Video: Ramses Oudt: The Power of Keeping a Learn Log (DocDrop)

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[Music] hello hello welcome everyone welcome to day two of the linking your thinking conference

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we're going to get this party started i'm really happy that we have today with us ramzis oot uh i hope i'm saying your last name correctly i didn't ask you about that it's outs just like in english yeah oh

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okay rums this out and roms is i'm so happy to have you on here because i first came across you a couple years ago um on twitter just with your you're curious and always uh that attitude to always

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want to learn and improve and i just thought wow what a great presence to have and now you are the community manager of log seek which is pretty wild and in your talk today you'll be

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sharing us with ways to practice writing in an outliner techniques for internalizing knowledge and retrieving notes using queries i'm just really excited to have you here as someone

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who's got a lot of experience with log seek which is an incredible tool but also you know how you're practically using it and everything but without further ado like to introduce ramzis thank you nick

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i'm really excited to be here because this is basically my favorite topic to talk about and that is learning or the learning process so i will go ahead and share my screen

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and i see that my external screen is not working along today so i will not be able to see the chat or anything so you will need to feed me

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some things uh sometimes uh you should be able to see my my screen now yes yes we can hear me well because i basically just want to take you along on a journey

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and that is my learning journey i will tell a little bit about how i got here because um to just get started with who i am my name is adam sis i'm from amsterdam

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the netherlands born and raised i'm 33 years old and i've made quite a journey uh to be where i am currently so currently i am the community manager at bloxy buxeek is an outliner tool you're

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looking at it right now and it looks like an outliner tool but it's much more than that and today we'll see a few features of how i leverage the strengths of oxy but this

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this workflow process would work basically in any tool so it could be obsidian but it can also be rome but i am really a fan of outliners and i will show you why so i'm a teacher by

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training i'm actually a spanish teacher taught for about two years before budget cuts were made all throughout the netherlands and basically language programs especially the more exotic

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types like spanish yes spanish is an exotic language here got cut so i had to look for another job and i got into sales so i always say i taught myself sales

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through a lot of trial and error i joined a very small company became a telemarketer and basically my job was to cold call decision makers it managers in particular but also

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business intelligence and intelligence managers and other departments within the i.t uh larger i.t departments i was calling them every day and having conversations

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so i did that for about two years learned a lot and i basically had to thank note-taking for learning a lot so i took notes of every conversation i had i even took notes on my intonation i

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recorded things i transcribed phone calls all to analyze and take note of how it could improve so after about two years on the telephone i became an account manager worked at oracle for almost three years

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and made the transition from sales to a more technical role which i also taught myself oracle has a really good educational program so i was taking course of the course and worked myself up to become a customer success manager

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so as i was on the phone with it architects i was as i was in meetings with the more technical people in projects i was also taking notes and

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i was seeing okay this is how they set up for example new cloud instances and i was just recording documenting everything and taking notes from it obviously my process was way more

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rudimentary than it is now but in the end i think the the skill that i learned best through all of this is learning how to learn so now i just like to

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take a skill that i want to either improve or start with and i make a project out of it and i don't make it too big i just decide for myself what are the topics that i need to learn and then as

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i go through my days i take notes about it so uh we'll dive into that nick i'm just going to pause for a bit and see like is the text still running good

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are there any questions you want to share so i think we're doing really well we do have questions coming in too which i think you can probably address near the end but yeah so far everything is

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running smoothly all right perfect so i will take about 30 minutes to explain my process i will show some examples and then the last 20

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to 15 minutes i will use for uh question and uh answer so i will run through basically these questions why take notes it's not obvious to everyone why i use luxy for it it's not just

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because i work at log seek i was using lexic before i worked at the company then we'll look at some principles so again this is not tied to any tool this

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this talk even though i love lexique and i will promote the heck out of it it's not necessary to uh to use this tool for this process you i'm just going to tell you or teach you

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a few of the principles that i have picked up through my experience but that also people that i really admire like andy matushak michael nielsen and even thomas frank i will link to it

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in the resources have taught me and have confirmed confirmed to me basically through their writings so we'll look at how to take good notes

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we'll look at space repetition flash cards in particular because lookseek has a really good flashcard basically functionally built in then we'll look at how to write good flashcard questions and other ways to

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review questions and notes so queries zettocasts and hopefully i can give a little bit of a demo of how to combine zelda costume and flash cards because i think that is a really powerful combination

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so first why take notes for me they're basically just two main reasons so the first reason is to learn new topics that is the thing i love to do most it's basically a hobby

