this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring you information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome back to the art of network engineering podcast i am aj murray at no blinky blinky and tonight we've got dan how you doing howdy what's new with dan uh just working busy what about you i'm i'm very impressed with your new threads dan i know people can't see this at home but dan is sporting the the new art of network engineering hoodie and it looks fabulous and see that nice thank you thank you is it comfy it is comfy yeah you look like a million bucks i've got the t-shirt or my t-shirt came in empty it that's comfy it's really comfy yeah i got the hoodie yeah that's good too it's really light though not like dance it's light i ordered a t-shirt i'm waiting on it it's nice i can't wait andy how you doing i'm good aj i'm excited i can tell you did your hair you did some push-ups you're ready to go he brushed his teeth and no and not necessarily in that order he got did some push-ups while he was combing his hair he's a man of many techniques last but not least uh yeah what's new with you yo yo absolutely nothing uh kind of excited for this a little bit because we we are the guests and you've got a surprise for us the the three of us me dan no idea what you're gonna ask us um by design so uh yeah oh collectively we're stoked slightly frightened what what i did and this is a kind of a spin-off of a project that i'm doing with gerard you guys know gerard uh from the discord him and i are working on this uh little side project and i was just like dude can i take this to the podcast he's like yeah man go for it so here we are so we went online and we went into um you know the ccna subreddit i think we went into the network subreddit uh i went on to a couple of facebook groups that i'm in they're they're study groups for ccna ccmp uh and we we found uh like the top questions that people keep asking right and and they range they're kind of all over the board but they were definitely questions that kept coming up you know it wasn't just like the one one-off you know but these are questions that i kept seeing over and over again so um as you just say it's from our sciences rcc r networking couple of other subreddits uh facebook group actually got some from the discord here as well from the a1 fans channel i dropped uh dropped some questions in there to see if people could throw some questions our way so we got some good stuff a couple of them might trigger andy but uh we'll get through oh it so excited i can't i'm not the over sensitive millennial just wait till we get there yeah just wait boomer i'm not a boober i like my pepsi crystal clear i'm still i'm still relevant i don't know how to tell you this but michael jackson died i drank zima damn it oh michael jackson bro billie jean is the best bass liner continue aj all right so without further ado let's do this all right how long to complete the ccna no wait hold on is that the full question how long to complete the ccna well a lot of people would just just right how long all right how long does it does it take to complete the ccna so how long did it take us a lot of people like how long does it take to complete the ccna and uh dan i think you hit it on the head it depends right like it depends how how how long do you have uh to commit to studying um how technical are you have you ever done anything with computers at all like there there is no set like you know three months two months six months like it's there's yeah are you already working in networking right that helps definitely i was not i was not and you all my answer absolutely yes why are you asking how long it takes to get something like it's a rotisserie chicken right like yo how long do you cook a rotisserie chicken that's that's how you get a quantitative number like it depends what temper you're cooking it until it gets to 160 smoking yeah no it doesn't really right you just you got to get to one it's done when it's done here's the deal it'll take longer to cook that chicken in the mountains it depends you're studying in the mountains good luck yeah bro i hate that question i really do it's that's true it's one that it you know love it like it or hate it it's one that keeps coming up and i i think you just kind of got to like it's a fair it's a fair it's a question for you about yourself and those people it's a question for someone who's who's yeah you're right the a question for someone who is like concerned like and they're at a decision point in their life what do i do like they're they're asking the that's maybe the first problem you're asking the internet for what you should do with your life basically yeah don't do that like when you say so so there's two schools of thought here because this is like uh how you like uh talk to a child right like how do you want them to grow you want them to learn on their own or or or do you just say uh it's really easy so that they they think it's easy and then they just do it right like part of me wants everybody to go in there and be like dude you could do that in two weeks because like you could do it in two weeks like that's very that's very possible yep right um so yeah results may vary obviously but uh there's just so many different so many different answers you're gonna get like like and what's and what's behind that question right like it might be somebody like i'm as you're talking i'm thinking like all right this this could be a young dude his wife just got pregnant he's in a crap job and he's got to get his crap together he might be like you know what i mean i got six months less babies here can i do i mean you know maybe there's some of that like if you're asking that question you must be in some type of time yeah or like or you just think that everything has a time associated with it right or who was who was our guest that was working and they came to her and said get your ccna you're out of here i forget was it it was there yeah somebody's somebody was there they were going to go off some people came here and said everybody's got to get started right now there's another situation you know like i'm going to lose my job if i don't get it you told me by x yeah that'll put some pressure on you now it's a fair question but people like us i can see that come on it depends i don't even like that it depends like i mean yeah everything depends you know like like how long are you gonna live i depends you know like listen we can't answer all these questions within the past i know that's the name this is going to be a horrible episode if we say it depends ten times thanks for stopping by forcing you to quantify a number that you think is not non-existent do it anyway okay give me your best shot i think your background depends on your background you just said we couldn't say that i know but okay so i'm sorry we'll edit we'll edit we'll edit that out i just broke them you know for a person that's got five years of production experience and a network studying for that test is going to be a hell of a lot different than clueless cable guy andy sitting in his truck like oh my god do you think anybody that has five years of experience goes on reddit and says how long to see a cna in that exact verbiage i know it's a weird world i don't i don't think they do i agree with andy it is a weird thing i don't know i know a guy his name is john i worked with him at the concert he's still there he's still there he still doesn't have a ccna this is a guy with 15 years production experience is he trying to go for a cc i don't know i don't think he wants it and he doesn't need it and they're not bothering him but there was a time when i worked with him they were like dude you need to get your cc here we're going to see the one that asked that on reddit maybe i just but there's but you know besides dr there's another example of somebody at work and they're like you need to get your ccna and he's like i don't want to do that but you know how much of my time do it like somebody who doesn't want it who's being made to do it they might want to know how much of this of my life is going to i mean i get you it's an annoying question okay so what's the number then two years okay that's what it took me i mean that what other answer could have been six months you do have 15 certs that make sense well i just know that like like like 50 years ago we put like three people on the moon like i could figure out how to subnet you know what i mean we haven't been there you know what i mean like like i'll figure it out right you know like in the of course we all do like in hindsight we're like it's it wasn't that hard right like it was very surface level but like it it's actually like the hardest in the way of like you're learning a new way of thinking you know and like different technologies and like how things but once you get it like things only get easier from there anyway if you're listening to this and you want to know how long to see ccna i would say uh how long to ccnp from zero right same deal at age at aj's job they get paid to study they have 35 of their day that management has said study it's going to take aj's folks probably faster than somebody like me who can barely breathe so i'm not going to say it depends all right jj next question i think you got our answers all right um let's see here suggestions on a beginner networking home lab even g uh packet tracer okay beginner we're talking about beginner beginner packet tracer packet tracer it's free yeah i'd agree with that you just go sign up at netacad.com and you can register for that packet tracer 101 class and that'll give you access to download packet tracer it it has i used it for my csv it's got its shortcomings but it if you have zero experience and you want to get started for free or or minimal cost that is the way to do it and every version they come out with it gets a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better and in fact now you can run it on pc and it's supported on mac and linux so it you know it used to be it was only supported on pc and you could hack it onto linux or mac but now it's just officially supported