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Upgrade Your Learning for ICT Career Success

Note

Originally published on March 20, 2023 on Medium, now updated and hosted here.

As in nearly any field within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry, a telecommunications engineer must develop and maintain a lifelong learning attitude and the necessary habits and practices to be successful. In this article, I will share the tools, tips, and tricks I’ve used to quickly acquire my growing list of certifications, and I believe they will work for you if you apply the commitment and discipline needed.

Fine-tune Your Mind

The first step is to develop the proper mindset for learning. You may already have a well-developed learning system that has served you well, or you continue to struggle through each attempt. No matter your level, I believe you will benefit from reading the following books:

  • A Mind for Numbers, by Barbara Oakley. Don’t let the subtitle, “How to Excel at Math and Science,” fool you—this book is designed to help you rewire your brain to learn more effectively through the practical application of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. To get the most out of the book, I recommend also taking the free Learning How to Learn course on Coursera, taught by the same author.
  • Ultralearning, by Scott H. Young. Like A Mind for Numbers, this book will introduce you to effective techniques to deepen your ability to learn new skills, this time with a focus on “aggressive, self-directed learning” towards competence or mastery in compressed periods of time. The author has a large number of articles and videos on his approach you can check out, such as this one. I try to use this method for every new “learning project” I attempt at this point.
  • Atomic Habits, by James Clear. Developing new learning habits won’t produce the results you’re after if you can’t maintain them, which is why learning better habits to maintain your learning techniques are also important. Everyone, myself included, tend to fall back to ingrained patterns of behavior, and for most of us, our old learning habits are poorly developed.
  • Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. If you’ve heard of the 10,000 hours of practice rule, this book explains that while it’s not that simple, it is straightforward to work towards mastery. The secret is purposeful practice, carried out daily with dedication and discipline. With this breakthrough mindset, you’ll be able to advance from beginner to expert in a proven, sustainable way.

Assemble Your Tools and Tactics

After developing effective learning techniques, the next step is to equip yourself with good tools, tactics, and other resources to help you in your learning efforts. A Mind for Numbers and Ultralearning cover a wide range of them in a general sense, so I’ll just list my favorites to get you started.

  • Flashcards. Spaced repetition is an essential technique the books above cover in-depth, and one of the best tools to practice this is Anki, an open source flashcard application. In addition to the many features available in the software, one of highest values it offers is the free cloud accounts that allow you to sync your flashcard decks across devices. I have a daily routine of hitting decks of upcoming exams, as well as reviewing content I’m already certified on as refreshers. There are many tutorials about using Anki available on YouTube, and it’s particularly popular in the medical school community.
  • Mind Mapping. In Ultralearning you’ll learn about the concept of metalearning, which is the process of mapping out your learning plan. Mind maps, popularized by Tony Buzan, are a great way to construct and visualize concepts; I often use them as I explore new topics and build off of that. There are a wealth of mind map apps available today, with XMind being my personal favorite. I’ll be polishing some of my personal ones and sharing them in future content here on Telecom Craft.
  • Get Organized. To further help you organize your learning projects, it’s good to have a system to consolidate all your activities within. Any note-taking app can be helpful as long as you use it consistently, and after using many over the years, I’ve settled on Notion. From lists of learning resources to kanban boards to track my study progress, Notion gives me incredible flexibility in organizing things exactly the way I need them, like a second brain. Find something that works for you and stick with it; don’t try to keep it all in your head!

Practice, Practice, Practice… Deliberately!

With both your tools and techniques together, begin developing your daily habit of practicing your craft. You may not have a lot of time in addition to just studying, but through the activities below, you will begin to supplement your studies and apply your skills in ways that reinforce your learning. Most of them can be done in the daily time spent browsing social media, in fact. Find things you enjoy and do them consistently!

  • Writing to Learn. Writing is an excellent way to force yourself to explain concepts you’re in the process of learning, particularly for technical content. A Packet Pushers episode from 2020 covers this in-depth, so check it out. This blog is my own personal commitment to furthering my practice, as well as improving my writing overall, and I urge you to try it, too.
  • Talking to Learn. Who doesn’t like to talk shop? Find people you can talk with about the things you’re learning in a safe and supportive space. Tell them what you’re learning about, and share any insights you’ve recently gained or difficult concepts you’re struggling with. There are many online communities for ICT, and a great starting point if you live in North America is the North American Network Operator Group (NANOG); I’ve followed their mailing list for years and a ton of interesting conversations occur there. Here on LinkedIn I’ve found possibly the most vibrant ICT community of any I’m part of, which is why I focus my time on this platform.
  • Watching to Learn. In general, I’ve found YouTube to be very valuable for learning about engineering and construction topics. In addition to its popular mailing list, NANOG, mentioned above, has a wealth of conference presentations available on their channel. Lastly, be sure to follow both vendors and service providers to find videos about products and services and how network operators are actually using them in the field. When you know something well, consider making your own videos about it.
  • Listening to Learn. Like video, podcasts are an excellent source for industry information. As part of my network engineering ultralearning project, I began consuming multiple episodes of the Packet Pushers podcasts every day. It admittedly took me a while to understand the difference between eBGP and iBGP just by listening, for example, but I quickly absorbed a lot of information just in my commute to and from work.
  • Get Hands-on with Home Labs. It’s good to take in information from multiple sources and via multiple forms of media, but at some point you simply need to get your hands on telecom hardware and software and start experimenting. This is admittedly not always easy, as setting up a pole line or conduit trench in your backyard is probably not a good idea, and trying to build a DWDM point to point link is more expensive than you want to even think about at this level. However, there are many things you CAN do, and creating useful telecom home labs is one of the big goals I have for myself.

Hopefully this is a good starting point for your journey into ICT learning. I’m sure I’ll continue to update this list moving forward, so check back often and send me any feedback on the above or new ideas you have to help enrich the ICT learning experience.