I have travelled this road before. I know what is ahead of me and it is not easy.

In this entry, I am going to outline my plan for my path to the CCIE R&S. This will include the CCIE Written and CCIE Lab. Since my last attempt was a very long time ago, my CCIE written has expired and I now need to take the exam again.

I am giving myself until the end of next year (December 2009) to pass my CCIE Lab Exam. While this may seem like a long time, anyone who has attempted the lab exam before knows what it takes to pass when you have a full time job. This may acutally not be enough time, in my estimation. I am typically the type of person who tries to learn everything there is about the topics before I take a test. I am treating this no differently. I plan to live up to the title of Expert once I have passed my exam.

The last time I attempted to pass the lab exam, I went into my study routine already at a disadvantage. I realize now I did several things wrong. I am not even talking about study habits or learning the wrong information. I am talking about the things you know you should be doing, but aren't. Things such as getting enough sleep every night, laying off the red bulls, eating healthier, etc. At the time, I thought I was optimizing my awake time and spending it by filling it with as much knowledge as possible. Most of the books that are recommended reading; I read them at least three times. Obviously, cramming as much info to my brain didn't help when it came time to recall all that infomation.

I see now I was defeating myself before I had even cracked a book or practiced a lab. I was not setting myself up for success. I kept putting roadblocks in place and made it that much harder for me to succeed. This time, things will be different. I really like the saying "if you keep doing what you have always done, you keep getting what you always got". If I take the same approach this time, I can expect similar results.

Now, my approach will be more than just simple study tactics, book learning, and hands on labs. I plan to take an all encompassing approach to the exams to help give myself the best chance possible for passing both the written and lab. This means not only filling my brain with technical information, but also enabling myself to retain and recall that information once it is in there. What I will be doing is preparing myself before I even crack a book. This may seem a bit extreme and even a bit wacko, but I assure you, I am neither of these things.

What I plan on doing is preparing my body, through good eating and exercise, to maintain my stamina and alertness. When you aren't tired, you can retain much more information. I might stay awake less, but I will be optimizing that awake time by filling and retaining the information the first and only time. In the end, even though I will be studying less, I will be retaining more. I firmly believe this. I know my body and how it responds. This is what I have to do.

At the same time, I am going to work on some brain building exercises. I don't mean just memory techniques such as logic puzzles, sudoku puzzles, etc., but staying away from the nasty stuff that could have an effect on my memory retention.

At this point, I am sure many think I am crazy. Like I said before, things have to change for me to have a different outcome. I am not saying all of this will work, but it will give me a better chance, I think, at passing the exams. Worst case, I end up healthier.

I plan to develop a schedule for studying. This includes and book time and practical time. I also think that this time, I will take a few more breaks from study. For my last attempt, I studied for 5 months straight, taking about 6 days off during that time. I put in nearly 10 hours per day except in Saturday where I put in about 16 hours of study time. This time, I will take a few more breaks and even change up the study routine, so it doesn't get monotonous.

The last part I will be doing during this time is documenting what I have learned onto this web site. That was my main intention, in the first place, for starting this site. I wanted a huge reository of highly technical knowledge that I could use. Well, I am going to put my money where my mouth is. I am going to add, hopefully, detailed information that could probably be found in other places, but maybe not combined in the way that this site is doing it.

From here on out, my goal is to add a blog entry every week about my progress and some personal insight into my journey. Barring any more hurricanes in the area until late November, I should be, on a somewhat consist basis, adding some blog entries here. They will become more consistent the further along we get into the year.

-Stephen