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Well back in the days of the of being in high school and even in the early days of Cisco - I used to take whole books and just read them cover to cover.

In fact, I did with Giles, Dolye, Kennedy Clark, and even Odom - 3 CCIE Books and 1 CCIE Book.

To be honest - For me it was like reading a bunch of garbage.  Too many terms that I had no basis for.  So I simply brute-forced it.

Wasteful!

I started all of this in 1999.

I even read the Cisco for Beginners book cover to cover - actually it was probably the first one.p>

Since I had no basis or use for the terminology.  I could not even begin to understand or digest the material.

Pointless.  Pardon the pun.

So...

I did what I did for Foreign Languages - Having studied both Spanish and German to fluency and not to mention good old English...

I brute forced vocabulary and trivia.

One thing I do have is what a very intelligent friend of mine told me was "photographic memory" and given he was the top guy in charge of hiring people for the IRS or GSO or whatever I gave it credence...

He told me there are 3 aspects to learning:

1. Ability to Memorize

2. Ability to do

3. Ability to apply

Or somethig like that.

Anyway...

He said most people considered highly intelligent usually have like 2 of the three.  He said very few people have all three to a very high level.  He seemed to think I did.   I took that under consideration.

You see the United States government invested a lot of money in teaching me how to think and learn in the most effective manner possible.  In fact, as I recall they did not seem happy with my old methods I had learned in High School.

So...  they beat it out of me in Nuke School.

They told me and my class - that 7 times was the number that seemed to be the "most effective" and I was told they were spending some $50,000.00 per week per student to make sure we remembered what we were taught.

Highly effective!

So... you think I should learning this way?

I can't say how everyone else takes a lot of technologies and masters them - but I am always a lead engineer and I always have to understand new technologies... all the time.

It's the norm for me now.

So...  when I look at any given body of knowledge one of the first things I do is nail up the trivia - first and foremost.

Then I read the subject matter and attend to the practical matter at hand.

It's a hell of a lot more fun to do exercises when you can speak the language and know what to look for...

I'm not that guy who opens the new VHS and has the audacity to think I was born to learn the stuf...  Nope!  Sorry that's not my stereotype.

I am the guy who likes to be perceived he has a clue when he's entrusted to design, configure, and implement literally millions of dollars worth of equipment at any given time.

So....

Back to the trenches.

And while it may sound a lot like just "braindumping" there is a subtle difference....

Memorization is and always has been a basic fundamental tenet to learning anything...

Ummm... especially a language.

Like it or not technology is a language too.

Now if we go no further to apply these languages - then why bother (aka the Braindumper)...

However, if we take it to the limit and apply it... we obtain the opposite: The Subject Matter Expert.

I have a lot of certifications by now - more expired than most people will ever even attempt.

I also work with or have worked with everything I'm certified or ever was certified in.

I don't know about anyone else but I have to produce and even if there were no certification exams...

I'd still be doing the good old "flash-card" thing.

Well in high school I'd just write the terms down on page after page and read them till I got them.

To learn to use them in sentences - I was taught to write things out 100 or 500 or 1000 times...  

I can't say how exectly that worked for the rest of the school on rainy days...

but no one ever tells me that my vocabulary or my ability to use it is "bad".

This works for me and quite frankly: I have a job to do every day.

Doing practical exercises without understanding aka being aware of the language and or having proper expectations is pretty poor too.

I think a person needs all facets... aka a blended learning solution.

One of the most important steps to learning and that is often misunderstood is to actually learn to like or love the subject at hand.  It's easier to learn that which is preferred.

So... it is easy to prefer that which is familiar.

How does marketing and name brand recognition work again?

Repetition.