everywhere that was i have a question does the new blueprint have virtualization in it to an extent yeah then does it make more sense to get a cheap server and okay in something like you need to go to that extent the easiest thing to do packet tracer yep now if you if you got any like type of money whatsoever to spend now we can start having a conversation as to where you should spend your money because yeah yeah yeah because if the question is where should i spend my money to learn uh i'm sure we could go on for hours about that right because there's yeah tracer packet tracer easy entry installed and who knows it's free right so like the best thing about it being free is if you know you're like a month into it and you're like you know what i absolutely hate this it sucks all right cool it is yeah and there's no like crazy installation or anything like that it's just appreciation yeah so they used to have speaking of they used to have a uh iphone app they still have that oh yeah yeah i use it on my ipad a little bit i definitely played on it it was awful but i don't know but yeah yeah it was pretty rough but i don't i don't know if uh they said i was trying to maximize my time you know what i'm saying it's like i'm on the go i'm on the subway on the way to work in the big apple no that's never been me all right next question all right tracers starting study material what's the what's the best material to start with when you're studying for your ccna well i guess the ocg would probably be one because it's going to go you know by the by the blueprint i agree with that answer but for a different reason um because you get free practice quizzes yes and you get end of the chapter quizzes and then you also get the did i know this already yeah yeah those those three groups of questions i have a different answer andy what's this cisco networking academy how much is that that's that's three grand yeah but we have had guests on here that took it for free and that's true so depending on where you're at it might be free well three grain is a lot but yeah there's no limit yeah there's no limit to the dollar amount so yeah like best bang for your buck uh though like how many books could you buy for three grand right well but i spent i spent eight hours a week with a ccmp instructor i was in their lab there which was a beast of a lab it was real gear and i was with 15 peers quote unquote study group or community okay you know there's an advantage to it if it's free but so that's my two cents so ocg ocg for sure but cisco network academy will so this is studying material are we limiting it to just books or or what else would we recommend well like cbt nuggets cbt nuggets and the ocgs and all that stuff right yeah like okay let's say you headed and all right let's say let's say they're like you just won the lottery and you decided you're going to get a ccna i don't know why you would do that invest in yourself yeah it was a thousand cents this is like wait what uh so yeah pretend that you uh have a job so you can afford study materials or like aj's job who pays for the study materials in some cases um any and they said all right you know what we'll reimburse you for everything what are you gonna buy what's the what's your like iron man lineup of study materials to where you have no freaking excuses ocg cbt nuggets boson boson and i think you need a lab and a physical lab we're talking about a physical app yes right that's they're the that's the wombo combo out there that's it you have if you have that the grand slam is there anything that you can supplement with that you don't have to pay for like what well there's different flavors there's plenty of labs out there on on youtube right like there's plenty of videos of people showing you how to do stuff on labs so if you're you're stuck you know you can always like you can read rfcs i mean you can get everything you need in the rfc i wouldn't recommend starting with the r2 so no blogs no no no no a little dry well you were saying like a free version drier than cisco prep yes yes 100 i know i love me cisco no but have you read the rfcs though my gosh yeah they're rough left to interpretation but yeah i know i wouldn't limit it to that but hey we know the grand slam is a video series like let's just nail down materials right video series book uh practice lab practice exams practice practice exams yep like like the good thing about boson is you can get the the x-m and the net sim yep so you can get the the practice labs too yeah the net set yeah that's a good supplement for for gear right like that's like you're working on again it's weird you asked this question because i was thinking something roughly around this idea like two or three days ago and i was thinking to myself like if i only had so much money like what would i get like a budget so basically your question with a budget and knowing what i know now and like not just about like the different products but additionally like how people learn in general i would say that the one thing that i would go back in time and tell my my past self to get would to be just the boson tests yeah i'd see i didn't do my vote or didn't use boson for my ccna and i used it for encore and that was the game changer yep so uh yeah i i i've been using it i did icd2 with it um and then i got all three of the ccnp tests worth of stuff like the catalog and that's for both that's for the xm and the netsim so i had like the whole every i was going to ask you that you got the netsim too i've never seen the i have the whole trouble ticket to apology so what was really cool is you remember like on t-shoot like it was just one topology it was shared it was all over the internet it was all good and so they just duplicated that and it was really rad so basically like they would just give you tickets and what i liked about it is they didn't name the tickets they just numbered them so i would just go in and there's like 20 tickets or something in there which was about roughly equivalent to what the test was and i'd i just double click a random number so i would have no idea what it was and i would just go through my troubleshooting steps and i would knock out all 20 of them as fast as i could and i was down to like a minute and a half and that was x-sim right yeah uh yeah i used x-m for t-shirt netsim okay yeah i thought that actually is testing engine is the exam it's exam ex so what is net it's the simulator like it's basically like their packet tracing like routers and switches yeah yeah yeah yeah um have you guys used that's what i'm talking about it was like the t-shirt tickets and all that stuff wasn't there but even for icnbc because i used xm for t-shoot which was really helpful yeah super helpful yeah i would say that was obviously because that one was the one you actually had to go in and actually do stuff for once on a test so anyway sorry aj hey no worries this is great conversation so um on to the next i think this is going to be a good one how do you study when you don't feel like studying well i'ma let andy answer this one let's let's hear andy's take let's hear andy's steak i don't know well maybe the answer is you don't like why why would you i mean there's a lot of truth in what people have said like and what uh the guy that knox quoted that we were digging around on twitter i mean you know if if you want it as much as you want air yeah you'll do it yeah and you know i guess i i can tell you that i don't want it as much as i want air so i can i could give a thousand excuses but i mean i could have not been on here tonight and spent my thursday studying which is what you know i talked about doing but we're doing tuesdays and thursdays so i want to do this podcast more than i want to study dude yeah is it weird that it's like when you don't want to study like why is it that the opposite equals something else like it doesn't so it's like it's not that you don't want to study it's clearly that you want to do something else right so like instead of saying i i don't feel like studying why don't you say i feel like watching tv because that's what the reality is i also don't feel like riding a unicycle down the street you know what i mean like if we're gonna go into things i don't feel like doing like the laundry list is like it's literally everything except for the one thing i want to be doing yeah like i've heard people kick around ideas of how to like study when you don't yeah but why force yourself you're not in the mindset like who cares they just don't yeah well so a writer will sit down every day and write jerry seinfeld's been doing comedy for 50 years he still writes every day because he's a writer he might not want to some days so uh you know writers write every day it's what they do if if i'm going after certs i should study every day i don't yeah but i think there's it's a choice right there's there's definitely like like like physical brain science saying that like you should let that information soak and then try to retrieve it again you know and not study every day i think you got to get hung i think you got to get hungry i studied like my life depended on it when your life depended on dna right exactly and my life like i'm not going to lose my job if i don't get my mp they're not going to fire me in six months if i don't learn automation or yeah i mean probably in a couple years but you know that the pain is on the horizon and i you know i don't have to right now yeah i'm not just delaying it right no i mean i get you yeah if i do that darn's not hot right now huh i mean i never had any reason to get anything it never did like all it did was like intrinsic stuff for me you know what i mean like i think everybody should go out there and get a ccna or ccnp or both because i know it'll do to you like inside even if you don't need it for another reason right like you were doing it because your life depended on it i had none of that like it right i mean so why did you do that like i was going to ask aj the same reason why it's an even better question to say why did you keep doing it after you failed it you know after after it knocks you down once and you had no reason to be