Project Management Courses > Intermediate 3 PM

• If you want PMI certification, then you should spend the $2500 or so that takes.
• If you want to improve your skill set at far less cost, our courses are the answer.

Simply reading through a course as if it's a book will probably allow you to learn a few things. But that's not a course of study and you will miss much of what you should have learned in the course.

In a typical classroom, most of the time is wasted with the instructor yammering and the students not paying attention. The real learning comes from mulling over the material, working some problems to see how principles actually work, and thinking through examples and case studies. You can't do the real learning in a classroom. The old lecture model makes sense if you want to have an excuse to charge students $40,000 for tuition. But if you want them to learn, you must take a different approach.

One approach is to have an instructor help a student work through a given set of study materials. That's an effective approach, but it also costs much more money than providing a distillation of that in a downloadable course as we have done.

Environment:

• Create a schedule. Unless you schedule the study time (write it into your calendar), the odds are you will keep putting it off. This one factor is why classroom training still appeals to people despite its huge cost.
• Decide on a location. If you can't get a quiet spot in your home, go to your local public library and get a room or table.
• No interruptions. Turn off cell phones and other sources of interruption. Your study time is your study time.

Study Method:

• Do a section at a time.
• First, read a chapter or section at your normal reading speed.
• Then, think over what you just read.
• Then go back through it more deliberately, and take notes on the concepts, principles, and ideas the come to mind. If any relevant examples from your own life come to mind, make a note of those.
• Then work the problems at the end of the chapter or section.
• Then go back and read the preceding chapter or section. This really reinforces what you learned previously.

Application:

• When you complete the entire course, you will have read every section or chapter three times. You will really know the material.
• Now the question is how to apply what you've learned. If you don't apply it, you will forget all or most of it.
• Go through your notes and think of what has occurred recently that might be relevant.
• Think through what has happened in the past few days that might be relevant to this course of study.
• Throughout your day, jot down things (about events) that seem relevant to this course of study and then set aside time to address those events as if they were problems in the course.

You cannot get great performance with ordinary tools. You need to, as Stephen R. Covey says, "sharpen the saw."

• A PDF delivered via download (instructions sent upon purchase completion).
• Self-study, at your own pace, with no instructor required.

Questions? Write to sales @ mindconnection.com (paste into your TO field and remove the spaces). Yes, we really do answer e-mails promptly. Try us and see.