy, great guitar players don't have to consciously think about how to hold the guitar or how to make a G chord or most chords if any at all. Their subconscious brain just does it now which takes the cognitive load away and frees up their brain to do other things like sing at the same time. Sleep seems to play a vital role in committing information and motor skills to that level of long-term memory. This is why reviewing notes before you go to bed is a great tactic. Your brain can go to work while you sleep reinforcing the neural connections to lock it in. It takes time and repetition though... no overnight success here.
Testing
The other aspect of how our brains work to be extremely efficient is the constant sifting out of what it has decided is unimportant. It only knows what is important through repetition and recall. Testing is simply a recall exercise and the more we can practice recalling the information the more important our brain determines it is. So create flashcards, do quizzes, take practice exams, make lists from memory, or practice the skill as often as you can.
Cornell Note Taking System
The Cornell Note Taking System was developed at Cornell University and is a highly effective way to take and organize notes and the information you need to know. Some key highlights of the system are that you divide your note page into a header, a left sidebar, and middle notes section, and a summary at the bottom. The header is where you write the subject/class/topic and date. The left sidebar is where you write down keywords, acronyms, formulas, or ideas. The bulk of the page is for your notes, and then a key part is the summary section you create at the bottom. In the summary, you write in your own words a summarization of the information on just that page. Even if you need more than one page for the notes just from one study session or class you still summarize each page. You can find a link to more details and examples of the Cornell Note Taking System in the resources section at the bottom of the article.
Pomodoro Technique
We established earlier that long study sessions are not that effective at building long-term recall and spacing is important. One technique to do this is the Pomodoro technique. The name comes from a tomato-shaped kitchen timer which some people do use for this but ultimately it is simply setting a timer for a manageable time of no more than 20-25 minutes where you will eliminate as close to all distractions as you can and intently study or practice. then when your timer goes off you take a 10-minute break. Go get a coffee refill, take a lap around the block, go chat with your spouse, or play ball with the dog. The more unrelated and mind and mood clearing the better. Then go back to it for another 20-25 minutes. Repeat this 2 to 3 times then take at least an hour or call it a day.
Not every study session needs to be a Pomodoro session. Your evening review before bed can just be a 10-minute reading and review of your notes. Definitely use a timer of some kind and I'd highly suggest one that is NOT on your phone so you are not tempted to doom scroll or be distracted by alerts during your study time.
Rewards
Nearly everyone struggles with procrastination at times. It's a reality most of us face even when it's something we badly want. One of the ways we can overcome this is to give our brains something to look forward to. If you have ever trained a dog you know one of the best techniques is positive reinforcement. You give the command, the dog does the action, and they immediately get a treat. We are essentially no different. This is why the 10-minute breaks in the Pomodoro technique work well... they let your brain rest a bit but also it starts to learn that a treat is coming.
Get that coffee at the end of your practice session. Don't look at Instagram until you complete the Pomodoro. Go get ice cream if you score above 80% on your practice test. Play C.O.D. with your friends when you finish the chapter. Buy the new shoes, the guitar, or the Scottie Cameron putter when you achieve the certification or pass your boards. Find small ways to reward yourself along the way. It can make a big difference.
Setting End Times
Another way to fight procrastination is to set the time you are going to stop studying for that session or the day. We can endure a lot of things if we know when it's going to end. It kicks in our "let's just get it over with" mode. The opposite is so challenging that not knowing when a training session or exercise going to end is one of the main techniques the Navy Seal instructors use to find which Navy Seal candidates will crack under extreme pressure. So don't turn your knowledge or skill acquisition into hell week. Set boundaries for your study and practice time.
If you know you are going to do a Pomodoro cycle and you'll have a break in 10 minutes and you'll be totally done in an hour, and you'll get a prize when you're done... you can become unstoppable.
Process not Product
Lastly, keep your focus on the process and not the product. The process is using the other techniques in this article to continually build on your knowledge or skills. The product is the end achievement like being able to play the song, pass the exam board, or obtain the certification. The product can seem too hard or too far away that it overwhelms us. The process gives us small, manageable, consumable bites that we can take every day ultimately ensuring our success.
It's cliche but its true... How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
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