Mindset!
Way of Thinking
The field of information security is massive. It would be impossible for any one person to learn everything. Let us take the following example:
Imagine you want to become a programmer, and you know that there are more than 200 different programming languages that can be used to create applications that can be cracked by debugging or reverse engineering. If we learned every programming language within 100 hours, we would spend 20,000 hours or 2,500 days (8 hours per day) or, in other words, almost seven years to learn all of these programming languages. As a result, we spent seven years learning all these languages and never tried to debug or reverse engineer the program we created. Great! Let us spend another seven years learning to debug and reverse engineering.
We have got the idea. No one wants to spend so much time on just one area. Furthermore, this is not necessary. We will need some time to learn different technical principles, structures, and processes, but we will not need to spend seven years. Every programming language has its own strengths and weaknesses. Also, if we can obtain a deep understanding of a single programming language, we will learn others much faster. We do not need to learn every programming language to understand how to read their code. All of them follow the same principles which R.D.Tennent initially defined:
- The Principle of Abstraction
- The Principle of Correspondence
- The Principle of Data Type Completeness
In information security, we have to learn and understand these principles, structures, and processes quickly. Additionally, we have to adapt our knowledge to the various environments we encounter. We will have many situations where we will not understand how “it” works. That is good. At this point, we have to find out what we do not know. More about that later.
There are many learning-focused information security communities available to us. Many of these communities provide free reviews of tested applications, vulnerable machines, and guides to help each other and improve their members’ skills. When we speak with the other members, we will notice there are generally two types of people.
- Those that do not know anything.
- Those who think they do not know anything.
This can be very frustrating, and this is a normal part of the learning process. Communication within these communities should be respectful, always keeping in mind that we all started with zero knowledge of this field. This is a critical point of success for the community and everyone learning and working in this field. Within Hack The Box, we can use the Forum and Discord server to interact with the community.
Another important point is our knowledge level. Many people do not know their actual skill and knowledge level. This is a complicated topic because penetration testers must have a deep understanding of a wide variety of technologies. As previously mentioned, the problem in this field is the sheer volume of information available to us. We can learn about every topic and still not master any one area, or we can learn about just one topic and become an expert in it.
Another option is developing our research methodology, the learning process, and how to use this to improve our knowledge. We will be successful if we know how to search for the required information on the internet, and we know how to learn fast and adapt it to the environment we are working in. However, before we can do this, we have to learn and practice how to do it.
We will become a good penetration tester only through considerable practice. There is no other way to improve our practical skills. For example, we can read 50 books about programming, and we will understand how to read the code. This is the process of passive learning. This can be useful. However, if we need to write our own program, we have to practice active learning, which means we have to write code and test it on our own.
One of the most common questions is:
When is a penetration tester good enough?
We know that one person cannot know everything. In this case, we have to learn how to find, choose, and adapt the information we need.
Right now, we are considering these three key terms. There is one key term missing.
Which key term is missing from the above list?
The crucial missing term is: LEARN
The process of “learning how to learn” is not easy. Most people have never truly learned how to learn effectively. For example, in school, our teachers discussed some topics with our class. First, teachers show us just one way to solve a problem. They explained one way to solve the problem, and after that, they gave us exercises to practice further.
Let us take a closer look at the problem. Look at this simple math equation and try to solve it:
20 * ________+ ________ = 65535
This equation is easy to solve, but did we think about how many different ways are there to solve it? Looking differently to a set question is a skill in it’s own that comes to one as either their innate talent or skill cultivated through enough practice and research. (experience != training) (experience people are objectively better at handling situations rather than people who never experienced those situation before. Doing things are always better than thinking about them.)
Think Outside the Box
What limitations were you given for this exercise? - None.
So, why didn’t we think to add more digits or to replace the given arithmetic operations? Problems might seem easy or difficult based on your current understanding, for instance elementary grade maths is a piece of cake for people in university but children who are currently studying in elementary grade find those same questions difficult and they will in future be able to solve them without breaking any sweat. That’s the power of progress. To get better at something one don’t need perfection but progress.
