When I look back at my CISSP preparation, I don’t remember only the hours I spent sitting with books or answering questions.
I remember the small pockets of time.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
Sometimes even less.
If I was travelling, I would practise questions.
Standing in a queue, I would practise.
Sitting in a train, I would practise.
Waiting for a movie to start, I would practise.
I would wake up in the morning and CISSP would be one of the first things on my mind.
Lunch break?
A few questions.
After dinner?
A few more.
Before going to sleep?
One more round.
Even while waiting at the school entrance for my child to arrive, I would use those few minutes.
And there were nights when I woke up at 2 AM or 3 AM.
Instead of going back to sleep immediately, I found myself opening questions and practising.
Looking back, it sounds excessive.
Maybe it was.
But that’s how deeply I had immersed myself in the journey.
For a period of time, my mind was filled with CISSP.
It wasn’t just something I was studying for a few hours a day.
It had become something I was constantly thinking about.
While travelling, I was thinking about questions.
While waiting, I was thinking about concepts.
After answering a difficult question, I would sometimes continue thinking about why I had chosen that particular option.
There were days when CISSP followed me everywhere.
Not because someone was forcing me to do it.
Because I had made the decision that I wanted to give this attempt everything I had.
And that changed the way I looked at time.
Earlier, I might have considered five minutes of waiting as just five minutes.
During my preparation, five minutes became an opportunity.
Ten minutes became an opportunity.
A train journey became an opportunity.
Waiting for someone became an opportunity.
I didn’t always have a perfect study environment.
I didn’t always have an hour available.
I didn’t always have my books with me.
But I almost always had a few minutes somewhere.
So I started using them.
That accumulation mattered.
One five-minute session doesn’t feel significant.
Neither does one ten-minute session.
But when you keep doing it day after day, those small sessions add up.
And they become part of your preparation without you even realising how much time you’ve actually invested.
Of course, this wasn’t the only preparation I did.
I spent dedicated time studying and working through questions.
But these small moments gave me something else.
Continuity.
CISSP stayed in my head throughout the day.
And that constant exposure helped me stay connected with what I was learning.
There was another side to it as well.
When you become this immersed in something, it starts occupying mental space even when you’re not actively studying.
You start thinking about it while doing completely unrelated things.
You start connecting what you learned with situations you encounter in everyday work.
You start questioning your own understanding.
You start remembering the questions you got wrong.
You start thinking about why one answer was better than another.
At some point, preparation becomes more than sitting down and studying.
It becomes a mindset.
That was my experience.
But there was also a point where I had to recognise that I couldn’t keep adding more and more.
I had already worked through nearly 6,000 questions.
There was always another question set.
Another topic.
Another revision.
Another area where I could tell myself, “I need to know this better.”
The closer the exam came, the more tempting it became to keep pushing.
But I realised that preparation also means knowing when to stop accumulating and start trusting.
I had put in the work.
I had used the small moments.
I had studied when I had dedicated time.
I had practised when I had only five minutes.
I had revisited my mistakes.
I had challenged my own thinking.
There wasn’t much more I could gain by convincing myself that I wasn’t ready.
At some point, I had to accept that I had prepared as much as I reasonably could.
And then came the actual exam.
As I mentioned earlier, those first 30 questions shook me.
I had entered the exam with the confidence built from thousands of questions.
Then suddenly, the exam felt unfamiliar.
It took me around 50 minutes to get through those first 30 questions.
For a moment, I wondered whether all those hours had actually prepared me.
But I had to remind myself of something.
Preparation isn’t about guaranteeing that nothing will surprise you.
It’s about building enough confidence and resilience to continue when something does.
I settled down.
I stopped comparing the questions with what I had practised.
I focused on the question in front of me.
And gradually, I found my rhythm.
The remaining 70 questions took around 60 minutes.
When the exam stopped at question 100, there were mixed emotions.
But underneath all of that was a quiet feeling.
I had given this everything I had.
Not just on the days when I had hours available.
I had given it the small moments too.
The five minutes.
The ten minutes.
The train journeys.
The queues.
The waiting.
The late nights.
Even those unexpected 2 AM and 3 AM moments.
Every little bit had become part of the journey.
Looking back, I don’t think the lesson is that everyone needs to wake up at 3 AM and practise questions.
That’s not the point.
The point for me was different.
I stopped waiting for the perfect time to prepare.
I used the time I had.
And when I didn’t have much time, I used whatever was available.
Five minutes may not change your preparation today.
But five minutes repeated consistently can change where you are months from now.
For me, CISSP preparation eventually became less about finding time and more about making use of time.
And somewhere along the way, CISSP stopped being something I was preparing for.
It became something I was living with every day.
Until the day I finally walked into that exam room.
And that’s when all those small moments had to come together.
Preparation happened in the big sessions.
But the journey was built in the small moments.
Part 6 will take you into the exam room itself—the moment when all the preparation ended and there was nothing left to do except face the screen in front of me.
