How I study using Obsidian

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You may notice I've taken a
lot more non-technical coursesthan technical courses, and
that's because I felt likeI was already getting a
lot of incidental exposure.I work in IT, I'm surrounded
by brilliant coworkers,I know Google-fuand it's basically my job
to learn technical thingsand teach it to people in a
way that they might understand.So the courses that I took
are more on the advocacy sideof developer advocacy.But I'm hoping that regardlessof what you are studying online,

you'll also be able to take inspirationfrom how I took my notes.First are the cohort based
or self-paced online courses.The biggest one by far was the
Part-Time YouTuber Academy,and that was founded by Ali Abdaal,who is a famous YouTuber, if
you don't know of him already.And that cost €1,326 and 72
cents for the essential edition.Now it is certainly the
biggest single expenditure

on my list for courses, was it worth it?Well, I took it in November
and that's about the timethat I started my YouTube channel.So I personally think that it was worth itfor what I've gotten out of this channeland the way that it's
helped me package my ideasin a much more succinct and
hopefully entertaining way.The course wasn't perfect, but I did getthree different
accountability groups from it.An accountability group
is a group of peoplethat have a shared objective.

In this case, they're all
trying to be YouTubersand trying to be content creators,and it's been really helpful
for me to have other peoplealong on this journey.I think that money was worth itfor those three groups alone.So here's how I generally take
notes on these cohort-basedor self-paced courses.I have a template here
called course lesson,and it looks a lot like a meeting.I also have the TVZ tag,I say that it is a meeting
and it's also a class.

I have the date, I have the title.I would normally put the course hereand then I have a summary.So I wait to fill that
out until the very end,until I have put everything
down on this log section.So let me show you what that looks like.Here's one that I did for,I think the very first PTYA meeting,I have the summary here,
there's Ali over there.And then I have a log
of people that I met,

and I took screenshots while
he was talking on video,and then I also took a bunch of notes.I also do a one sentence
summary at the top,just like I do for meetings.So I can pull in all of these
notes using a Dataview queryand the tag, or maybe
something that's in the title,and then get a one sentence
summary, or in this case,two sentences of what
this lesson was all about.After I create enough of these lessons,

I then have like a master page for it.In this case, this is my
Part-Time YouTuber Academy page.And by the way, all of these are publishedon my Obsidian Vault,so if you're interested in what I learned,I mean, Ali in particular
was very, very transparentand encouraged us to
share what we learned.So it's not like I'm in
breach of any copyrightsor anything, you can go and have a look atmy public Obsidian Vault.I'll put a link in the
description to that one.

So this is the Part-Time
YouTube Academy page,where I have all of the weeksand every single meeting that I go to.And you'll see, I didn't
go to all of them,but I did go to most.And then at the end here,
now I won't show you thisbecause I don't wanna show
you where people are located,but I do have a list of
people that I met in PTYA,along with their location
and their YouTube channel,so that I can reach out
to them and talk shop.

The next one was a filmmaking
and storytelling classwith Casey Neistat.I've been watching Casey
Neistat for a while.He's the person that got me into YouTube.His vlogs were just so
ridiculously entertaining.So I was very curious to see his process.And Casey's style is much
more chaotic than Ali's,and for that reason, I really liked it.It was €226 and 32 cents.And it presented me a picture of Youtubing

that is devoid of all the business side.Casey is all about the storytelling,it's all about the creativity,
and he's much more in linewith where I am on that scale.So I really appreciated it.Here's the same thing for Casey Neistat,with me embedding the summary pagefor each of these lessons as well,and they also link out to the full notes.The next course I took
was called Ultraspeaking,and this is two things.

First I paid for the course,
which was 937 and 4 cents.And then I also signed up afterwardsfor their online learning
platform, which was €134 per year.Ultraspeaking is all about
speaking to the cameraor to the public,anywhere basically that
you have an audience,Ultraspeaking will help you
improve the way that you speak.And a surprising way or surprising outletfor all of these lessonsthat I had in Ultraspeaking was D&D.

Because it turns out, D&D is
like four hours of talking,whether you're the player or the DM,there's a lot of talking involved.And so the lessons of
being confident enoughto be on camera, made it all worthwhile.I would highly recommend it.And I also really appreciate
their online platform too.I still do it with some of my
developer advocate friends,because I think it's something
that we all struggle with.What you don't see beyond,

beneath this veneer of being
on YouTube is the sheer panicat turning the camera onand basically talking to a
hunk of metal and plastic.Ultraspeaking helped me with that.Course number four is Ship 30 for 30,and this is an interestingly themed coursebased on writing something
every day for 30 days,specifically to go on Twitter,
because that's the platformwith the smallest feedback loop.I picked up a lot of
things from this course,but I also really like Typeshare.