Welcome to the hacker’s way of thinking called:
”Outside the box.”
So, why didn’t we think like that? During this learning path, we will acquire more information that will help us find an answer. However, first, we have to understand the way of thinking we currently use. Make it clearer. Try to understand what we have to work on.
Dependencies
Way Of Learning
So, why did we calculate it like this?
We performed the calculation the way we learned it. That means we will use the patterns we have been conditioned to use. At this stage, as in the previous example with the calculation, we used the information we already had. This art of thinking, called ”Outside the box,” is an essential part of the “hacker mindset”, or the way we must think as penetration testers to solve complex problems. Thinking outside the box means seeing things outside of the limitations placed on us. This means we have to be able to “pivot.” We have to focus on so many different technologies during our penetration tests that it can become confusing and frustrating when we do not understand some things.
A problem is an emotional state. Without emotions, it is just a situation.
In other words, frustration and confusion come with the point of view we are looking at. The learning process is not just a theoretical and practical part. It is also our learning process and progress that largely depends on our emotional state. If we feel good and we know we will reach our goal, we will be successful.
Another essential part that makes you successful is that you know your goal. Imagine the following scenario:
You’re standing still in a room, and your instructor instructs you to move across the room, and you start moving. After a while, the instructor put a chair in your way. What will you do? - You may sit down on this chair.
Now let us change the scenario a little bit.
Your instructor instructs you to move to the other corner. We start moving, and the instructor puts a chair in our way again. What will we do?
You will pass the chair and continue moving forward to the corner because you know your goal.
The big difference between these two scenarios is that we know our goal and know how we have to move on. We will overcome the obstacles which are put in our way. If we do not have a goal, we will stop at the first obstacle. Without a goal, we will be disoriented moving from one topic to another.
Learning Efficiency
The problem here is the sheer size of the information security field. As we saw in the example with programming languages, there is a lot to learn and many topics to cover. Many of the courses available are very technical. This is a good thing and essential for us to strengthen our skillsets. We have to understand how things work, how they are structured, and how to use them. All of the technical information we need to be successful in this field is already out there.
The primary and most difficult objective we must overcome is the combination of our knowledge, adaptation, and new information.
It often is not easy to find the information we need. First, we have to find out what kind of information we need.
What do we already know?What do we not know yet?
Even if we find the information we need, we do not know how to use it because we do not have an overview.
Another major problem we must solve is handling this massive amount of information and adapting it to our strengths and weaknesses.
Imagine another scenario:
A student wants to learn how to assemble an engine. Before a student “can” assemble an engine, they start learning many theoretical concepts to prevent failure.
However, first of all, we have to fail. It is an unavoidable and essential part of learning. This is one of the parts of the learning process which make us successful. Experience is built on failures. It explains that we know how to handle differently. Sometimes adverse, situations where something does not work as expected.
Many companies are searching for good penetration testers and information security specialists.
“However, what does it mean to be good?”
To be good at something means we know what we are doing. If we know what we are doing, that means that we are experienced with this topic. Experience means we have a vast repertoire in this field. Repertoire comes from associations and practical experience. When we say practical experience, we want to know how much we have to practice to become competent at a specific task.
There is something called the “10,000-Hour Rule,” which explains that you need to spend 10,000 hours on becoming good at something. We do not want to spend 10,000 hours learning a skill.
When we research this rule a bit, we will find a TEDx talk by Josh Kaufman in which he explains it more in-depth. He proposes that we can learn something new in 20 hours, even working on it for just 45 minutes per day. This sounds much more attainable! At this point, we also should think about the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule.
The Pareto principle states that with 20% of the effort, we can achieve 80% of the effect. Conversely, this means that with 80% of the effort, we can achieve the remaining 20% of the effect, which is 100% missing. However, it is essential to note that it does not apply to everything but is a general rule applied to specific areas.