doing it in the first place it's like but at that point you're so into it and invested in it you have to finish it right i mean that's how i feel i just didn't want to be the dude that didn't have it you know what i mean like i felt like i knew what i was talking about but like i wanted to be able to prove that to people you know and and myself really i don't know maybe aj's story is a little different i don't know how do you do it aj i mean you're you're very serded up as well how do you study when you don't want to it's uh it's like tricking my mind right like sometimes people think about studying like they have to commit hours and hours and hours to studying and and for me it was daunting to sit there and think about like i don't really want to do this tonight but i you know probably should or have to and uh and so it was just like okay well i'll lab for 20 minutes you know just just commit to like 20 minutes in my head and then i start laughing and before i know it like an hour or two has gone by because i like really got into something and you know it was just kind of like a trick yeah and that works right you just reminded me i i do this meditation app 10 happier and this guy dan harris who created it he came up with this like one minute counts just sit down and do it for a minute if that's all you do it counts cool go on about your day the pomodoro technique with studying yeah 20 minutes yeah that works that's nice what technique is commit to 20 minutes i could study for 20 minutes every day if that was something i committed to i mean i can find 20 minutes why don't you just do it like like you said well right exactly i mean this might be my solution but like to your point aj i have so much to learn that i'm just like it's too much oh yeah i see what you mean you know what you should do i got to learn automation i got to learn azure i got to learn aws and you know you should be i need to learn juniper it's too much so i know i know but 20 minutes i could you know you know why though it's because this is like this is a whole separate step in the process that uh probably most folks that are getting a ccna are not doing i'd just be willing to bet and that's breaking down each piece and just attacking those pieces and i don't even i'm not talking about sections right like it's okay to learn people want to know what's on the test you know but it's okay to learn stp and mst when they're not teaching you mst you know like it's okay like know that those exist but those don't show up in the lamly book you know and oftentimes they do periodically like in in like ocgs and stuff they'll be like they'll mention it and they'll say you don't even know this but just so you know this is out here um but it's okay like digging into some white papers you know and then all of a sudden it's like all of a sudden you know every lsa type for ospf and then you go to take your ccna and you're like what kind of softball questions are these right like i just i don't know i it's really just the way you know you approach it and then that little section that you learned uh you just do it for that day and then three days later try to test yourself on it you know and then you're just like continuously playing like little like leap frog game where it's like you know you learn something and then you learn something and then you're studying the thing you just learned right and just kind of keep going and just leapfrogs itself so whoever ans whoever asks that question i'm tomorrow gonna use aj's trick and study for 20 minutes i can commit to 20. don't even commit to five watch what happens watch what happens but if i do that three days a week that's an hour then i'm not studying nailed it so like 20 minutes it does it does snowball though like aj was saying like all of a sudden it's been like two hours but it even even so for like days on end like you mentioned seinfeld i remember his thing was like he was always writing it on a calendar and he didn't want to break the chain like that's he's like famous for saying that so like i studied today right and then he didn't want to see a blank spot it would give him so much anxiety so like and it was writing for him it was writing a joke so he he would write every day because he didn't want to see the chain break so and it makes you feel like you have control over your destiny almost like losing weight does if you're overweight you feel like crap if you do the work every day a little bit at a time and drop 10 pounds you feel great you're in control like okay i'm not a slave to this you know ice cream yep same with like studying if i study 20 minutes a day i'll feel so much better than i've been feeling about you know i'm smarter yeah do you guys do do you guys jump topics though yes like my problem is i'm very bad about i gotta start at the beginning and go all the way to the end and when i hit a section that is either very boring to me or something like that that's where i start dreading continuing because it i don't know it's something in my brain that it's just like i can't i can't skip over it dan i stopped reading the encore ocg when i got this banner which is like challenging i read a chapter no it's chapter four i wrote a chapter a week before and i got the stp and i said i'm out yeah that's how much i loathe this he went from listening from listening to discarding real quick i was yeah learning after learning are you doing salad now my i jump around but i jump around on purpose just to keep it fresh there's a you guys should read make it stick it's a really good book but so you don't think the books are written i don't care that that who made that order up it's just there the people who wrote if you read a novel out of order it's not going to be yeah but it's not a novel i understand but don't you think they're writing it encore for example you don't think the order matters for the ccna probably no it doesn't matter if i learn spanning tree before ether channel right yeah but i feel like in the ccna book that's kind of each chapter started building off the previous chapter did it not no i mean where they choose to an extent where they choose to tell you about layer 2 stuff and in layer 3 stuff i mean shouldn't in theory then let's like let's just make sure that we all understand every type of cable and cabling type out there and then we'll go into every sort of data layer data link layer thing that we can we can possibly come up with like mac addresses and dell c's and all this other stuff and then we'll we'll see how switches communicate with each other with bpdus and things like that right and then finally when we hit ccie we'll talk about routing protocols because we finally made it we'll get to bgp last because it's you know kind of like a layer four-ish routing protocol well so he's writing a book different than making a video absolutely like i'm thinking right i'm thinking you're like install even g on your server video you can't install that before you check it before that order order is important but maybe not in technical manuals maybe okay so the whole i look at it like you're not saying yeah okay so you just they're all individual topics right like like they're not really a some of their each other's parts like you could you could get away with learning that's why there's specialties right you can get away with learning very niche stuff yeah but i'm looking at it from somebody who you know because there's a lot of people that get the ccna that have never done anything with networking and you can't just open it up and go straight into the routing right like i feel like you got to start off i went in order because that was my background then i knew nothing and the material was written and taught in order yeah as if someone didn't know anything but darren's point you could if you had a little experience you could probably jump around it doesn't matter if you learned spanning tree before either panel or route before switch it's all well it might depend on the learner too okay that's true aaron you know more about learning yeah so let's put it this way it's not that it's not that you wouldn't be able to or that uh one makes more sense than the other uh because either way works right um it's almost like which one would be less of a resistance on you as as a person right like oh this makes more sense because i learned about that but that's not to say that someone could just drop ospf in your lap and say figure this out you could you would have no idea how to plug anything into anything like physically right but you would you would understand like someone could go and learn that you know what i mean so yeah i see what you're saying yeah so what was the question you asked aj because i think we went down a rabbit hole yeah we definitely did i think we i think we beat that to death and then came up with a new question oh i thought he asked us what we had for dinner and we just kind of started talking wait we're asking questions yeah all right all right that was a good one all right it's time to time to trigger andy oh god here we go all right here we go i'm i'm good baby i just i know that he's already two times like you know throughout this uh podcast and uh i feel like it's essentially wait can i guess what it is what have i brought up do you need a physical lab yeah labbing physical or virtual is that is that the question i think starting out physical yeah you don't need a physical lab you don't need a packet tracer packet tracer gns i mean i only built i'm so adamant about a physical lab because of what it is i'm right there with you but look yeah but it's not going to hurt right like like it's not going to hurt but it does cost money and yada yada so i i get all that but a physical lab for me in my experience see i built a physical lab because i was working in an isp noc and all the people with like 20 30 40 years old experience i was sitting with said dude you need a physical lab they all had physical labs they told me why and that's what i did jeremy char said build a physical lab keith barker said everybody was saying build a physical lab so i did because i didn't know anything and i'm glad i did um you will learn