Typeshare is the app or platform
that I think they createdor had created for the course.And it turned out to be
useful in so many waysthat I didn't expect.It's I guess, a way to post on Twitter.But what I really found
useful was the templates.See, when you post on Twitter,
they recommend that you havea format for atomic essays.And those templates are
things like five mythsor personal story and advice.And it says like in the first sentence,

tell people what you did
that changed your life.And I found that really usefulbecause one of the most
dreaded things of a creativeis looking at a blank pageand just trying to write
something, anything.So with the Ship 30 for 30 method,you would never start from a blank page,you start with a template.And I found that a lot easier,and I've used a lot of those
templates for videos as well.So video scripting is writing

and I found a lot of connections that way.Ship 30 for 30 was €318 and 42 cents.The next one is Master
YouTube by Matt D'Avella.That was another YouTubing
course by another creativethat I really greatly admire.Matt's course was more along
the lines of Casey Neistat's,where it was a lot about
growing with intentionand integrity, something
that I really resonated with.It was about business, it
was about making a living,

but doing so without
sacrificing your principles.Just to show you this briefly,I did the same sort of
thing for Master YouTube.So I have these modules here.I took notes on each of
these modules separately,and then linked them
back to this master page.And that Master YouTube
course was €281 and 12 cents.There are two other courses
that I'm currently enrolled forthat's Project 24, which is like,it's a little bit different,
there's a bunch of courses.And also it's a one year
membership to a community

and then Pencil Pirates,
which has just started.And it's going to be about visual learningand visual storytelling.These are my notes for Pencil Pirates.We've only had two meetings so far,but because of the very
visual nature of this,I am also taking my notes
a little bit differently.So instead of having it mostly in text,which is what I typically like to do,I'm actually doing it in Excalidraw.

And here's, okay, so
it's not so great, right?I never said that I was great at drawing,but I am taking notes visually.And let me show you my second one.This was the second meetingand this was a little bit longer.So if this is using Excalidrawand with Excalidraw, you can either do itin this pop out window here.And that's how I normally like to do itwhile I have the same notes
opened up in my tablet

and it's an iPad Pro.And I just like drawing on
that because of the stylist,the Apple Pencil,but then it automatically
updates here anyway.And it also embeds this PNG version of it.Check out my video where
I interview the developerof Excalidraw and
ExcaliBrain, Zsolt Viczian,that was live last Saturday.Project 24 was €424 and 76 cents

and Pencil Pirates was €275 and 39 cents.So what happens with all
of these disparate courses?I mean, they're all about the same thing.And so I started to build
up my own notes on the topicand it is this page
called producing videos.As part of Ship 30 for 30 I
got really into atomic essaysfor a while, and in one of
them, I did like a workflowfor making tech and travel videos online.And so I happen to put it here.This is a cool way of aggregating
my thoughts on the topic.

So I led with that,but then I also have
different sections here.If we bring up the outline here,you'll see that I've got
section on white to make videosfactors for success, channel strategies,pre-production processes.So I'm pulling in a lot
of things that I learnedfrom the different
courses that I attended.This particular graphic is
from Matt D'Avella's course.And in preview mode here, you'll see thatthere's like a little one
here and when you click on it,

it goes to the reference here.So that's just a cool
way of being able to citewhere something has come from.This is really where
most of the work happenedbecause it's one thing to have
notes on separate courses,but it's another to combine
them in the same thing.So for example, in the
idea generation section,I've got a video that I made,
and then I'm talking abouthow a framework for
idea generation is PKM.This endless idea generator
came from Ship 30 for 30.

This forms thing is for me,the idea of signals was
from Ship 30 for 30,but then there's also a part herethose quoted from Matt D'Avella.So as you can see, there
are bits and piecesfrom each course that
I've mashed together,along with my personal spin on things.Now, I find that doing this
and aggregating in this wayis where the real magic
happens because it's not aboutlearning the course in the
way that it was presented

and being able to, I don't know,recite it off by rote memory,but it's about being
able to contextualize itinto something that matters to you.In my case, it's about
producing videos on YouTube.So those are the courses
that involved one teachertalking to multiple students,whether that was live or self-paced.But I'm thinking now
that maybe the best waythat I like to learn or the
best way to learn from meis when it's completely self-paced.

