It has been told by those who should know (Malcom Gladwell), to become an expert in any field you need to spend 10.000 hours of practice. Of course in the field you want to become expert in. This rule is valid for much skill domains. Yet more interesting some other studies have shown that a basic skill can be acquired in as little as 20 hours (Josh Kaufman). Roughly 45 minutes every day and having 1 day of wiggle space per week.
Other studies revealed that information is anchored in the brain more quickly. Retrieve newly acquired information from your brain for about 66 times and that specific information in more or less anchored in the brain. To help your brain anchor the information better use the technique ‘spaced repetition’. Your brain remembers information better when the path to the information is already starting to fade. Like everything else in nature; “use it or loose it”.
My field of interest and expertise is networking. And in my career I have handled networking equipment of different vendors. In the past years I have worked with equipment from vendor like Cisco, ECI, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Juniper, Ruckus.
I am about to embark on a journey to become an expert in networking. This means spending hours reading and setting up network labs. My goal at the current moment is to become a CLI networking ninja. My secondary interest is security and privacy. Perhaps the two will meet someday.
Robert
Network Ninja 