Monday, May 23, 2022

How I became PMP Certified in less than 3 months

Whenever I browsed on LinkedIn in my early career years, I always used to watch people write words such as 'PMP' &  'PRINCE2' on their LinkedIn profiles rather proudly. And i used to wonder if these sort of 'additional degrees' as i called them, are really needed to survive in the corporate world OR is this just another tactic to brand yourself. That was way back in 2011

Come to 2021, I was really leaning in to a wall. I was realizing that I needed to 'upskill' myself for  3 particular reasons:

  1. I loved doing Project Management & realized I was good at it
  2. I needed to 'legitimize' my project management skills
  3. I was itching to learn something new & outside of the digital marketing skills I use in the everyday work.
This started me in to a YouTube rabbit-hole on what would be a good thing to learn & conquer next. I had been using LinkedIn Learning platform since 2020 for learning a lot of concepts around Agile and traditional Project Management. But getting an appropriate certification wasn't really something I gave a serious thought. I kept postponing it in 2020 justifying my postponement with silly reasons. In hindsight, I realize it was more laziness than anything else which made me postpone it for 2 years.

In Jan 2021, I made a resolution list of 3 things I needed to do professionally and personally by the end of the year. I ended up doing the other 2 on the list by mid June, and the 3rd one on the list read: 'Get PMP Certified in 2021'.

I frankly forgot about that list in the next 2 months doing the daily chores before it re-surfaced to me as a reminder in August. I usually keep these sort of larger goals organized in Google Keep & attach it to a reminder, so I don't just forget about them after making them on a particular inspiring day. Just helps me stay on track! 

Back to the topic, And so I thought, why not give it a try now in the next 4 months? 


I started researching on YouTube & Reddit after work on what sort of preparation would it take to attempt for the PMP exam. Most of the comments were positive but also re-iterating to not take the preparation lightly..

You need 3 things to apply for PMP:
  1. A 3 year project related experience and 35 hours of training (If you have a 4 year degree)
  2. Documenting your experience & your projects
  3. Submitting proofs while applying for the PMP

I joined the PMP sub-reddit and started following this YouTube Channel for my primary research. Many users on the PMP sub-reddit recommended Andrew Ramdayal's 35 hour course on Udemy as the gold standard for learning the way of the PMP exam. Before that I was trying to leverage LinkedIn Learning courses for some PMP related concepts. They were pretty boring and 'corporate' to be honest, I slept through most of them & did not find any new 'insights' from them.

And so, I decided to take the plunge with Andrew's course as Udemy was running a sale and it was available for around 350 Rupees. That helped me change my approach towards studying PMP & making me aware on how I can be thoughtful before applying for the exam. Andrew covers most of his stuff in the 35 hours pretty much emulating the exam curriculum & based on how the questions would be framed. His style of talking & teaching is really intuitive and something I was hooked from the beginning. No jargons, No bookish stuff. Straight talk & interactive. I loved it!

I (along with the others on Reddit) can completely recommend his 'Mindset' section in the course which is crucial for how you can approach the PMP questions in the real exam!
This is how my schedule then looked for studying & practicing PMP for the next 2 months:
  1. Complete 1 hour of PMP course on a work day & 4-5 hours on a weekend to complete the 35 hours in 3 weeks
  2. Follow Andrew's YouTube Channel for his weekly 10 PMP mock questions & understand his 'mindset' for the questions you have judged wrongly.
  3. Take the mock exam from the Udemy course set by Andrew & see your progress.
  4. Purchase his TIA mock PMP simulator of 4 exams for a final preparation 1 week before the exam.
I  did not need to follow multiple sources of information or confuse myself with methodologies to 'crack PMP exam'. I was fairly confident that knowing my own expertise & the 'mindset' would be more than enough for me to proceed for the exam. 

The best thing you can do to commit yourself rather than procastinating about the PMP exam (which I have seen a lot of my colleagues do) is block the exam date. Once you see a probability as a certainity (the exam date!), you automatically start to take out time to prepare from your somewhat chaotic schedule. I did the same and blocked my date back as 26th December which would give me 2 months to prepare & give mock exams when I completed the 35 hours course.

Now that I think of it, I could have given it sooner, but with a new born baby there are always un-certainities.And so I wanted to add a buffer time in case something happened in between which I needed to take care of.