And so I do already subscribe
to some learning platformsand apps that are more for
more individual learningbecause these apps and services are oneswhere I can just pick up anything
and start when I want to,and stop when I want to and
go completely at my own pace.So it's not even the self-paced
courses that I had earlierthat I'd mentioned only
open for enrollmentat certain times.And this one is just like,
I just like the simplicityof signing up ones for
a service for the year.

And then I can just hop in
and hop out whenever I want.One of those platforms is
Coursera and that was €365 a year.Coursera is a platform for MOOCs,that's a massive open online course,and it's really surprising
the quality of the coursesthat are on here,because these are from real universitiesfrom all over the world
on a variety of subjects.I've taken lots of courses here,everything from Python
to learning how to learn,

to basics of Mandarin Chinese
from a Chinese university.It's really cool to be able to have accessto so much of this
education for €365 a year.Now you could pay a little bit moreand get the official
certificates per course,but personally I don't
really feel the needto be able to put that
on my CV or anything.I think it's more important
for me to actually learn

the material and be able to
implement that in my workand daily life.And the other learning platform
that I use is Skillshare.Now, Skillshare costs
€143 and 88 cents a year.And it is, I would say, mainly
on the side of creativity.So there's a lot of video related coursesthat I've taken there,
some for video editing,some for personal branding,
so more on the marketing side.My husband actually uses
it to learn Portuguese.

So apparently language
learning is really greaton Skillshare as well,
because it is a video.So there's audio and there's textand there's some materials as well.And he's been really
rocking it with Portugueseand really putting me to shame.So we're both getting useout of that Skillshare subscription.For the most part, I
take notes on Skillshareand Coursera courses,
the same way that I would

for the self-paced and
cohort-based courses.And here's an example of the output.So this is my Python page or
how to do stuff in Python pagethat was largely taken from the excellentUniversity of Michigan'sPython for Everybody specialization.I still really use this a lot.So if I go to regular
expressions in Python,I just put in things that matter to me.Like if I have to Google it,well, then I'm gonna put it on hereso that it becomes like my personal Google

and it doesn't have to
make that much sense,I don't have to explain things too much,as long as it makes sense to meand it's useful, then it works.So I really appreciate this.So I do this for other
programming languages too.Like here is my JavaScript one.JavaScript is something that
I'm currently working on.So I expect to continue to see this grow.While we're talking about JavaScript,I almost forgot a course actually,

I just bought this course,The Best Way to Learn Modern
JavaScript, ES6 for Everybody.So I'm going to be working
my way through this.I got the master package, I believe.Yeah, this one, which was $97.Haven't started on that
one yet, but I've bought itand the work is going to be
reimbursing me for it as well.My last category is apps,which is more for on-demand learning.And the thing with apps is
it's a little bit trickierdepending on the app to take
notes on it because mainly

I use apps on my mobile
and not on my laptop.And so I don't have the web app openand I can't send it to
Readwise and all that.But let me show you what I've done so far.Brilliant is the first
app I wanna talk about,and it would be €83 and 85 cents per year,but it's free for mebecause Brilliant is a
sponsor of this video,but I never promote products or servicesthat I don't personally use every day

or at least incredibly regularly.I think I missed a few days in my streakwith Brilliant, unfortunately.But you can read all about
my ethics statement over hereto see how I decide what
companies I partner up with.You also see in a second,how I process Brilliant
lessons into Obsidian,Brilliant is a web app and
there's a mobile app too,that focuses on STEM topics.But the way that it handles
potentially dry concepts

is really refreshing.I'm a developer advocate by profession,but I'm mostly self-taught.That means that I pick up what
I could from my coworkers,from researching on the internetand from on the job experience.So I still feel like there's
a lot of fundamental thingsthat I missed because
I didn't go to schoolfor computer science.So of course, when I
started using Brilliant,I chose the computer
science fundamentals course,and I've been pleasantly
surprised to find outjust how much it's teaching me

on the lower end of the
spectrum in terms of foundationsand basic principles,
like algorithms thinkingand also on the higher
end where now on BrilliantI'm actually learning Python on Brilliant.And the fact that they're
able to do this in an appthat can teach you something
in like 10 minutes a dayis pretty mind boggling.Here's the lead into a
subject that I know very well,application performance.But instead of jumping into
a theoretical definition