The whole section above is an example of a simple association where we combine different approaches and information.
As Josh Kaufman explained, we can become excellent pretty fast. This is the so-called learning curve, including active and passive learning. These active and passive learning types can be found in the Learning Pyramid.
Learning Types
The Learning Pyramid can be represented in many different ways. It describes the learning efficiency of different types of practice.
Passive Learning
If we follow the Learning Pyramid while going through the modules just by reading, we will learn only about 10% of the whole penetration testing experience. By watching some demonstrations, we will not learn more than 30%.
Active Learning
When we start to discuss our entire enumeration process, results, and findings with others, we will see different points of view, results, and information to compare with our own and find out what we missed. By using this type of active learning, we collect up to 50% experience. Before we can discuss our results with others, we should practice on our own. So while we practice, our learning experience grows to 75%.
We can imagine when we learn theory in driving school. We learn a lot about car and traffic rules. Using examples, we are shown situations that should lead us to specific actions and reactions to ensure road safety. We can learn as much as we want, but as soon as we get into the car for the first time, we will realize that all of this knowledge has still not taught us how to drive a car.
Before moving on to the next exercise, we should talk about the information we collect. The information has a certain level of quality, but not all information is helpful. More than that, some information can confuse and disorient us completely. To learn to discern such information, we need a repertoire which we collect by practicing. Therefore, it is essential to understand the context of the topic we are researching.
Efficiency depends not only on the quality of information we find but on the usage of that information.
Moreover, it depends on our motivation, focus, and our goal.
There are many different ways to stay motivated. An excellent method that works very well is by recognizing success, even the most minor successes. We must recognize our successes and see that we have made progress. We already talked about how important it is to have a goal. When we know our goal, we know the direction of our actions. If we are focused on our goal, we will notice when we drift from our path. By following our path, we will automatically look back and see how far we have come. At this point, it is vital to notice the progress we have made.
Progress is noticeable when the question that tortured us has lost its meaning.
Looking back and seeing how far we have come will keep us motivated. Many people struggle during the learning process because they have to learn a lot of different topics. It is vital to take breaks and remain calm.
For example, if we attempt to force ourselves to learn Web Application Penetration Testing in two hours, it just will not work. There is too much information to handle and too many details inside the technical processes we must master.
To make it more clear, we will look at another example:
How do we empty a bottle of water? We turn the bottle around and let it flow, right?
Why didn’t we try to create a vortex by turning the bottle around the Y-Axis?
By creating a vortex, we let oxygen flow into the bottle regularly, and the water can flow out without closing the bottle opening.
The same thing happens with learning. If we learn too much without taking breaks, we will get stuck.
“So, how many breaks do we need and how long they should be?”
This is a question that we must answer on our own because only we know what effects and consequences our actions will have on us.
However, what happens when we get stuck? There are many ways that we become “stuck”. It could be that we focused too much and lost the context of the task at hand, or we are tired and did not take enough breaks. Solving a problem like this requires creativity. In penetration testing, it is essential to pay attention to details that appear unimportant at first glance. If we look back, we will see some terms printed in bold and like this, and if we take a closer look, we will see that they have an essential meaning in the process. Here it is crucial to train the eye to notice even the most minor details. All our knowledge and experiences are based on associations that connect us with different perceptions, such as colors and smells, for example, through different situations, known to us as memories. These will be recalled later either actively or passively.
Organizing information
Documentation
When it comes to documentation, we must first determine the report audience. We will document our activities differently than we would present our results to a customer. The purpose of documentation is to present the information we have obtained in a comprehensible and easy way to reproduce a specific activity.
Therefore the essential characteristics of documentation are:
- Overview
- Structure
- Clarity
As we learn and practice, we will come across many different situations and resources. As discussed before, we will have to process massive amounts of information.