I chose a physical location even though they had recently started a virtual exam option sitting in your home. I did not trust my internet enough for that option & frankly travelling to a location would have calmed down my nerves anyway. The set-up can give you a 'board exam' vibe with a lot of competitive exams happening in the same centres around the same time. You can see students aged 18-20 studying for their GRE's & someone like me attempting a PMP at 32 years. I can imagine their stress being multiple folds compared to what I am going through. I could not help but smile & that helped me relax along with listening to some good 'Opeth' music. 

The exam as predicted had a lot of situational questions which were tricky. The PMP exam does have a lot of 'word play' and if you miss out on reading one word, the wrong answer can seem like a right answer to you. So I decided to re-read each question twice, select the most appropriate answer & then verify it by reading the question again. Of-course I could not do this for every question, but reserved it for the most crucial (or tricky) ones. I ended up finishing my exam 15 minutes before time even after going through each question once again at the end. 

The noise cancelling headphones which were provided were too silent for me to concentrate and took some time to get used to in the initial questions. But after the time passed, they became a crucial accesory as I tried to focus on the seemingly 'too good to be true' answers. And after much deliberation of 'if i should really end my test 15 minutes early?' question (because nobody else really had gotten up from their tests yet), I decided to end it anyway..

And a congratulations message popped up, confirming my intuition that I had indeed passed the PMP!

YESSSSSSS!!! I screamed internally but my face was as cold as it could be.

The proctor came to my seat & confirmed if I had indeed ended the test & then walked to her station for the print-out. I asked her that would the 'Congratulations' message mean I had indeed passed the test. She just said 'Hmmmmmm' which was more a half-baked affirmation than anything else. That just made my heart skip a beat as I wasn't so sure anymore if I had remembered the message correctly after having walked away from my desk. 

She then gradually printed out my result & said 'Congratulations'. I was relived more than anything else. I quickly glanced through the print-out and saw the 'Above Target' scoring. A 'PMP' Certification generally means you have to be on 'Target' OR 'Above Target' as they do not reveal the number scores. But an 'Above Target' is generally considered to be a really good score, so I was happy. I came down smiling & pinged my wife about it. She was more escatic than me & soon spread the message across all my family groups. It was a big deal for her I realised.

I was relieved, more so that I had actually completed all the goals I had set out to do at the start of 2021 just 5 days before deadline. In a true PMP fashion, I had completed another one of my yearly projects just before deadline..

The first thing I did after coming home? Updated my LinkedIn Profile

Life had come a full circle from 2011! 😁

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Baby and Sleep : A Parenting Update for the first 3 months

One of the advice they tell you about being a parent is
'Sleep when your baby sleeps'
Although it makes sense, it is pretty hard to implement in real life. Everything kept aside, the sight of your new born baby is a blessing which is just ❤️❤️ 

Babies in their early stages sleep more than 16 hours in the day..This might not be ideal for their grandparents (as I experienced) as they get less time to play with their grandson. But it is ideal for their brain development and also a break in between the madness for the new parents. 

As my new born has crossed 3 months, he has started to fall in to a pattern. I would like to share how we have managed our schedules and sanity during these 3 months through self experimentation.

3 Months Baby and Sleep


To summarise;

  • Manage your routine around their sleep:

Newborn babies do not sleep for long hours in the beginning. Although the sleep in total everyday averages more than 16 hours, they do not sleep for more than 2-3 hours at a stretch. So expect your baby to wake you up at random times throughout your day and night. So if you have a team meeting coming up or have a commitment, try to adjust your routine around his/her sleep. 

Making him sleep 30 minutes before your work makes your available for the next 60-90 minutes depending on his feeding and burp. If he is fully fed and burped, expect a distraction free sleep for a minimum of 90 minutes

  • You need to develop their sleep routine:

When we sleep, our bodies tend to know whether it is day or night. This process is called 'circadian rhythm' which is a natural way for our body to follow a pattern to be asleep and awake at a particular time of the day. Babies do not have this and start developing it slowly as they age.

During the day expose them to sunlight for their internal body clock to realise that it is daytime, while as they are going to sleep do the opposite. You might need to help them sleep in a dim environment without much noise and stimulation. Do it everyday at around the same time for the first 3-4 months and your baby will start to feel sleepy during that time frame automatically. For our baby this time is around 11 PM when we start our night routine which generally consists of dimming the lights, starting his favourite lullaby music and lack of activity in the room.