of latency versus throughput,
this lesson talked abouta baker named Pierre
who wanted to sleep inas late as possible, relatable.By the time the course got
around to saying the words,latency and throughput,both concepts had already been explainedin real world terms.I've explained this topic so many timesand never in such an elegant
and simple way unfortunately.Since Brilliant is web based,I was able to use the Readwise
reader browser extension

to bring in parts of the
lesson to my Obsidian Vault.Here's what that looks like
when Readwise brings it overto Obsidian using the
Readwise official plugin.This was a lesson about two
different sorting algorithmsand how to determine their performance.And here's one of my highlightsabout the number of comparisons
between array elements,being the cost that you
can assign to algorithms,specifically sorting algorithms.However, the best workflow that I foundinvolved just going through
the Brilliant lessons

on my mobile app, because it's
handy and I always have it,and I can always spare
a few minutes with itand not worry so much
about taking notes then.And then later when I
get back to my laptop,then I go into the Wiki sectionand their Wiki is a lot
more of a detailed lookinto each of those topics.They're also presented in
a way that lends itselfreally well to being sent
to Readwise and highlighted.The Readwise Obsidian official plugin

imports them in this format.So I've got my awesome TVZ
tag, which just is a signalthat I haven't processed this yet.This is one about algorithms,and here are the different
highlights that I tookon the Wiki page.You'll have to check the
price in your currency,but for me, Brilliant is about
€7 month on the annual plan.But I recommend that you
just get started for freeby clicking on the free trial
link in the description below.It's also a cool way to support
me and a good way to support

a really awesome company
trying to do great things.Some other apps that I use,
and actually all of theseI've been using for years
are Duolingo Plus Family.This is €122 and 99 cents.I pay for this for myself
and for my husband.I think I have 16
languages that I've learnedon Duolingo now.Some of them are useful
like Dutch and have given me

literally a new home country
and an entirely new lifeI never thought to dream of.And some of them are just
for fun, like Klingon.There's Headspace family, which
is €101 and 19 cents a year.This is also for my family.And I guess you could say,
it's not really a course,but I think that it is,it's just a different type of course,rather than more of an academic style.It's more about learning awareness

and learning how you're feeling.Italki is an app that I swear by.I've been using it for years.I do have a referral link for this,but that referral link is only
gonna give me Italki credit.So please use itif you think that you
wanna learn a language,because then I can learn more languages.This is the way that I
learn languages really.I'm very conversational basedbecause I like to learn languagesso that I can talk to people,

that's always my first priority.And it doesn't make sense
if your primary goalis to be able to talk to people.It doesn't make sense to learn
grammar first or to learn,I don't know, spelling or pronunciation.I mean, just book a lesson
with one of their teachers,whether a community tutor,meaning someone who's
just a native speakeror like a formal teacher.So I use a formal teacher for
my more advanced languages,like Spanish or Dutch.And then I use community tutors

for pretty much every other language.And this is the way thatI've always been learning languages.And the last app that I'm
gonna mention is Memrise,which is €99 lifetime.So I really love Memrise because
it's in a flashcard style,but it has a focus on mems,
which are mnemonic devices,so when it teaches you a word,it doesn't just teach you
the word in, say Swedish,and then English or whatever languageyou're using to learn it, it
also has a mnemonic device

that you can use, it could be a picture,or it could be something with the wordsthat hints at the meaning and
I really like that approach.For €99, it's a steal.I don't know why I didn't
through this sooner.I've been subscribing on
a monthly basis for years.I probably should have just
bought lifetime up front.I'm gonna talk about
language learning in Obsidianin another video, because
this is a whole other topic.And I have plugins and
workflows that I wanna show you.

I'm gonna leave that for another video.As you might surmises
by that little do dad,and the fact that I've
spent over €7,000 this yearon learning, learning in
general is important to me.It is part of my job,it's part of what I like
to do for fun, honestly.And most importantly,
it's part of my identity.And so I don't regret for
a second or for a Euro,everything that I've spent on learningbecause it's an investment in the future,

but it's partially
because of the fact thatI've fulfilled my dealto incorporate those
learnings into my PKM,that I don't regret itbecause I think that it
may not be worthwhileif I didn't have those
notes to look back on.But now that I do have them,I know that 10 years down the road,like I'm starting to do now
with my notes from 10 years ago,I'm going to be able
to still glean insightsfrom the things that I'm learning now.If you'd like to see the nitty
gritty of how I would process

some new topic, some article on the topicthat's pretty new to me,
then check out this videoon how I keep up with tech
trends using Obsidian, what else?(Nicole chuckling)(Swedish) See you next time!And thank you for watching.