Thanks for all the comments.  I'll definitely check out the Shon Harris videos, thanks for the suggestion H1t.  As well the CISM evaluation might come in handy.  Since i don't really know the format or "feeling" of the questions on CISSP, I've been casting a pretty wide net and relying on memory techniques.

For example, I'm not sure i need to be memorizing the ISO/IEC specifications 1, 3 and 4 for Smart Cards.  But it seemed like it could make a pretty good test question, so I've got things like: 

The ISO/IEC 14443 standard outlines the following items for smart card standardization:  [...]

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The ISO/IEC 14443 standard outlines the following items for smart card standardization:  ISO/IEC 14443-1 Physical Characteristic, ISO/IEC 14443-3 Initialization and anticollision, and ISO/IEC 14443-4 Transmission protocol

My gut feeling is that this is creeping into the line of overkill, but it's easily memorized (especially with an SRS system backing me up).

I can see your point about focusing on the things you find more interesting.  My goal has been to get the CISSP and then I get to reward myself with the things that really get my brain ticking.  Certs like OSCP, C|EH, RHCE, GSEC and GPEN are all exciting to me and hopefully will help me fulfill my CPE requirements once I am able to pass the CISSP.

I have to be honest, and I'm sure this community hears this a lot, I feel a lot more directed in my career and personal improvement goals.  I've been an System and Network admin for more than ten years and while I love my job I really like having the impetus provided by focusing on the security field.

Once I decided to shift my career focus from System and Network Admin towards Security, I got really nervous that studying simply wasn't my strong suit given my time constraints.  Between family obligations (Married and father to a three year old girl) and professional obligations (Renewing my CCNA or getting CCNA:S and I really should be reading Powershell in Action instead of EH!) and even just personal hobbies (Getting into the Arduino, studying Japanese, and yea, I knit).  All these things that have claims on my time and one of my biggest weaknesses is my impatience.  So, deciding to sit for the CISSP, I picked up the Shon Harris book and just started reading and highlighting.  I'm sorry to say that I got quickly overwhelmed.  Not that the material is too difficult, but I was reading in the vicinity of 30 to 50 pages a night. 

So I decided to try to take a long view (Marathon not a sprint!) and swapped my study habits to what is listed below. 

• Read 15 pages of Shon Harris' CISSP All-In-One
• Each night, highlight passages or concepts that would make good test questions.
• At the end of 15 pages, fire up Anki and review the notes I made with the highlighter and enter each in question format with chapter tagging.
• Try to clear my Anki reps every day and set the new fact number to 20 per day.
• When I've finished the All-In-One book and worked through my Anki deck take some practice exams and note where I fell short.  Review those chapters and reset my Anki counts for those chapter tags.
• Take the exam
• If I fail reread the book and maybe look into a boot camp type of prep course

For reference Anki is a Spaced Repetition System and has worked miracles for my studies in Japanese, I think it will easily translate to CISSP studying.  I've been using the Cloze deletion technique for my facts, so it forces me to memorize versus hunt for an answer in multiple choice.

I chose 15 pages a night because it allows me to get through a decent amount of information without finding myself up at 2am and too tired to pick up my CCNA books or even enter the CISSP info into Anki.  I'm currently at page 375 and if I can manage to read at least 5 nights a week I'm projected to finish the book in about 15 weeks.  If I manage it every night of the week, I'm projected to finish in 10 weeks.  From what I've read about the CISSP, I feel that's a significant amount of time to study and really familiarize myself with the information. 

If anyone has any thoughts or comments or even warnings, I'd greatly appreciate them. 

Thanks knwminus.  I'm still going to re-read the Todd Lammle book and throw my notes into an SRS system to get myself back up to an acceptable base of knowledge with Cisco.  Any suggestions on CCNA:S books?

I remember trying GNS3 back when I was originally studying for my CCNA but I recalled having a lot of trouble with it.  I'm sure it's made some serious strides in 3 years so I'll check it out again. 

I actually really like the idea of going for CCNA:S but I my main worry is that I'm out of practice.  I still have the Lammie book and my certification doesn't expire until November.  I've been considering re-reading the Lammie book and feeding key parts of the text into Anki and constantly reviewing until I have a solid hold on those.  For hardware, I'm likely to either try GNS3 ( it wasn't very mature when I used it three years ago ) or I'll try to scavenge some old Cisco routers we have around the office if possible. 

Hopefully I can manage this along with studying for CISSP.  If I manage my time at night after the kid has gone to sleep and try not to hurry, I think I can pull off both (well, i guess it's all three). 

Does anyone have any good resources for starting with CCNA:S? 

And again, thank you for the advice.  I'm new to EH and so far, things has been very encouraging. 

My CCNA cert will expire near the end of this year.  When I originally took the exam I took a week course and then went home and studied through the Todd Lammie book (http://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Certified-Network-Associate-640-802/dp/0470110082/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1) .  Unfortunately, at work, we moved away from Cisco equipment and i haven't touched one in probably two years.  So I'm out of practice. 

Does anyone know if the Lammie book is still a good resource or has the test changed enough in three years? 

Does anyone know of a good way to get some hands on experience to test?  I haven't seen a way to virtualize an ios environment and some of the simulators leave a lot to be desired. 

Thanks in advance.
Mac

The Kindle is nice for on-the-spot reading but I still find myself going to the paper version at nights.  One thing I've read about the CISSP exam is that, given it's non-technical content, it's often described as "a vocabulary test," albeit a difficult one.  So I've been using a highlighter to mark sections that I think are likely to be adapted to exam questions.  Then I go back through the highlighted parts and start creating facts in Anki (http://ankisrs.net - a Spaced Repetition System.  I've been using to study Japanese.) and have even considered using Cloze Deletions to make the cards a bit more test-like. 

My only other cert is a CCNA (speaking of which I need to renew that - where am I going to find the time?) and I'm hoping that I can adapt my study methods to a non-technical cert like CISSP.  Once I have that, I'm planning to push into considerably more technical certs to fulfill my CPE requirements. 

How hard is it to start Cross fit?  I've been working on weight loss (calorie counting, etc) and once it's warm I'm hoping I can get back into barefoot/minimal-footwear running. 

Not sure if you got the book with the DVD included, but if you did, there is a chapter-by-chapter copy of the book in PDF format included on the DVD.  Pretty nice for tossing onto the Kindle/iBooks/etc instead of carrying that brick of a book around.  When I'm reading at night, I've taken to reading from the dead-tree version, but when I'm at work or waiting for my daughter at daycare, I hop to pdf on the Kindle. 

Just went through the copy I bought today (recently decided to push from System/Network Admin into heavier security and work towards a cert) and only counted 8 diagrams in 50 pages that I selected entirely unscientifically.  It varies, obviously, but as I look through it, it's not what I would consider diagram heavy, and what diagrams it has shouldn't really look too bad on a Kindle.