One of the hardest things about learning cyber security is there’s no formal roadmap 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 manage this? It all starts with having a strategy and structured plan for learning. This way, you can stay on track and make consistent progress. Here are five simple steps to do this:

Step 1: Focus on topics related to your existing meaning structures. Meaning structures are areas of knowledge that we can tap into when learning something new. That’s why transitioning from I.T. or programming into cyber security is more accessible than from most other fields. You already have similar meaning structures in place. If you are from a nontechnical background, pick a cyber security subfield that’s most related to what you already know.

Step 2: Interleave theory and practice to build competency. Doing this allows you to understand new topics from multiple perspectives. It also lets your brain rest and reorganizes during many sleep cycles over the weeks and months. Humans build competency over time, not in a onetime dose at a boot camp or crash course.

Step 3: Use teachers to assign you projects and provide feedback. Don’t rely on them for teaching. Many people think that learning is just a matter of someone telling them or showing them how to do something. Knowledge transfer happens by doing projects with guided feedback along the way from a teacher. Try this approach next time you’re working with a teacher, and you’ll be amazed at the progress.

Step 4: Build mental models to help organize your knowledge. Learning is more about knowledge organization than it is about accumulation. That’s why you need to acquire good mental models along the way. They are shortcuts that help you organize new information into a visual representation which acts as a meaningful structure for you to learn cyber security topics faster.

Step 5: Use mind maps to help visualize and structure your research process. To manage the overwhelming amount of new ideas and concepts you encounter when learning cyber security, you need to map them out on paper along the way. When you can decompose abstract ideas into visual chunks, it’s much easier to identify which areas to focus on or skip.

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00:00 Why Lots Of People Struggle Learning Cyber Security
02:24 Focusing on Topics Related to Your Existing Meaning Structures
05:15 Interleaving Theory and Practice by Spacing Out Your Learning Schedule
06:46 Using Teachers For Practice and Feedback Not For Teaching
09:09 Building Mental Models and Systems To Help You Organize Knowledge
11:34 Mind Mapping to Help Structure Your Research Process
12:24 My Process For Learning Something New

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