more on a physical lab people love to pooh-pooh it and say what do i got to know about cables and pin-outs reports no you're right you're right yeah you're absolutely right i got blog po yeah i got blog posts on it listing the 18 things that i learned on a physical but i would never read the question again aj it's just labbing physical verse or yeah physical virtues virtual i would say both because that's what i do it says physical versus virtual now because you can connect you you can have a virtual lab talking to a physical lab you know when i when i do my ansible demo i have a virtual csr csr 1000 that neighbors up er eigrp with my physical routers and it's great yep the qu the question is flawed because it starts an argument it's inherently inflammatory right when they're both when you need when you when you need neither in reality and i never and i never say you know physical only virtuous poop i use both but when i try to say hey physicals are great because of xyz this is what i learned that's when people jump down my throat and like dude you're an idiot you you know physicals are garbage what year is this like how old are you like dude so so physical absolutely it's like they knew or something i'm an old guy because i got a physical lab every you know ccie that teaches this stuff says build a physical lab yeah if you're starting out and you only have so much money right then i would say go physical app and then once you get your ccna once you get a bigger job more money then you can invest in that virtual app because you can build a physical app for less than a hundred bucks if you don't have a hundred bucks plus you you you can how are you finding uses that are like retiring gear like i i got like three or four routers and switches like completely free because i was talking to the right people that were getting rid of some gear totally totally yeah and and one thing to add to that too is like if you're starting out in let's say you go all virtual and you get to a job interview and they ask you have you ever done this on a real device or anything like that you're you're gonna have to say no well what if they ask you on the physical well if they ask you on the job have you ever used uh dns3 because that's what we do here to test out our new stuff what if that's supposed to ask you that you should know both see what i mean though so like yeah yeah yeah are you you're 100 always going to have a gap or you've never done something that's absolutely true but what i would say to the question is physical versus virtual is neither you don't need either i can promise you this that you could get a ccie without a lab i promise you no question is it easier to do it with a lab sure it's already not easy okay the guys who practice for the eight hour lab lab for eight hours at a time to build up muscle memory i mean you need a lab well you know what a guy who i knew took the ccie said he used to do it a notepad so you don't need a lab actually you could just do commands in a notepad really yeah because that's what you that's what they all do anyway they just they copy paste the configs because they're all duplicates like it's not typing do you want an airline pilot who's new who's never been in a slim you know what i mean what do you what what did jeremy char say do you want a surgeon who watched a bunch of videos and never performed the surgery no build a lab get experience right just get a lab you could get you could build a lab for 75 bucks two crap and what i'm saying is that you could go into a medical doctor test without ever cutting open a cadaver that's what i'm saying no you absolutely could that's not how medical absolutely you cannot has anybody done it before i'm sure i'm sure they haven't all right so the answers need some answers i think both packet tracer's free gns is three if you're in an interview and you haven't touched gns you have not prepared and you should not be there so if somebody asked that question aaron said and you've never touched gns you should be ashamed of yourself if you haven't touched physical because you can't afford it that's a different story but if you haven't fired up a free program like if it's a hundred bucks like we all know if they if the person only has 100 people like huh it's free right it's great if you only had a hundred dollars like i think clearly the way it goes the ocd it's gonna give you a book it's gonna give you all the practice tests it's gonna give you all the flash cards all that stuff but we're talking about labs if you only had a harp right there's definitely a use case for both i would start with physical and then add virtual after that because no matter what platform you look at whether it's cml gns and even even g a lot of those platforms have a very hard time duplicating what the cisco a6 can do in their switching platforms and you can get really close you can do everything you're not going to get as close to working with a cisco switch as you know actually working with a cisco switch everything you can do in a physical lab you can do in gns the converse is not true you cannot well switching you cannot create a switching loop in gns but you need two switches it's also harder to have you know 20 routers yeah yeah there's definitely some economies in scale that you'll see with virtualization like i i but if i drop 200 bucks on you know a decent server and get gns3 or evg or something like that i can have a lot more routers in my topology but i still agree i think i think everybody should have a physical lab at some point and then if they decide they want to go virtual i you know but just because you're going virtual doesn't mean you need to ditch the physical it's it shouldn't it shouldn't be yeah it should be yeah i think it's i think it's a money decision right if you have money for physical you get physical if you don't you go free gns and you're done yeah that's pretty easy yeah all right all right next question yeah yeah um your virtual lab on your physical lab because that's what i do running your virtual lab on your physics like on your server yeah well i think we're talking about physical routers all virtual labs run on a physical yeah there's a every everything needs a physical underlay aaron what's going on did you have a stroke all right how do you defeat self-doubt i think we're i think we're touching imposter syndrome you don't you don't you don't stop telling yourself that you can you don't a lot of a lot of thought right how much time you got a lot of uncomfortable couches no you don't just use it yeah yeah i think you're you're we're not going anywhere you use the reframe yeah so uh imposter syndrome will get the best of anybody and when you stop worrying about people are gonna you know figure out your not who you say you are or you're feeling uncomfortable because you're diving into a new subject um think about it as it's growth it's about growth you're you're exploring something new get excited about that and just change your frame of mind around it i mean doubting something you don't know or you've never done before is just like an evolutionary behavior like it's it's something that's helping your survivability so like if you think it's going away you you don't want it to self like people without self doubt are like the people that walk around the streets that don't mind getting in fist fights with just anybody like on a random occasion for no reason you know what i mean because they're just like i don't care i know if you want to be like that you you want self-doubt for you want us you want a healthy amount of self-doubt right it's going to prevent you from doing something stupid but it shouldn't be crippling you right i mean there's an element of like mental health here that you know if you if you do have a crippling amount of that i would suggest seeking a professional for sure like there's no shame in that aj absolutely you said reframing so i i got an answer so um i'll relate it to like my personal life so i've been told by a number of people i'm a great dad my wife my you know people i don't even know like wow you're such a great dad like but 50 of the time i doubt myself and i'm not sure if i'm a great dad right i don't know where it comes from but what i've learned and you said refrain that's actually cognitive behavioral therapy trick you do is it it's based on a core belief something you think about like aaron said like instinctive stuff but if you take if you're doubting yourself you want to reframe it and the way i've been taught to reframe it is you look for proof so okay i believe i'm not a good dad sometimes am i not a good dad and then you look for proof on well am i a good dad or not is there any proof that so if you're doubting that imposter so imposter syndrome for i mean this is like just straight up therapy stuff right i didn't make it up no but it's smart doubting yourself that you don't belong and imposter syndrome and all that stuff look for proof my vp did it when i talked to him not too long ago and i'm like i don't know if i belong here you guys are geniuses i'm clueless you gave me a new job i don't know how to do it he's like dude i hand picked you i i want you here i know who you are you your reputation preceded you you belong here but i had self-doubt and i needed that i needed to see proof yeah he showed me all the proof of he's like i talked to a half a dozen people before i brought you over to my team and each one of them said that about you and that's what i want out of you know my guys why is it we need so much like that's crazy you said that like why is it we need so much like so many chips stacked in one direction to be like i'm great at this right like you have to have this and this and this this to feel to feel great about something but like you could have absolutely no proof and be like i suck you know what i mean like it's it's it's the extreme exception i think a lot of it happens you're in a vacuum you're not getting the feedback loop and especially when you're studying by yourself there's nobody there to tell you you're doing a good job you know there's no way to confirm for you like you understand what you're talking about