1. Don’t sweat the details

It’s easy to get caught up on details, especially memorizing facts. While the CISSP does have detailed answers that depend on you knowing facts, it’s much more important to understand concepts. Don’t get me wrong, you have to put in the effort required to memorize terms and concepts, but you can’t rely on this to pass the exam.

We all know that many of the questions are difficult. You will either immediately know the answer or you won’t. When you don’t know the answer you have to count on your understanding of the concept to help you pick the most likely answer based on the intent of the question.

2. Studying for the CISSP is like learning to subnet

Remember when you learned to subnet? At first it seemed like voodoo black magic that inexplicably produced answers that couldn’t be explained. That’s because you need to apply multiple concepts at one time in order to subnet. As you learn to subnet, you first learn one of the concepts. This creates the strange sensation of learning something, yet not getting any closer to understanding it. After you learn all of the basic concepts then you suddenly have an “ah ha” moment and understand the entire process. The CISSP is the same way.

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