No matter whom the documentation is intended for, here are some guidelines we can follow:
- It is beneficial to put ourselves in the position of our readers. This will make it much easier for us to design the documentation.
- Avoid repetition and ambiguity.
- Make documentation as easy to read as possible. No one wants to read the documentation that is difficult to understand or follow.
Before we create documentation for our customers, we can clarify which points are most important to them.
Organization
We have already seen the term overview mentioned several times. To understand how important this term is, imagine the following situation:
You are standing on a big mountain, and at the bottom of the mountain, there is a vast forest. On the horizon, we see another mountain we want to reach. The difficulty here is that we will not see this mountain as soon as we go down into the forest. The only way to reach the mountain is to orient ourselves using the lakes, rivers, and fields between these two mountains.
This means that we should take all the necessary tools with us, like a lighter, knife, tent, and others, and set all the interim orientation points to avoid getting lost. Because as soon as we get lost, we cannot move through the forest disoriented, hoping to reach our goal somehow, or we will have to move back to the first mountain to reorient ourselves.
We can see how the terms depend on each other and how important it is to have a map to orient ourselves. By completing the previous exercises, we have already made the first drawings on our map. These will help us to understand where we are and where we want to go. Being organized is significant in penetration testing because the entire report writing process has to be structured.
It may take us a single day to take over several systems. So we don’t want to keep looking for sources or information we need over and over again. organization is best described in the following example:
An inexperienced woodcutter takes 30 minutes to sharpen his axe and 3 hours to cut down the tree.
The experienced one will sharpen the axe for 3 hours and cut down the tree within 30 minutes.
Process
Focus
Let us dive a little deeper. This time we will talk about focus, which is a vital skill that we need. However, like many other abilities, it is a double-edged sword. When we talk about focus, we are talking about focusing on a subject for a specific time. When we focus on a subject, we concentrate most of our thinking and attention on the chosen topic. In doing so, all other thoughts concerning other topics will be completely faded out.
Have we ever wondered why most frustrated people go straight to the gym after a stressful day instead of just lying down and doing nothing? Why do they feel better afterward? Often we hear from them that they absolutely need it to calm down again. If you think about it a bit, it seems illogical at first because these people need additional physical energy in an exhausted state.
This raises again the question: ”Why further physical effort helps them to calm down?”
On the one hand, so-called endorphins (happiness hormones) are produced by the body when doing workouts. These have different effects on the body, and one of them is the reduction of pain. Also, the chemical transmitters have a calming effect and ensure a restful sleep. Another function is the formation and regulation of hunger. We probably know the latter from sports. As soon as we have exhausted ourselves, the feeling of hunger comes. Another beneficial effect of endorphins is the strengthening of the immune system, not only on the physical but also on the psychological level.
This may explain why we start to feel better afterward, but after all, the most significant stress is not in the body but the mind. We know that after sports, the body is exhausted, but why does our mind start to relax? We are entirely focused on the physical exercises during the workout since these usually require a large amount of energy that also requires our entire focus. As the focus turns away from the actual stress, we let go of the situations that have stressed us so much, and these are subconsciously processed and, for the most part, solved. Here is an excellent example of such a situation that you have probably experienced by yourself:
You have probably forgotten where you put something, or you can’t think of a specific term that is so obvious to you. Have you ever asked yourself why you can suddenly remember it after a short time?
We distracted ourselves and focused on a different topic. With that, we gave our subconscious the possibility to solve the problem by itself.
It is essential to differentiate between focus and [attention](Notes/General/attention.md) because they are not the same. [Attention](Notes/General/attention.md) refers to the momentum, as it is happening right now, and you are reading this text. However, the focus is on the topic you are dealing with at the moment. When we return to the example of the misplaced keys, try to remember what was going through your mind. Most likely, it was something like:
“Where did I put the keys?” or “Where did I last see them?”
If these were the questions we were asking ourselves, we could see from the questions alone that it is the subject of the keys, and therefore our focus was on finding the keys.
