Tips and lessons after being fully certified in Google Cloud (all passed in the first attempts) !

I started my GCP learning journey in 2017 and took my first GCP ACE certification exam in 2020–08. Finally passed ALL GCP certifications in 2023–03. Below are my tips and lessons and hope it can help you in your cloud learning journey.

1. Learn EVERY DAY and form a new habit of Continuous Learning. Even 15 minutes a day is good!
2. Save time and do not waste time on small things: e.g. what to eat tonight (some can spend an hour to decide this?), wash your car less often, vacuum your house less often, watch only the LAST quarter of an NBA/NFL game, etc.
3. Write down your GOALS on a blank paper and post it in kitchen or hallway so you can SEE it everyday. I wrote down, “Pass GCP XXX Exam by 2023–03” and posted it on my hallway, so I can SEE it many times a day. This really helps me to FOCUS! I will then ask myself, “What have I done TODAY towards my Goal?”
4. Learn from good authors and instructors: e.g. by Dan Sullivan, Guy Hummel, Joseph Lowery, Konrad Cłapa, Google Cloud Certified Fellow, VCDX, Andrew Brown, Ranga Karanam, etc…
5. Use technologies: e.g. download your Udemy, Cloud Academy or A Cloud Guru courses onto your mobile phone. I listen to many courses during my weekend hikes (up to 8 hours) and basketball practices (up to 1 hr).
6. Read the official exam guides carefully and try to learn ALL the topics listed. In particular, the NEW topics added recently. Often, some online courses were recorded earlier and so may NOT have the newly added topics inside. This is the gap you need to make sure you study in Google docs so you can answer the corresponding questions.
7. Practice more sample test questions and test quizzes. Practice makes perfect!
8. Do more hands-on labs (e.g. Qwiklabs or SkillBoost).
9. Read many GCP docs: e.g. best practices this and that (this is often asked in the exams). You will see many questions such as: what is the most cost effective way to do this and that? What is the most secure way to do this and that?
10. Read more good GCP exam books: e.g. Architect and Network.
11. Follow the tutorials at Codelabs.
12. Use elimination methods. When you are NOT sure about the correct answer, use process of elimination and increase your chance of success. Often you can easily remove 2 obviously wrong choices and then have the last 2 choices to select. Now you have a 50% chance of picking the right answer!
13. Sleep enough and sleep well before an exam. You need to READ a lot of questions and answers, so good to sleep well before the exam to focus better.
14. Flag the questions you are not sure and go back to review them. Skip and do not waste too much time on a single difficult question.
15. Check ALL questions before you submit.
16. Do not PANIC! Keep CALM and carry on. Even if the first few questions look very difficult, the rest may look easier.
17. Exams may be easier than you think. I was NOT sure if I could pass the Professional Network and Machine Learning exams, but I passed both luckily and happily in my first attempt.
18. Read good repos: e.g. Sathish VJ’s awesome gcp certification repo.
19. Spot the DIFFERENCES in the answer options: e.g. Option A is a custom profile and Option B is a default profile, etc…
20. Remember to bring your “Test Taker Authorization Code” to the test center if you do an in-person exam. They need this code to enter into the exam software so you can have the right exam shown.
21. Try to avoid the “Always NOT READY” symptom. I sometimes feel I study too MUCH because I always feel not yet ready.
22. Join Google Cloud Innovators Plus program which offers over $1,500 in developer benefits for only $299. Access the entire catalog of Google Cloud Skills Boost on-demand training, up to $1,000 Google Cloud credits, a certification voucher, special access to Google Cloud experts and execs, live learning events (taught by GCP experts) and more.