At this point, you know what you're going to study. What are some ways of maximizing your preparation time? Here are some tips you can use to make sure that your study time is as efficient as possible. Most people lose their ability to focus, and retain information quickly. Trying to cram over the weekend, before your exam on Monday, is probably not the best idea. Plan to study a little at a time, in 20 minutes segments, or less. Take breaks when you start to get tired, get up, and move around. Occasionally, do something else to distract yourself. Vary the modes of learning throughout the day. Spend some time doing labs, then spend a few minutes watching videos, or reading. Plan to study at the time when you're the most fresh. If you're a morning person, do the most challenging things then, save some easier things, like watching videos, for later in the day. Take advantage of the downtime you have during the day. Download your online courses to your phone. When you're in the car, waiting for your kid to get out of school, watch some videos. When you're early for an appointment, watch some videos. When you're walking your dog, listen to a video. Leverage your preferred learning styles. If you don't retain information by reading, then slogging through the PMP book all day, might not give you the best results. It's one thing to read in that line, it's another to create one. There's something that connects what we write down to our memory, so as you're studying, take notes. The physical act of creating the outline, will help you remember. It's even more effective when you write with a pen, rather than typing on your computer. Take practice exams. There are third party companies that offer practice exams online. If you're the type of person who gets nervous before exams, taking practice exams will expose your weaknesses, and build your confidence. Another effective study technique, is creating flashcards. Create them on index cards using a pen. The act of writing the flashcards will solidify the information on your brain. When you're tired from a hard day of work, spend a few minutes reviewing your flashcards. If you're working on an IT certification, make sure you do lots of labs, and tutorials. There's an old saying, ''The only way to learn a programming language, is to write programs in it.'' This holds true for Learning Cloud Computing, or Kubernetes, or building DevOps pipelines. Tutorials are only a start though. After you've done some labs, make up a project. Working on a case study without step-by-step instructions, is the closest you're going to get to real-world experience. The best advice I can give you, is to master what you're expected to know to pass the exam. Sometimes people try to memorize facts that they think will be on the exam. Just trying to retain facts is tedious, and frustrating. It's learning to the first level of Bloom's taxonomy, remember. Unfortunately, most certifications are written to a higher level than that. It's more interesting to embrace the topic, apply what you learn, analyze, and evaluate alternatives, and learn to create new things with the knowledge you gain. Finally, use your new found skills in your work, and life, and make it a point to practice. The more you practice before taking the exam, the better you will get in choosing the correct answer.