If you have been in the situation where you said to yourself at the same time:
“OK, the keys are not here…”
Then we had our complete [attention](Notes/General/attention.md) on searching for the keys. However, what if we are in a hurry?
Then we look at our watch every 5 seconds, and our thoughts are already on where we expected to be soon. We will hardly be able to concentrate on the search for the keys because your focus is on ”being late” and not on ”finding the keys.” It should have become clearer that focus and [attention](Notes/General/attention.md) are not the same and that attention is influenced by focus.
The focus is based on our will and what we want to achieve. It can be a conscious decision and a subconscious decision guided by external influences.
Focusing is the purposeful and deliberate alignment to a specific goal.
Focused people are not only enormously persistent and tenacious, but they are also hardly distracted or discouraged. If we know our goal, it is easier to align our focus accordingly. This, in turn, makes us much more efficient, and we get closer to our goal much faster and do not let ourselves be distracted by external influences.
Attention
It can be said that attention is the perception of a specific topic with a higher level of interest in order to gather specific data and information from it.
Our attention changes with our experience and the information we gain from the content and its clarity.
[Attention](Notes/General/attention.md) is influenced by your interests, needs, personal attitudes, beliefs, orientations, goals, and experiences.
We have already approached this module with a confident attitude, expectation, orientation, and goal. Attention is an independent mental process that takes place subconsciously.
So when we talk about concentration, we mean the maintenance of our attention on a specific topic. This means that as long as we are interested in a given topic, we keep working on it until we have achieved the desired result for our well-being. Again, attention goes hand in hand with concentration and focus.
We will already know that our attention will begin to decrease at some point, and we will no longer be able to absorb information effectively. We are getting stuck at this point, forcing ourselves to keep trying, and learning ends up with problems of understanding and, therefore, with higher frustration.
Information security is a vast subject, as we have already discussed. We will not be able to absorb all the information at once. We will often come back to topics and repeat what we are missing. This is a normal process. We must understand how to divide our attention.
There is no general formula that we can use to learn how to divide our attention correctly. This is an individual process that cannot be categorized yet without diving too deep into psychology studies. There are far too many personal characteristics and experiences of each individual to be taken into account.
We know that attention takes place at the moment and therefore has a limited duration to maintain it. It will be a great advantage to find out how long and emotional state our attention span lasts the longest.
We can document it, and after one week, we will be able to see an interesting pattern. If we want to approach this on a more scientific level, we can add the following points to our documentation to get a better insight into it:
- current emotional state (calm, nervous, worried, happy, depressed, relaxed, etc.)
- the previous flow of the day so far (also with one word)
- place of work
- working hours
- duration
- sleep
- inserted breaks
- duration of the breaks
- and anything else we can think of.
These are phases for which we must invest at least one hour of our attention. Make it fun, and we will surprise ourselves with the discoveries that we make. We can create a simple list or even a table for us to document this quickly and easily. We do not have to document it every time we start something, but we could relate it to the current module/course/path.
Once we know how our attention span is behaving, we will also get an idea of how we can split it up. However, this does not mean that if we have an attention span of 60 minutes, we can divide it between 3 other topics of 20 minutes each. Remember that the amount of attention we can devote to a particular topic depends on too many factors.
Experiment with this. Change our place of work, working hours, duration of work if possible. Listen to different music and try out different things that might help us.
It would be best if we did not force ourselves to focus on a specific topic because it will have a negative effect and, as mentioned before, can end up in frustration, which we will discuss in another section.
Make sure that you feel comfortable and ready to learn new things.
Comfort
Comfort is an emotional state of a person’s mind, which, among other aspects, has a strong influence on behavior, thinking, focus, attention, and the ability to concentrate. This is the feeling of well-being in the form of comfort and the attitude of risk-free behavior. This is also often referred to as the so-called comfort zone in which the person thinks(!) he/she is located.
