Studying into the night

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Hi,
I am finding studying in the evening fairly difficult lately, much after 9.30PM and i find i have dragged myself to bed!
How do you manage to study into the night and absorb the knowledge that is Microsoft?

 

If you're tired, your brain won't "learn". If you find that by 9:30 you're starting to bog down:

1) you might be waking up really early and getting less than 8 hours of sleep
2) your body might be lacking nutrients and you're not living a healthy lifestyle
3) you might need to do a little more excersize, maybe run an hour in the morning
4) you may have sleep disorders, can be treatable most of the time
5) you may even be one of those people who simply don't function on 8 hours of sleep and need much more

Anyway, having said that, don't force yourself. Reading 50 pages in the evening when your brain is not up to the task is useless. You'll have forgotten all of it in the morning. Remember the saying "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".

The human brain usually has a 20 minute "perfect" attention span. After 20 minutes, we tend to gradually decline in our interest on any given subject. Taking pauses in between studying helps you get back on track.

Sometimes caffeine helps. Sometimes eating better helps as well. Keeping fit is important too. Maybe changing the study material will help you keep more involved. But ultimately, if you're just not interested in the subject, you're probably looking at the wrong career or variation of your existing career. We're all different and I find subject X in IT very fascinating, and subject Y as a complete bore. That's life.

I even find that there's the occasional day that I'm full of energy, able to work into way past midnight (for example, it's what I'm doing right now... working on a server hardening guide for Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 Domain Controllers, veeeeery interesting for me when I need to look at all the system properties, what exe or dll needs what access rights, what GPO can help me harden what function on the DC, what service can be shut down safely, etc...) and sometimes I just pass out like last wednesday after I spent 7-8 hours in a class room listening to ITIL lectures, and when I got home, I was ready to sleep at 8pm.

 

I have found that things I have direct experience with, I learn easily... and things I have NO experience with come more slowly. For example, at the time I was studying FSMO roles, I hadn't ever had to mess with them. However, everything became much clearer when I had to start dealing with them.

 

Thanks everyone

I have started reading my Thompson books for the 70-290 as i was struggling with the MS book on some chapters, also increased my coffee intake