that's what the difficulties are for does anybody on this panel not have that like i could even go deeper and say like is it my parents fault you know what i mean like so it's all but it's all it's all the voice in our heads right like we all have a voice talking to us in our heads i haven't met them yet but i imagine there's people out there that have a nice you know reaffirming yeah i'm good that voice in their head right so i don't know why must be wonderful he has no doubt he's good his parents did something no it's not that at all it's not i don't i just don't have an amount of self-doubt to speak of you know like like to to like even throw out there you know like like you've never felt like an imposter and you're never never actually quite the quite the opposite which is probably a problem too actually that's probably more of a problem than but seriously like how can you become how can you be confident if you don't have enough skill to be confident in something like when you started as a sales engineer you weren't the best no i was not i'm i'm still not and but i and you were never like oh man like i don't know how i'm going to do this this looks hard no no i uh i just did it i i don't know dude you just no it's awesome like it you you might have the secret well the nine times out of ten like aj's just said it right kind of it's like like a moth to a light right you you just go to a candle it's like hey that thing looks uncomfortable let me just drift over there and see what i can get into because every time i've i've been in like a oh my god moment like uh oh what's gonna happen now you know life gets ripped out from underneath you and you're like now what like for some reason i've always just been like i mean this is what it is right like like what are you gonna do right you have two choices of how you're gonna think of stuff which is what you just said right you just told us that like you can either think that you're really good at it or really bad i mean like i guess you could think you're neutral at something but i i don't really know how that's possible like i'm just neutral at everything there's another there's another trick you can only have one thought at a time it's like science has proven it right so you can either decide to think positively that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying yeah if if you're full of doubt or you're full of imposter syndrome you're just having negative thoughts you're also just another hacker like replace that with a positive it's like you with a dad thing change your state you know you don't do like like daily check-ins with your kids and your wife like like what did i do today to make sure i was a good dad you know what i mean like you don't do that because it's ridiculous um but just as much as like let's say no one ever said that you were a good dad same time no one's ever told you that you were a bad dad you've never heard that um so what are you gonna think then why would you assume right why would you assume that yeah like like you like you just said you have a choice just just pick the other one like it's really simple to just i i'm making it sound simple because it is you could just choose to say just say it out loud like there's something to like self-affirmations too like i always heard of guys like in the morning like stories of guys that had roommates that like their roommate was some crazy badass entrepreneur dude and he'd be like i could hear him every morning in the shower and he's like i am a badass i am rich i am like he wasn't rich right but he was just saying it and like you know you just start to believe it after a while so who knows say it out loud make yourself hear it speak speak it into speaking into existence pretty soon you're gonna be lying to yourself so much that it's gonna happen you're like whoa that was crazy because you the other the other alternative is you lie to yourself the opposite direction and then you end up you know god forbid like sleeping under a bridge or something you know have you ever heard this one what you think you become because it's true it's just like you just it's straight up just like you were talking about the the you know being a surgeon or whatever and you know like not not you could get a ccie without ever having to lab right basically my point is like literally everything's possible same thing with they put a freaking dude who's walking on the moon like what is the point of that like but here we are doing it right and they did it like we barely had color tv like they had no right doing that right and here we are 60 years later like how much how much has happened in the past six years like it would be it's unfathomable to keep up with all that crap like there's so much stuff like there's stuff out there you're good at anyway whether you think you're not or not so what does dan and aaron do with self-doubt or imposter syndrome because aaron doesn't have it i i have a couple of tricks do you guys ever have self-doubt or imposter syndrome yeah so for me um i mean just being completely open and honest here so i started in it back when i was around 22 or so and i'm 30 now and when i first got out of college um i was real heavy on the studying for the ccna and i kept putting this test up on a pedestal and i was like i'm never going to get it because there's all these other people out there that are so much smarter than me that it and i didn't have this community either so i think if you are struggling with this like i did um i think getting a community is very helpful because you you can find people like you guys for me who push me you know non-stop every week to get out of your comfort zone to to take that exam off the pedestal because at the end of the day it's just an exam right but uh i mean it it crushed me for years because i was just kind of doing the job i wasn't really trying to learn or go for the search anymore because i felt i felt like an imposter at even where i worked at you know and especially like if i went to any like seminars or anything like that uh cisco uh what are they called connect or whatever stuff like that you're around these other brilliant people and it's like what am i doing here but uh do you ever think that they think the same about you you know it's crossed my mind a few times but like they don't know you just like you don't know them right exactly yeah so it's safe to assume that if you're gonna if you're gonna judge someone just judge them to be stupid right yeah maybe that's what i do andy you just assume everybody's dope just assume she's not being smart until proven otherwise so what dan dan let me ask you this if there was a so like putting the ccna on actually i'll ask everybody this putting the ccna on the pedestal made me think of something if there was a test past the ccie ccie is still what it is today if there was one past the cca do you think that we would think of it like we do nothing changes about the ccie whatsoever but then now there's a test past that do you know what i mean yeah that seems to change our perception um i don't know i think there is isn't there it's not it's it's like a board there's a whole bunch of stuff to it just kind of paid a bunch like the listed so it's the it's the the cisco architecture arch exam yeah and it has a ridiculous entry fee to even be considered to apply and if you don't get approved you don't get your money back okay so it's not like you can't even put that on the pedestal because it's not even yeah nobody knows what that is so but you get my parents your point if they made yeah if they made one higher than the ccie then the cci would be more attainable even even if it meant nothing changed about the ccie blueprint the hardness of it whatsoever yeah perception of it right yeah probably oh it's not the hardest isn't that weird so imagine this now in your dance position and like ccna is the only test that exists right because there's a lot of stuff out there that's like that there's like one test for it right and then there you are you have it um i mean if it was just one test would it make it even like more intimate like how how many less people would have it or if ccmp was the top i i love the answer of the community because i didn't have one either day and when i was starting and now what i have like with you guys and with the discord community and like twitter and all that good stuff yeah like i really wish this would have been around when i was getting my ccnp you know what i mean like it was kind of people are pulling for you they pump you up i know eugene hit me up this morning like hey man what's going on let's get it like that really fills me up yeah like some just good i didn't have you know yeah but hearing other people and and hearing that they're struggling with this i didn't hear that and so i thought i was alone in that sense right you know like right why why is this so difficult for me or whatever and uh and then you meet this community and everybody's like oh yeah buster's in jail i don't think that you know you know what doesn't stink but like i i know that i could choose either or and so i make the decision like consciously like i get nervous when i go to tests you know i feel them half the time anyway so like why wouldn't i be nervous that would be stupid it would be so stupid for me not to be nervous given the amount of time like who do you think you are dude but that's the other thing too it's like there's there's an element of that to like like with aj and you and myself especially like like i wonder how many failures we have just like across the board like for us to just keep you know getting hit like that and to keep coming back like that is how you eliminate self-doubt right just freaking do it don't take no for an answer man so aj you said reframing i mean is that what you do when you how do you do that if you feel like self-doubt or when it comes to impostor syndrome i i try to reframe it like i don't always pull it off um i'm working on a project right now and i'm i'm trying to learn nso and i and so i'm having a difficulty with nso in that i i'm doing training and i'm following the documentation and it still