There is a so-called Yerkes-dodson law, which describes the cognitive performance as a function of the level of stress/nervousness. The performance curve for this is also very individual, as it depends strongly on emotional and motivational factors and is divided into four sections.
The most used presentation of this law and the performance process is the Hebbian version.
When it comes to comfort, it depends heavily on whether we have a healthy level of stress or have already crossed the threshold, leading to a reduction in our performance. It is very individual here where our center is. We are in an area that we are used to and that we consider comfortable. Mostly these are situations and fields in which we have already gained a certain amount of experience and know-how to find our way there.
When we leave the so-called comfort zone, we enter a situation or field where we have little or no experience. This kind of uncertainty lowers our ability to think and has a powerful impact on our thought processes, which, in turn, slows us down.
The fact that small children do not exhibit such uncertainty is interesting.
They love to try out something new all the time and are not afraid or uncertain of making mistakes.
After all, mistakes are an essential part of the learning process, and we should always keep it in mind.
An interesting question that arises here is: “Why small children, unlike adults, do not feel such uncertainty?”
Let us first look at the following diagram:
The source can be found here.
Now imagine you are standing at the entrance in front of a massive dark forest in the middle of the night. This forest is so dense that no daylight can get through the treetops. To the left and right of this forest, some cliffs are much too steep to climb down, and we know that somewhere in this forest, there is the one thing we want to have.
Will you go inside and look for it?
Common sense would do anything not to.
But what if the thing you want is a hundred yards further into the forest, and it is brightly lit?
That is the thing that will fulfill you the way we have always wanted it to.
Would you risk it now?
Those who chose to leave the comfort zone would reach their destination faster than they thought they would. They would never have sprinted at such speed before in their lives.
Now we should understand the progression between decisions to step out of our comfort zone or stay in it. We will often get into situations where we do not know what to do. These will come again and again. However, we will always learn something new, and it will become more comfortable each time.
Handling Frustration
Frustration is an emotional reaction to an event, situation, or condition that occurs in the form of disappointment or powerlessness. Most often, such a feeling occurs in varying intensity, depending on expectations or desires. There are two different types of frustration. One is caused by external influences, such as negative opinions of superiors, and the other is caused by inner frustration, caused by conscious or somewhat subconscious thought processes.
Most people are not aware that feelings reflect subconscious thoughts and thought processes. That is why we can understand quite well how we think from our feelings. Often it helps to listen to our thoughts from a 3rd-person perspective or imagine that our best friend expresses these thoughts. With that, we gain some distance from the feeling of being affected by it, which makes it easier to construct an objective opinion and judgment about it.
Everyone has an individual frustration tolerance, which is why people with a low frustration tolerance tend to give up or break off quickly when unexpected resistance arises, or the expected success does not occur within a specific time. The result of this behavior is an increased tendency to stress and avoidance and partly aggressive forms of reaction.
The frustration tolerance can be trained and developed very well. There have certainly been situations where we may have experienced a friend in a stressful situation who remained impressively calm. For this situation, the frustration tolerance was very pronounced. Many factors can speak for this, but the fact remains that the situation seemed to be much more stressful for us than our acquaintance let it affect him.
In order to express frustration tolerance in this way, it is crucial to know where it comes from. Let us take a look at the following diagram:
Since we are dealing with frustration here, we can see from the diagram that, in this case, we lack some resources that frustrate us. In information security and pentesting, these kinds of resources will often be information that we have to work with. Perhaps we have already read it several times that ”Enumeration is key”. If not, it is not bad. We will fall over it.
Since we are dealing with the offensive aspects of information security, it is essential that we can get the information by ourselves. This is a skill that must be continuously trained. We will have to deal with different services, sources, and technologies to find out how to get the information we need. The feeling of frustration with a lack of resources depends on our skill. If we do not have the necessary skills, we will feel anxiety, which brings us back to the topic of comfort and comfort zone. We should also understand the connections between the individual topics better to get back to the frustration tolerance level.
