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CISSP Tips and Tricks | How to build your CISSP study plan

Having the right approach, the right materials and using the materials at the right time in your CISSP studying is critical for passing your CISSP exam.

Learn how to build your own CISSP study plan, how to manage your study time right, and what to study in which order.

Get my free CISSP study course to get the full free CISSP: How to study course, it also has the fillable study plans for you to use. https://thorteaches.com/get

https://youtu.be/hVI-0T9OvUk

You can get all my courses, free study materials, my free CISSP course and much more on https://thorteaches.com/

Transcript:

In this lecture, we’re going to talk about study plans, how to get them, how to tailor them to your specific needs and how to use them in your studying.
And to begin, I’m going to answer a question I get asked multiple times a week, how long should I study?
And every time I get the same answer, I have no clue.
I have had students who studied for one week and passed their exam and I have had others that been over a year.
Normal is somewhere between four to six months, and it varies so much because everybody comes into the CISSP studying from a different point of view.
You have a different background, you have different knowledge, people are different in how fast they learn.
How much time they spent every day studying, how focused they are, and 50 other things that will influence how long you need to study to pass your exam.
So in this lecture, I’m going to approach it with a normal student in mind that uses the four to six months.
For something as big and as complex as the CISSP, I suggest you study at least two to three hours every day, and when I say every day, I actually mean it.
It is every day.
And many of my students say, “Well, I can’t just find two hours in the day or three.
I can’t make more hours in the day than there are.”
Completely true.
What you need to do is do less of other things and you need to find those little pockets of time where you have 10, 15, 20 minutes where you’re not doing something else, your commute, your breaks, your lunch break, all of that I use for studying.
I also take a close look at what else I do that is not urgent or important.
So I spend less time on Facebook or social media.
I watch less TV, I play less games, and try to do it in a way that doesn’t ostracize your friends and family but you still get the study time that you need to pass your exam.
And before we start looking at the actual plan, remember, the study plan is a living document.
If for some reason last week you did not have time to study enough or you all of a sudden had extra time, well, then you adjust the plan.
And now for the actual study plan, download the attached study plan from this lecture or go to thorteaches.com/study/ and then click on free stuff.
The first thing at the top on the free stuff is the study plan.
On the front page of the study plan, I have my suggestion on how you should approach your studying and which order you should do it in.
First off, get one to three video resources, watch them all and then take notes.
In my video courses, I have study guides you can use and then add your notes alongside those.
Once you have watched all the videos, then you read your primary book, you supplement your notes, then I suggest you read the Memory Palace, the CISSP Process Guide, the Sunflower Notes and the NIST documents.
And the NIST documents, you can find the same place that you do the study guide, thorteaches.com/study/ and then click on the free stuff.
Then you re-watch all the videos again, maybe at 1.5 or two times speed, you update your notes and after you have watched the videos the second time, either reread the book or just skim the highlights, the areas you’re not completely sure on or start doing practice questions.
Practice questions is where you are going to spend maybe 50% of your study time.
Do a practice test mark everything you’re not completely sure on for review, once the test is over and you get the results, everything you had marked for review or that you got wrong, you go, restudy those topics, read the book, watch the videos, do online research, look in the study guides, and then you do another practice test.
And that is really what you’re going to do for the rest of your studying.
Plus some reviews every so often, use the easy to mid questions first, fifteen hundred to thirty five hundred of those and then the hard questions towards the end of your studying and you have probably heard me say before, do not reuse practice questions.
First off, if you have already used those questions, then you have already found the weak areas that you have that they could show you.
Second off, next time you reuse those questions, you’re going to remember some of the answers, meaning if you took it the first time, maybe you scored 70%.
When you take it the second time, maybe you score 85.
But that 85% is not really a true representation of where you are as far as being ready.
And now that we have all the practical stuff out of the way, let’s look at the actual study plan.
So my template study plan here is based on two hours every day, seven days a week.
If you can use more time, wonderful.
