“If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development”
Brian Tracy
“The fastest way to learn IT is 80% labbing and 20% studying theory. Just do it and have fun.”
vAndu
Are you wondering how to become a master or expert on something in IT?
It is actually very simple. You have to practice and practice until you master it.
When we look at dancers, singers, athletes, or even chess players, they practice every day. When we look at pro gamers, they practice, record their games, and watch other players’ games to learn and develop their skills. Sadly, we don’t see the same thing in the IT field.The common path for people is going to a training workshop or school and doing it at once by following the curriculum of the the day, getting certified, and suddenly an expert has been born .
Imagine if we started providing certification for dancers, singers, athletes, or even pro gamers because they danced one dance, sang a song once, ran 100 meters, or once played a game. After that, we start calling them professionals. You see how silly it is.
For those people who are serious and want to become experts, home labbing is a must. Today everything is possible to virtualize. A person who wants to learn networking can use Cisco Packet Tracer or GNS3. You don’t need physical switches and routers at all. Everything is possible to virtualize, and network virtualization is getting more popular. VMware vSphere and Workstation Pro/Fusion are perfect for mastering most of the things. People who wish to learn different operating systems and services are one example.
You can play around. Blow up things, revert, and build up massive infrastructures in your server or even play around with different malware and learn how they affect your systems and protect them. For example, how many security experts have played with malware in an isolated environment (sandbox). I think, not so many. So, how can you protect a system if you haven’t tested out what works and what doesn’t? Can you taste food by reading a description in a book? So, why do people expect it with IT? If you want to know how the food tastes, you have to get your hands dirty and start cooking. Most people know how to install, but very few know how to administrate systems and keep them running. The installing part is easy; setting things up takes time.
Let me bring you a different example. Shaolin monks practice Kung Fu every day at the monastery. Every day they practice, they have additional training exercises. Let’s call the virtualization environment your Shaolin Temple, where you train your IT skills.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
Bruce Lee
I know you are looking for a silver bullet, tips, and tricks to become an IT expert in one day or a week. The fastest way is to start building your home lab and playing around with the software in the virtualized environment. And yes, it would take time. By practicing a little bit every day, you will gain a significant advantage over everyone in the long term. You have to think in the long term.
Imagine you are going to Kung Fu training. Would you be a Kung Fu master after one training session? The answer is no. Why would people expect anything different when learning IT?
So…if you want to become a master of something, start doing it right now. Don’t worry about what you don’t understand or whether you will suck at the beginning. It’s the same as going to Kung Fu training. In the first few months, you will suck a lot. People will laugh at you, call you an idiot. But, don’t worry; after three years, you will be a leading expert and those who laughed at you or called you an idiot will be the first ones to come and kiss your butt.
You have to practice every day, and the best way to keep going is to build a daily ritual that supports your IT learning. Again, don’t be afraid of making mistakes and blowing things up. The more you blow up and fix, the more you learn.
Muhammad Ali once said, “I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.”
So, for a home labber, the new mantra must be: “I don’t count my creationuntil I have blown it up 100 times and fixed it.”
If you want to take your home labbing or studying to the next level, then you should form home labbing rituals.
What are rituals? Rituals are the daily habits that we repeatedly do without thinking. Start small to build a habit that will support your IT lab building and playing with different software. Want to learn more about rituals/habits? I suggest reading the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.
How to stay motivated and keep going? Motivation doesn’t create action. It’s the other way around. Action is what produces the motivation to continue taking action. Many people think they need the motivation to take action, but that is totally backward. The key is that you have built up a daily habit/ritual that you execute without thinking.
Remember, home labbing must be fun. Enjoy the journey. Don’t get frustrated or worry too much over the final goal. Instead, build a ritual that is simple and fun to do.
So, don’t overthink it. Imagine vSphere or Workstation Pro like your Legos or computer game, and things will get easier.