  • Experiment to find out what works best:
Initially our baby used to sleep on my chest only which was always a cute moment to see a fragile thing laying his head on my chest and sleeping peacefully without any movement. But then before it got addictive and turned to be the only way he could sleep, we started to try different techniques to see which ones had a better success rate. Feel free to experiment to see what works best for your baby and calms him down.

For us, he sleeps peacefully on his stomach more than on his back. He has never liked swaddling much, so we avoid doing it in the day time and loves sleeping himself off staring at the fan. Keep those 1 or 2 techniques consistent, so whenever you hold him in that position, he knows it is sleeping time!

  • Appreciate the little things

I have never been more tired and excited at the same time. My baby sleeps really light in the afternoons waking up every 30-45 minutes some days. This gives me a break of only half an hour to get things done.

So I end up not wasting that time browsing on my social media profiles, In fact quitting social media this year has helped me not make that mistake at all. I manage being appreciative of the little time gaps I have in between his sleep and feeding patterns. Sometimes I end up using it for work and sometimes just taking power naps. You will start to appreciate even the 20 minute naps you get in between.

I repeat, 

Do not spend all of those resting times you get in between his sleep on your mobile phone!

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Senior Citizens and Technology

With the pandemic scenario , one of the sectors which has transformed for better or worse is Education. Online learning has been in the space for quite some time, although the relevance has been the greatest in this time since it's foundational moment.

All the schools and colleges in India are going virtual! For someone like me who has been working remotely since the past 4 years, this is a natural progression. But for a 50 something year old teacher, this is something totally different. This is unlearning years of traditional teaching methods which she has carefully adopted and then trying to fit in a completely new medium. For me, this would be as much as a drastic change as going back to work in a Government office from the 1970's.

Senior Citizen and Technology


One of the things this has brought me to think is why do generally older people bad (or slow) to adopting technology.

My mother in law is a school teacher who is in the same situation. And I have been trying to teach her Microsoft Teams for quite some time.. And yet, every day i watch her forget the same old moves i taught her yesterday. Most of this resistance i can blame on her anxiety, but some of the traits are different. 

Compare this to my 10 year old niece who is taking the same online classes. She will know how to mute herself and when to unmute to ask questions while also going to addition options to change her virtual background (which I never taught her). 

So why are older people more resistant to Technology or change?

Curiosity is one of the biggest factors which is higher for a younger generation while the law of diminishing returns applies to those who are older. My mother in law was comfortable in an in-person teaching surrounding and her tools of work and education never involved clicking on a folder or sending an email to anyone.

While the barrier for my niece is already shortened for Technology when she is using YouTube at this age and coupled with hee curious nature to learn how things work and knowing how to 'Google' stuff. She can do these additional tasks flawlessly..

When you grow up with something, you learn it and evolve until it becomes second nature to you! We are the Facebook and YouTube generation, but for my niece Snapchat and TikTok are the platforms she is most comfortable with.. It still takes some time for me to use them when I see the platform and how she uses it!

So does that make me the 'senior citizen' now?



Sunday, May 24, 2020

Managing Spam email and where it comes from

I have been using my Gmail ID since quite some time now and hence one of the constant nags of having an email address which is old is getting a lot of spam marketing emails from around the world where the source is unknown.

Most of the times you must be wondering: "I did not subscribe to this brand! How did they get my email?"


Managing Spam Emails


Outlook does solve this problem with creating aliases with your same email, so you can have a John.Doe@outlook.com and a John.D@outlook.com point to the same email and circulate for different purposes. Maybe one for work and one strictly for marketing emails, so you can separate the mess!

With Gmail, Creating an alias is not possible (yet), but there is a workaround which I would like to share with you today. I have been trying to use it since quite a while now and it helps me to figure out from where i get my emails from.

Gmail allows you to set up aliases using '+' signs or '.' sign in your email address.
That means, a johnsmith@gmail.com and a john.smith@gmail.com sends the email to the same inbox. So the next time you sign up for an e-commerce website such as Amazon, you can use your email as john.smith+amazon@gmail.com OR if you want an email address for investment logins, use john.smith+money@gmail.com.

The idea here is to personalize and add the name of the service you subscribe to after the '+' so it helps you to recognize the source of who is selling your email to unknown businesses and also helps you to set filters in Gmail accordingly.

Once you’ve chosen a few aliases, set up filtering within Gmail by going to Settings > Filters.

Then all you need to do is give the appropriate version of your email address to different people and your messages will be filtered and labelled for you when they arrive.

Cheers!