To express our frustration tolerance adequately, we need to consciously but in a controlled way, place ourselves in situations where a particular frustration can be assumed. It is important to note that this must be done in a controlled and conscious way. It must, therefore, be our conscious decision to deal with the upcoming situation.
To make it a little clearer, pay attention to our feelings for the following example:
Imagine that you have to catch a train. To catch it in time, we are forced to run about 2 miles quickly. We take all excuses and changes out of the situation for this example (“Think Outside the Box”) and determine that you have no other choice in this example. We will be sweaty, maybe we will even get a bit dirty and out of breath, and maybe we will even miss our train because it came too early for once.
Furthermore, now let us change the situation a little bit and imagine that you consciously decide to leave the house too late and run fast to catch the train.
Even if we do not catch that train, our frustration level will be much lower than in the first example. We will no longer pay attention to the external factors we blame for not getting the train, but we will find ourselves analyzing our reactions.
Do not forget that this feeling of frustration is temporary. This means that when we feel frustrated, it will pass. Most people get scared and panicky at such a feeling, which leads to the fact that such people sometimes even react aggressively. They are not aware that it is a temporary feeling. Therefore, we do not need to be afraid to venture into such situations. Frustration passes, the experience we have gained through it remains.
Instead, over time, we will become calmer in reacting and dealing with such stressful situations, which in turn will strengthen our self-confidence. We can control our inner frustration. The frustration of the external factors, however, can hardly be controlled.
Learning Progress
An important aspect to be considered in the learning process is progress. In order to see our progress, two specific states are compared, including a specific time window between the learning process. In other words, we compare our knowledge from the past with the present and try to keep track of the progress to give ourselves the confirmation that we have achieved something new.
When the point comes where we cannot give ourselves the confirmation, we look for it from others. However, no one else will be able to give us confirmation without taking the path together with us. To make it clear, let us return to the example of the mountains.
Now let us suppose that you have gone down the mountain and have a very long and arduous way behind you. You have already passed a few stops and towns, and now after a couple of weeks, you meet another person whom you ask if you have already performed well.
This person will never be able to tell us if our performance was good or bad without having walked the path together with us. Metaphorically speaking, even if this person has already gone the same way, all the factors cannot have been the same, such as rain, thunderstorms, heat, wind, etc.
People who have been on the road for years will know how exhausting it can be and what hurdles they have to overcome. We only gain height by going uphill. Going uphill is always exhausting, and we may slip and slide a little bit down again. What is essential here is to keep moving constantly. How fast we want to reach a defined height depends entirely on our ambition. Whether we only take one step a day or ten steps a day only plays a role in the duration.
The difference here is easy to see. If you stop on the mountain and do not climb any further up, you will stay on the same spot. Look at the following mathematical example to see the difference in numbers:
(1.00)365 = 1.00
(1.01)365 = 37.7
Here we can already see the enormous difference, how much it makes, even if we only increase our performance by 1% per day. If we want to record our write progress down to look back and see how far we have already gone, you can create two lists.
List No. 1
On the first list, you write down the current date and everything you know about your desired topic with all your skills with an estimated scale of 1-10. Try to make it as detailed as possible. The more detailed it is, the clearer the difference will be for you to see later. As soon as you think this list is ready, put it down or save it in a way that you will have access to it even after one year.
List No. 2
The second list is written continuously. This means that as soon as you have familiarized yourself with a topic and you have learned something new for yourself, you will add it to this list. Try to learn every day, even if it takes only 10 minutes. If you want to do it more scientifically to get even better results, document the calendar weeks.
We will be amazed to see the progress we have made during this time. Above all, it will become evident to us why no one else but ourselves can tell if we have made good progress.
Reference
This article is my take/understanding of module Learning Process on HTB academy.
Most of the content here is taken from their module only. All credit goes to HTB and authors.