q1 personal learning

q1 personal learning

You know how I said I was thinking about trying a personal curriculum but in an abbreviated form since it would just be for part of Q1? I immediately forgot about it but I came back around and I think what I'd actually like to learn more about is how to learn.

Or more specifically how I learn, and thus what the most effective way for me to do this would even be.

Rachel In Theory on youtube has a lot of sensible videos about planning stuff in general but I'm particularly pulling from her dirt simple learning system video because her systems tend to be straightforward but also well-thought-through in a way that appeals to me and seems like an evolution of a lot of my natural habits.

She recommends a system of three notebooks:

Thinking book is sort of how I use a lot of my notebooks, just getting ideas down, jotting research, thoughts, scenes, etc. When thoughts get more complex, she recommends they move over to the journal, which is a place to process ideas, to put down stream of consciousness words or do the writing equivalent of thinking out loud. Subject matter notebook is basically a backup for when the thinking book and/or the journal was getting overwhelmed by a single subject. It's also useful for when a subject is becoming overwhelming for her, to enforce boundaries.

The way she talks about having subject matter notebooks is particularly helpful to me because I like the idea of having subject-specific notebooks but I don't actually do it 90% of the time because I know I'll start them and then never come back to them again. If I wait until I have a lot of information to put in it to begin with, then it'll cut down on that fear of having a stack of almost empty notebooks as a monument to failure. But at the same time I could just… not do subject specific notebooks if I don't feel like I need that separation.

In the video she does talk about just using one, her thinking book, and like I said, I basically tend toward something like that. For me, this is the pocket notebook that I carry obsessively and put everything in. And it works great, it's what I always end up going back to.

In fact, I tried a planner again this year, and used it for about five weeks. I wanted to try it because my spouse has a properly week on two pages planner and it seems quite useful in some ways. But I just moved back into one of my pocket notebooks, because once again what I learned was that I am terrible at keeping everything written down that I need to write down if I have any kind of structure at all.

I'd already been experimenting with something that's a lot like how she talks about using the journal, because small notebooks fill up really fast if you're writing longhand, and so I'm just reframing how I think about it in a bit more structured way. And the step to a subject-matter specific notebook or two seems very straightforward from there, when the right time comes around.

As another note on how I learn, for the last few weeks I've been trying to be more intentional about how I use YouTube. I do find a ton of videos on there that sound really interesting and I really want to watch, learn from, even take notes on. But honestly I don't learn really well from audio and video content in general, and I've only moved in that direction because so much sharing these days is done via video instead of text.

If something is only available or most helpfully available on video, I've noticed that to actually get anything out of it. I need to be not just listening but actively interacting with it in the moment.

What does that mean?

Well for one thing it means I've been writing thing as I've been listening to the videos I linked above. I'm thinking about what she's saying as I go, I'm processing my own thoughts and getting them down, evaluating as I go, scooting back and forth in this document to type up my thoughts.

I've never been much good at audiobooks or even listening to podcasts when I'm not doing something else, but I wonder if trying to listen to audio nonfiction would be more effective if I was trying to take notes on it as I went.

In general I'd also like to try to shift more intentionally back to books or even specifically looking for text websites with information to do research. Even then I want to do more note-taking to keep myself on track, unless I find myself getting absorbed in the book. If I'm absorbed, great, that's fine. But if I'm not… notes may be the necessary think to keep me on track.

That can be physical books but it can also be ebooks. But for ebooks or longform reading I am thinking I'd like to be more intentional about getting off my phone. Conveniently I just found the most amazing little e-reader and I have no self control. I have some thoughts about it that I'll probably put in another post.