doesn't work and i don't even know what it is nso is network services orchestration so it was an application cisco picked up a few years ago called tail f and it's focused at orchestration of large service provider-focused networks but now everybody's doing automation so it can be literally any network um and so i have to learn it for this project i'm working on um it's it's good stuff it's just the you know now after beating my head against the desk for the last week or two it like come to find out like the installer is not doing what it's supposed to be doing it's not declaring variables in the operating system to allow me to finish the install process and that's not my fault that's not a hurdle of me not understanding it it's just the software is not working as designed um and so you know i'm sitting over here like beating myself up because i'm working on a team of three guys and every time we meet every week uh those two guys come to the table like oh well here's what i finished this week and here's my nice shiny thing that i i completed what i set out to do and it's just like you know i'm still stuck so so how do you how do you reframe that that's what i'm saying like i haven't been able to reframe that you know like i understand i'm trying to learn but i like i've literally just been beating my my head against the desk and and finally me and another guy we like we looked at it because they've had success um and and you know so we start digging into what's going on in my environment and these things these variables aren't being declared during the installation and i'm not doing anything differently than these guys are doing and the only thing the only difference that we can see at this point is that the version of software that i have is a couple of revs newer than the version that those guys are using i hope this isn't you asking us for help because we're like what no no no i don't even know the actually yeah i mean neither i'm glad you asked because i was like i was just gonna let it go i was like well aj the real deal reframe would be that look at all the proof of everything you have learned about progress and research you have you you can learn new things this has given you a hard time and you will learn this just like you learned everything else about your other search i mean that to me that would be a reframe but like all right i i can do this i've done it before this is just exactly yeah you know to get you out of that doubt exactly so the next question is how do you know when you're ready you're studying for all this time ready how do you know when you're ready to take the exam i never know when i'm ready i i would agree with with that i don't know for me it was when i started passing the practice uh practice exam over i'm trying to think because i took the the cbt nuggets i think is it kaplan that they have i think some tests yeah it's one of those something like that um you have to pass the practice test yeah that i was passing the practice test with like i can't remember it was like over 850 or something like that or 800 or and and they said you would be ready if you're doing that and i was so i went and took it and that i know i got a 919 on that yeah i seen d1 nice so yeah yeah dawg so the question can you read the question again i want to make sure that i know exactly you know when you're ready it turns green to set to sit for an example it turns green turns green what turns green that's how you know it's ready oh now you know you're ripe you know what i mean dan i have not had the same experience that you've had because when i was studying for my ccna i would take practice exams and i would pass and pass and pass and then i'd go sit the real exam and i'd fail i hate this question there's no answer to this question there's my my t-sh my t-shirt exam i was taking i used bosun for the first time on my love uh life loved it love it we'll continue to use it but i was passing the boson t-shoot exams practice exam and i failed t-shoot three times so the barometer's supposed to be when you're passing those those are hard for sure i'm just you know just yeah i got i never know when i'm ready and even when i'm sitting i don't know until i hit that damn button at the end like there's times i felt like i nailed it and didn't yeah and there's times i felt like i fell on my face and i passed so i can never i'm right there with you that's the problem it's like each other the number one was an exam and got to the end like yeah i passed this and then i hit next and it's like sorry well what did carl say i thought carl had a good like with the with the test from home like he doesn't schedule ahead of time he doesn't stress it he just he gets the feeling like he'll get a feeling maybe it's just a feeling you know what i i think i can go take this i like that like i don't think like remember when we were talking about you putting uh videos on youtube and stuff and like even like your website and it was like well i'm kind of a perfectionist i kind of want things to be look good when i get out there and it's like best foot forward like that's what it's about right before the horse you know you don't want to get out of order is actually the same question it's like all right do you read the book in order you know it's like things have a process but it's analysis paralysis you'll never exactly exactly you'll never you'll never publish your website that's never perfect i think that was my biggest problem andy is that i i didn't feel like i was ready so i wouldn't take it and then and then i waited too long on the uh the icnd2 and then the new one came out and then so now my icing d1's you know doodoo i don't think like because like you just said you could think you're ready and then you could also think you were not and do well but the the answer is this i could tell you when you're ready when you think you're ready and when you are ready are two completely different things when you're ready to go sit for the test and legitimately pass like you could pass by guessing everyone knows that you could actually guess on every single question and pass that is statistically possible okay but that doesn't mean you learn anything right so to make it easier on yourself the best way to do it is to take every subject and teach it back to either someone else or yourself because that's how you will know that you know the stuff right it's then when you are ready it's not do i think i'm ready am i not ready it doesn't matter what you think you either are you're not right you either know the stuff or you're gonna say like if you can explain it to a whatever five-year-old yeah yeah which i you know i agree to an extent like technical i mean technical stuff's a little bit different right yeah yeah so basically like like like what aj does like if you could teach a high school class or you could teach a college class like even the most basic fundamentals of this stuff like think subnetting like how hard was subnetting it was so hard and like i i could not get it i almost gave up so many times i just could just did not make any sense people talking about cutting pies into pieces and all this other crap i'm like what like none of it made any sense to me like there was only like a few words that would have made sense to me that somebody could have just said in like a half a sentence and i would have got it right away but that's the thing it's like all of that hard like work that i did to finally get it and we all did the same thing right and once you finally get it like use that opportunity to then go back and reframe it and make it make sense to you because it's going to be easier on you in certain ways or it's going to be harder it'll all get in there eventually there's just easier paths and harder paths and oddly enough the easiest path the most efficient path is the hardest path because if it's easy you aren't doing anything stop highlighting throw those highlighters away all right aaron embarrass me away from my thing i don't do it anymore all right i think we're gonna do the last question that we've got time yeah that's with a good one here i'm excited the grand finale i'm excited to hear from aaron on this one so let's let's talk don't trigger me now study strategies you just brought up throw away the highlighter so what what are some study strategies uh there's only one let's let's hear it uh well let's just say that the there's two steps but only one like learning process the first step is organizing yourself so kind of alluded to it earlier with andy and how he was in the question about like bouncing around same with dan like do you go through this do you do this do this or whatever no there needs to be a strategy right so if you have a certain amount of things to learn which you do and it's great because cisco if we're talking about them specifically actually every real certification for any it related thing has a blueprint right the the subjects are all there you could do just a simple thing as googling those those subjects right my point here is that you have to have an attack plan okay so then the next question is what is the attack plan keep in mind that none of this is learning all this is planning right so if you don't plan up front you just start diving in like you're going to get lost in the sauce because you never had a direction you never had a sign post so if you don't if you don't lay this out ahead of time you're setting yourself up so if you want to you could do this on a time based schedule which i don't necessarily recommend but you could totally do it i do recommend doing something often however i don't recommend like saying that you have to have something done by friday unless you're that type of person so if you're that type of person then put it to a schedule right take each chunk and it could be as easy as this like there's you know four categories let's say within each category there's three subtopic topics each subtopic has uh three topics attached to it so i would take that subtopic it's got three little things in it like let's say like we always beat up like let's say it's uh um stp rstp and pvst those are the three little sub sub talk it