One of the hardest things about learning cybersecurity is that there is no formal plan and a million different places to start. The more topics you explore, the more rabbit holes you discover. It's really intimidating.

How do you do it? It all starts with a strategy and a structured plan for learning. This will help you stay on track and make steady progress. Here are five simple steps to make this happen:

Step 1: Focus on topics that relate to your existing meaning structures. Meaning structures are areas of knowledge that we can draw on when we learn something new. This is why it's easier to transition from IT or programming to cybersecurity than from most other fields. You already have similar meaning structures. If you don't have a technical background, choose a subfield of cybersecurity that most relates to what you already know.

Step 2: Link theory and practice to build competency. This will allow you to understand new topics from multiple perspectives. It also allows your brain to rest and reorganize during many sleep cycles over weeks and months. People build competency over time, not through a one-time dose in a boot camp or crash course.

Step 3: Let your teachers assign projects and provide feedback. Don't rely on them to teach you. Many people think that learning is just about someone telling them or showing them something. Knowledge transfer happens by completing projects with guided feedback from a teacher. Try this approach next time you work with a teacher and you will be amazed at the progress.

Step 4: Create mental models to help you organize your knowledge. Learning is more about organizing knowledge than accumulating it, so you need to develop good mental models as you learn. They are shortcuts that help you organize new information into a visual representation that serves as a meaningful structure to help you learn cybersecurity topics faster.

Step 5: Use mind maps to visualize and structure your research process. To handle the overwhelming amount of new ideas and concepts you'll encounter while learning cybersecurity, you'll need to sketch them out on paper as you go along. If you can break abstract ideas down into visual blocks, it's much easier to see which areas to focus on or which to skip.

Did you enjoy watching this video and find the content valuable? Share it with someone you know to help them learn cybersecurity faster!

PS: We are building a platform for network analysis and visualization.
Would you like to be notified when we launch? Sign up now at:
https://teleseer.com

No spam. We only send the emails you want.

00:00 Why many people struggle to learn cybersecurity
02:24 Focus on topics related to your existing meaning structures
05:15 Combine theory and practice by dividing your learning schedule into different periods
06:46 Use teachers for practice and feedback, not for teaching
09:09 Build mental models and systems that help you organize knowledge
11:34 Mind mapping to structure your research process
12:24 My process of learning something new

LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE
Discord: https://discord.gg/ZKwR9CV
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cyberspatial_HQ
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cyberspatial

Chris Sanders' website:
https://www.networkdefense.co/
https://chrissanders.org/

Please take the opportunity to connect with your friends and family and share this video with them if you find it useful.