I’m the type of person that enjoys taking aptitude tests. I remember a career aptitude test that once classified me as a “Change-focused” individual. The test said that I crave new places, new things, and new ideas. In retrospect, a career in sales and a career in IT were both fitting to those findings. In both professions, I found myself in the training spaces. For me, the best part of teaching has always been seeing students learn. Specifically, it has been watching them “get it.”
I’ve been teaching cybersecurity for about two years. The high level of attention our discipline has been getting, coupled with the increasing amount of breaches, has led to a wave of new professionals. It doesn’t take long for newcomers to realize how comprehensive Cyber can be. Many people get overwhelmed with the amount of information, technical jargon, and technical skills encompassing cyber.
The million-dollar advice: You don’t need to know everything, and you certainly don’t need to learn all of it from the start.
How to use a hammer vs. How to make a hammer
The person who learns to use a hammer can become a roofer, build furniture, or hang a painting. The person who understands how to make a hammer might need to know how to smelt iron and carve out a wooden handle.
Both are valuable things to learn, but they don’t go hand-in-hand. They have different horizons - they are other parts of the business and ultimately entirely different worlds. Which side of the journey do you initially set out living through? If you let your curiosity drive you into the weeds, you might find yourself standing next to a hot furnace in the wrong part of the hammers’ life. This same dynamic carries to tech industries.
Scoping
Since it’s so easy to slip down a rabbit hole, the best solution I’ve found for keeping a solid foothold and moving forward is to scope your learning landscape. Utilize the 80/20 rule is a principle that says 80% of outputs come from 20% of inputs. Usually, 80% of productivity and results come from just 20% of efforts. And the remaining 80% of work time yields just 20% of the result.
As I was choosing a direction to take my career, I knew that the road I wanted to take had its foundation in networking and eventually led to the cloud. Providing myself a scope lets me define clear parameters of where I should spend my time learning. It was a helpful way to say that if I get chips and silicon, my curiosity has taken me too far!
You can’t know everything
It’s impossible. There is too much information out there. If you want to be a top performer quickly, lean into your strengths.
Please do yourself a favor: Surround yourself with talented people and listen to them. Give yourself time. Try different things. You don’t need to learn all of it now. Nobody knows everything (at least not in-depth). Don’t feel guilty for what you don’t know, and be proud of what you do.