must know have working knowledge of all three of these right i'm gonna take those three they're all kind of similar and i'm spending the week learning everything i can about those things and then i'm going to test myself okay and then where the learning actually is so is is in the guts of this right so that's all just the planning stage so when what am i going to do when am i going to do it and how will i know when i'm completed with that we've we've answered all of that in this podcast right how do i know where i'm going easy get a link get a signpost right how do i use my time more efficiently that that's part of like scheduling and actually getting stuff done and then the next part is actually getting to the meat of it and learning it's like what does the process of learning look like and it's as simple as you have to test yourself as much as you can so i see flashcards all the time for for stuff that you have to remember like uh like britney she brought up right like what are the the stages of spanning tree and all of us were like ah you know you know we piece it together eventually but like um it's stuff like that that you typically put on a flash card right like i gotta remember all of these so how am i gonna do it maybe you make like a mnemonic out of it or you know an acronym or whatever it is but what you should be doing is taking those subtopics that you had and in my example it was uh mst rstp and let's say traditional spanish stp right all right the things you should do to learn all three of those together first of all find some tests that have those questions in them a great place to find those end of the chapter quizzes or the ditkas both of those things exist in an ocg for every chapter okay so find those chapters do all of those tests and yes you you heard it right do those tests before you read the subject there's science behind this you're more likely to learn something if you test yourself on something you have no idea about and then you go and try to learn what you just tested yourself on so there's there's evidence saying that that is going to help you right is it because you're because you know what you're like once you read it you're like oh that's what that question was yeah you're like wait that makes sense because the way they asked it and that however that that connection happens i'm unclear about that so i i can't really speak to that test yourself and then read the chapter test yourself at the ditkas and the the if if your eyes are glossing over like just take a second and read the question like there's things in there it's okay so let's i'll just make up an example question on the spot okay uh what are the uh or which one of these ospf lsa types is a uh router advertisement let's say right and it gives you one three five seven okay and i have no idea what the heck osp ospf is right um so i look at those and i go okay well there's clearly a one a three and a five and a seven maybe i don't know looks like they they at least numbered them right okay what is an lsa i don't know what that is um what is ospf i don't know what that is uh so then now i'm going into the ospf section okay i've gotten past that part ospf i get that i get what it's called the acronym is oh link state advertisement that's what that is okay so clearly there's a bunch of these why is there a bunch of these right like and it's okay to go back to those questions and be like aha and even if you took those questions and that's how you learned like let's say you just went question by question and then just googled the answer and found it and then went into a rabbit hole like wait then why so then why couldn't it be this right because just important as to why it's something is why it couldn't be something else and another piece of advice every bit of the technology that we deal with is like is a result of an efficiency or something breaking you know what i mean so it's basically you could just think in your head for everything you learn like why does this exist what problem did it solve and it's we're engineers so that helps us you know in the like put pieces together so when you're going through these subjects and you're reading all these things you should be making flashcards for yourself the flashcards should be very difficult and i cannot stress that enough um maybe sometime i'll give you an example of a flash card that i've made for myself because it's something like define lisp you know it doesn't say like you know what's a router id you know or you know what's what's an ip or what what could an ip address that lisp used look like or something you know what i mean i i'm i'm i'm paying very close attention here because i need this so just to crystallize what you're saying planning which is basically the blueprint as an example then test yourself make it difficult end of chapter tests into dikkas and then do you read again like do you do you test read test then you're going to test at the end with like xm i just keep testing and the flash cards are a test right the harder my flash cards are the better it is um you're looking at your flash cards every day maybe yeah and that's so easy to do because if you something like anki especially yes when you start to learn them they they they use the same methods i'm talking about i have to sign it so that probably won't happen but you know so yeah so you have to see so anki's cool because it's spread so it's a nki there's an app there's a web uh desktop version as well that you could type it to it's super easy this is what i think it's free right what's that and it's free yeah yeah and you can actually type in on your desktop what you want and then load the deck into your uh your app it's study wherever like it doesn't matter like it'll sync so is it do you use something like that for digital or do you write out physical flash no i don't care about writing yeah it just it doesn't matter no yeah so there's nothing to be said about writing it no there is in your brain right but here's here here's why that's a tricky statement is writing something more likely to make you remember it than typing it out absolutely but i'm not using typing or writing to remember anything i'm using a flash card to remember it i just want it quite honestly andy it doesn't matter nine times out of ten i copy paste from a white paper and just shove it into the note card as much crap as i could possibly come up stick in there like like when you okay so i'll give you an example of a card that i had like um in for ccnp route why would i use ospf over eigrp no idea right but there's a reason there's reasons why i would and the reasons why i would well eigrp is cisco proprietary maybe okay so okay so is that that's that is that is that a question that they would ask you on an exam no i mean but to be fair so like yeah so so so which one of these would you use if the environment was you know like mixed vendor and they're trying to trick you right you know what i mean they do stuff like that but but i know that because in my cards are are things like that and if i learn something i add it to the card right to eventually get to the point where you're like basically giving yourself a lesson about everything and then when you see questions like i'll do this i'll go back into boson and i'm reading the question and holding my hand over all of the answers i don't want to know what the answers they're giving me are i'm i need to spout the answer off see if you can pull it out of here exactly and and i don't give up the longer i'm thinking what's nice about the flash cards too if you're going to waste five minutes of your life maybe flipping through instagram yeah yeah my biggest life hack on the planet yes you have a choice especially like let's say you're sitting there at doctor's office so much wasted time on that just just nonsense if you move that to your home page like the front page right it's right there you could do whatever like any time you had the urge to do that remember we're talking about decision points you just pull that up takes two seconds i do it because it's on my desktop first thing in the morning before i even open my email client for work i do the i do the car i i don't even remember doing them now because i do them so automatically and this is anki yeah i use the desktop version and the flip for version and they sync to each other so i have like i i don't have that many cards right like i don't have a full deck also i would never get someone else's deck that's pointless like you always like yo let me get that deck or whatever it's like or let me get some of the questions like for ccna i had like a stack yeah i don't know how many of these huge that's all i did during the day it's always like it's always like the stuff that you have to learn like you know like what's the multicast address for a uh a bdr right like okay like i need a card for that because it's like one number and you gotta remember the number you know what i mean like that that's all like just like trivia type stuff but there's a reason why that exists right like so it's better to read reading repetition is key i guess right that's what flash cards are no you're just reading stuff so that's why someone would pick up a book and reread it right it'd be the same thing that's actually the easiest thing you can do and the worst thing you can do rereading something or how's the flash card different because you're trying to pull up the answer before you look you have to use a flash card correctly you have to i don't care if it takes you 10 minutes to think of the answer and like you're just like don't look do not look you're only like just think about this the longer it takes you to answer don't you turn it around don't don't do it it's so easy to and you're like oh i knew that no you didn't because you would have said that stop tricking yourself it's wait the it's the struggle i guess the struggle because the struggle creates a stronger bond right it creates that memory and it's like it's like a firmer thing like so so the law is the same as like you know we all uh you learn from your mistakes kind of thing like uh like when you mess something up is when you when you