And of course, I use my resources, the ones that I recommend in this study plan, if you’re using something else, well just replace it with that.
And the last page in this study plan is a blank page.
It has the days.
It has the weeks, but it has nothing filled in, meaning you can fill it in with whatever you are using.
So the first two days I have, make your own study plan and watch the Thorteaches.com CISSP Intro course.
The Intro course has no set curriculum, but it has all the practical stuff.
How you should study, how you can be better prepared, how you should approach videos, books, questions, and everything else.
So you make sure that you study as efficiently as possible.
Then for the rest of the first four weeks, you watch two hours of my videos and the secondary videos you have chosen every day and you take notes.
Most students that I have talked to download my study guide and then alongside that they add their own notes.
And if you are a student on Thorteaches.com, one of the first lectures of the video course will have all the study guides for all eight domains.
If you are a student on Udemy, it is attached to the first lecture of each domain.
So that is all the time if you use two hours a day for four weeks.
Then we’ll go to week five.
Here, you read your primary book and as you can see, I have selected 50 pages a day.
Plus, take your own notes.
Some students might be able to read more, some less.
Adjust it to fit what you do.
And remember, it’s not just read the book.
It is read it, understand it, and be able to explain it.
I have had students who told me, “But Thor, I did what you said.
I read the whole book twice.
I did 5,000 questions and I didn’t pass.”
But then when I start talking to them about the concepts, they have no clue.
They just read as fast as they could through the entire book, not remembering anything.
And they did the same with the questions.
They just did a test.
Oh, I scored 65%, and then they moved on.
They never looked at all the things they had wrong.
And since they never looked at all the things they had wrong, they never improved their knowledge.
So it is not just read the book, it is read the book, take notes, understand the topics and be able to explain them.
Reading your primary book continues all the way into the middle of week eight, at this point, start reviewing your notes.
I have set aside four days for that use, more or less, depending on what you want, but be able to explain all the concepts and for each concept, be able to explain what it is, where we would use it, when we would use it, why we would use it, and how we would use it.
After those four days of review, I suggest you read the Sunflower Notes, the Memory Palace, CISSP Process guides and all the relevant NIST documents.
For this, I have a lot of six hours.
After those, you have two weeks of review, review the videos, watch them at 1.5 or two times speed, supplement you notes where you’re lacking, then reread or reskim the book, again at your notes and then another review session.
Two days where you explain why, where, when, how, what.
At this point, you’re about halfway in your studying.
From here on out, it is practice questions.
For the first week, I have set you to do between 50 and 100 questions every day.
After the first week, I dial that up to 100 to 150.
So every day you do one full practice test between 100 and 150 questions, once you are done, you review everything you marked for review and you review everything you got wrong.
Restudy those areas and then the next day you do another test.
For some students, there’s just not enough time to do 100 or 150 questions and then review them in two hours.
Well, then one day you do the test, the next day you review everything and restudy.
If you look here at week 13 to 16, you can see everything is practice questions that continues all the way into week 17.
Now at this point, if you are not consistently scoring 80% plus on the mid to easy tests or at least 70-75% on the hard ones, then do more questions.
If you are scoring in those areas, well then it is time to review, review your study notes, the PDFs, the videos and the areas of the book you had issues with and do that for three days.
Then re-watch all the thorteaches.com videos, here watch it as fast as you can.
Most students can do this at at least 1.5 or two.
When you’re done with this, we’re in week 19, here, I suggest you read the 11th Hour, Luke Ahmed’s and Wentz Wu’s books and then research online for any topics that you’re not completely clear on.
We have six days or 12 hours allotted to that, after that, reread the Sunflower Notes, the Memory Palace, the CISSP Process guides and the NIST documents, and pretty much do this until you’re ready for the exam.
After reviewing everything, I have some students that go back and take two or three days of practice questions just to get back in the practice question mindset.
And I also have some that on exam day right before going into the exam, do 10, maybe 20 questions.
Not enough to wear your brain out, but enough to get yourself back into the question mindset.
They should take you all the way to exam day.
Remember to adjust the plan as things change.
It is a living document and good luck on your exam.
And with that, we’re done with this lecture.
I will see you in the next one.

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