like when you fail like you know but you don't though the thing is you learn when something like traumatic happens whether that's like but that's like an instinctive thing and that could be good or bad like you want the reward just as much as you don't want to get punished for something you know what i mean so so your brain is always tricky that so do you read the flash card and if you get it wrong you like punch yourself in the face or something no you get somebody else to punch you that would be stupid because you're not going to be that hard on yourself but like it's a new meaning for studying you're building roads you're building building you're building roads in your brain neural pathways and you're not going to do it by reading the answers over and over again you gotta try to pull that's the biggest that's the biggest thing is like because it's so time consuming and eventually and again this is kind of like what i was saying with the ccie you get it without without doing that right is it hard as hell yeah like would anybody ever do that in the right mind no there's all these tools for them right like why why hinder yourself but what i mean is like the harder you make something for you the more rewards you're gonna get and aj and i talked about this before it's it's just your brain is a muscle it's and it's literally just like going to the gym why would just think why would you go to the gym and lift one pound weights for three hours straight nothing is gonna happen right but you know what happens though you go home and you tell everybody you know oh yeah bro i spend like three hours a day at the gym so you know i'm at the gym all day every day and they look at me they're like you are at the gym all day everyday i'm like yeah i'm in the gym i'm not doing anything well i am though i'm busy i'm busy i'm actually lifting weights so you can't say either of those things now i'm pretty sure we can all say that aaron that's not a very effective use of your time and i would say easy yeah it's way too easy so wouldn't you rather spend 10 minutes maxing something and then just bounce out of the gym you know as an extreme example and then guess what that did more for you than lifting a one pound weight for three hours straight right so the point is that whether you have a lot of time or you don't everyone is gonna say that they don't have enough time that's just that's just how we work all right um but we're all lying we can wake up an hour when are you when are you gonna create this content and release it you're doing it organically through all this if you tune into enough part of networking engineering episodes i mean i i get i get a lot out of this though yeah just you can try it you keep it coming that concept made a lot of sense to me though the the you know don't don't go to the gym dude i wrote that everything you said i'm gonna make flash cards for three hours you know that that makes sense so yeah it's a muscle try that i mean it quite my problem is it's like if if you got a deck of 200 flash cards it's like my gosh i got to go through all these but what you're kind of saying is like hey maybe focus this week on just ospf flash cards and and breaking that down like one day go through all your lsas and and what what are each one or something but don't worry about the rest of them kind of thing is that should they be grouped by topic or should it be random does it so so here's what's interesting about that all your stp be you know back-to-back yeah there's science that says that you should be interleaving so that they say the two strongest way two strongest ways to form the skill or the memory are to uh interleave practice they call it interleaving which means mixing subjects around um and uh uh like dedicated practice which is like or they call it a purposeful practice or um basically like testing yourself right the interleaving is important because i think one of the studies they did this is an example like um they had a bunch of like five-year-old kids and they gave kids uh like a ball and a and they had like a trash can and the challenge was going to be that they gave these kids like as many times as they wanted to practice throwing the ball and they're four feet away so the test the end test was going to be throwing the ball in at four feet so they got a controlled group of kids and they all threw from four feet and practiced and practiced practice for what what was that they also got kids and had them throw from one foot six foot three foot eight foot all over the place the kids that did that scored significantly higher than the kids that just practiced at four feet the ones that didn't release significantly higher like now uh the inky or however you pronounce it i don't know how you pronounce it but uh the the flash card thing it it has that built into it right like it absolutely does which is why it's such a great program if you answer really well on a question or a really quick i guess you want to say on a question because it also has a it has like a true thing at the end like hey did how quick did you answer this question or did you get it right it's it's good so it's great or not so great right yeah exactly so if you answer that honestly i think it's like if you answer really well it'll say it won't bring that question back up for like the next three days it's space repetition yeah that's what they do yeah so space repetition there's there's a forgetting curve and it varies but they show it a significant drop off of like i think it's like three to five days or something like hope nobody quotes me on that i don't really remember what it was exactly but if you catch something while it's kind of falling off that's when you really get it right like oh okay yeah it's like it's like you were about to forget it like your brain was like almost like ram versus hard drive right your brain just kept it cached and never decided to move it to the hard drive but you were like wait a minute that needs to go save as right and if you catch it as it's going like that that's the spot but the reason why you're while you're testing yourself is is that same thing right this the the flashcards are that they're they're you testing yourself the more last question on flashcards you only put things on you don't know right if i know something there's no reason to put it uh that depends like yeah you don't want to toss yourself a softball but make something you know hard on yourself so this is why this is so difficult right but it's the same reason why it's so efficient it's because it's so difficult because it doesn't make sense like why would i make this so freaking hard on myself but that's what you need to be doing right you need to put yourself through hell for this to make sense like all right don't kill yourself but but you're making it hard because that's how you're going to develop the memories and they're going to be able to tell you that's how we learn right and everybody says this too lift the weights exactly okay so check this out and i'll give you another example because people it drives me knows when people say this like well i learn like this that's not true at all we're all humans stop thinking you're so special you're not we're all the same we all have brains they all operate literally the exact same way like almost to a t there are some people that were born gifted there's a very small percentage of people we're all we're all essentially the same you may have a preferred learning style but oddly enough when someone says i learn this way or this is how i learn what they're saying to you is i prefer to learn this way and what they're really saying to you is this is what's the easiest for me and what that really means is that i don't get out this as much as i should so if if you hate sitting in a classroom let me tell you something there's a reason why you hate that it's because it's not easy it's hard raise your hand and ask a question like don't tell me you don't like sitting in a classroom because there's a guy there or a girl there to help you that person is there to help they get paid to help you that's such a valuable resource now if you're reading a white paper and it doesn't make sense to you then yeah like what are you gonna do about that right like go find a video i guess it's just super super easy but like oh i can't read because of this i prefer to watch videos i'm sure you do because you just click play and you sit there right like yeah you know what i prefer to do which is why i said earlier like if i only had 100 bucks i'm buying a boson test i might i might redact that to say like i'll just get the ocg because i have a bunch of test questions with it which we know now but and that's enough to get me by but yeah i can come up with whatever gaps i don't get like if i find a subject that i really suck at i'll give myself a bazillion questions on that like every little nuance and i'll make it so general when i ask the question so i won't know what basically what i'm asking myself like what sort of details should i give here you know like if the card says like describe ospf like where do you start like but the thing is if you have to answer it you will and if the point is to get out as much information as possible you will you'll start spouting off lsa types you'll be like oh but you uh if you were running into this issue you would have to use this but that's an extension of that and they've already solved for that and always make sure that you summarize here because this could happen right also remember to add this if you were gonna uh leak that route to another protocol or whatever you know so it's like it's just trying to get yourself out of a comfort zone i guess is the best way to put it i guess we'll slash and rant there since that took like 25 minutes it was a good that was a great point yeah all right well i think we've uh we've gone long enough on this hopefully we've answered your questions whether you had them whether you had them or not right right all right and uh we'll catch you next time later hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of netench that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you