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of mine to learn new things but also to offload your thinking diving first into learning new topics um as i've told in my introduction continuous learning opens up career

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possibilities i am a tea a teacher by training i don't have any degree in computer science or any business degree everything that

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i do right now everything that i've done in the past consulting it infrastructure consultancy i've taught myself all through note-taking all through being curious

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consuming content randomly throughout the day and then just taking notes out of it so i didn't have a very elaborate system i was just writing writing writing writing and explaining things to myself in writing i will come back to

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that in a little bit and as i say here learning can be relaxing but it's also a rewarding activity for me certainly relaxing may not be for you if that's not the case if you think

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learning new things is very is is a burden like it's either boring or takes out a lot of energy find basically the the lowest bar of entry so

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don't don't make it bigger than it is just write some things even if you never revisit your notes it's still better to write something in your own words than to never take note of it

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and then as a professional i've noticed that note-taking is crucial to offload my thinking so my mind is constantly overflowing with

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things and to the point of overwhelm so that is why i take notes i don't have to keep track of things because i have different processes set up in log seek but also using other tools that will help me

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reduce overwhelm and by offloading bits of useful information you will help your future self so basically what i will show in a bit it's not just a way to feed my brain so to revisit the

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notes that i took and to then make them my own so i remember them you'll also see i'm basically building my personal wiki so i'm i'm going to show a very concrete example of how i'm learning web

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development right now because i want to create loxic themes and i want to create themes for blogs i'm a huge fan of blogging and i just want to become better at html css and javascript

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and that's what i'm using my learn log for currently so we'll return to that in a little bit then the question obviously arises okay you're convinced that you should take

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notes but why you use loxic for it these are my reasons entering new notes is frictionless in boxing that's why i love outliners i came through basically the outliner paradigm of doing

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things through rome research and that was the first time i didn't experience the constant nagging question where should i put this where should i store this note before i was

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using evernote i had thousands of notes but i was basically repeating myself over and over again because it was very difficult to find notes and i always like i always kept thinking where should

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i or how should i organize these notes with rome and look seek that is basically not really a thing because if you use the data journals page or from the notes page for everything or like 90 plus

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percent of the things that you record throughout the day and you tag it that should be enough so the outline structure for me also makes organizing things very easy as you

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can see here i click collapse and expand this because i have severe adhd when i see a wall of text i get overwhelmed i don't know where to look

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you already saw that i go through this outline by just clicking on a block and then basically filtering out all the extra information so that is why i like to use an outliner

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i've tried obsidian but again i ran into the same problem i had to think about where do i put this and then how do i structure pages so i don't feel overwhelmed with an outliner

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in my case i just experience it as um as easier because i can just start on one page and then create branches basically on just one page

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and then using links you really make it easy to find notes so if you're familiar with rom or lexical have the link references there are queries their flash cards

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which is basically my favorite way to retrieve notes because then you actually have an algorithm to help you when you should revisit something before you forget it you need to be careful

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though with what you memorize but we'll look at that in a little bit um all right we'll now jump into the principles these apply to any

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note-taking tool so how to take good notes this is a very contentious question because if you if you're on the so-called note-taking twitter this is the perpetual question that is asked how

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do you take good notes um there are a few you know schools of thought there so there's uh the zeddocast in school there's uh the the

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the people who say oh you shouldn't overthink anything you should just use apple notes they're like they're both extremes i like to have a little bit of a [Music] of a middle path with

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just a few simple principles to keep in mind to ensure that even if you never revisit your notes you will still benefit from it so

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that may be hard to believe but that is at least my experience so how to take good notes first the question is obviously what to take notes on when i just started with this whole tools for thought

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thing i would say that it's almost a glorified hobby even though it's also my work i didn't really know what to take notes on i was taking notes on everything like literally every article that i that i

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was reading i felt like i had to take highlights i had to take notes which made reading just random articles not a lot of fun because everything felt like work so i did thiago fuerte is building a second

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brain course a few times and there's one technique or one approach that he teaches which he calls 12 favorite questions to keep in mind so whenever you're reading something

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whenever you you're consuming content the basically the the decision is made for you when to take notes on something and that is basically based on your 12 favorite questions

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this is based on a something that richard feynman once said just read out like the quote my approach to problem solving is to carry around a dozen interesting problems and a dozen interesting

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solutions to unrelated problems and eventually i will able to make connections so connecting things that is basically creativity and then feynman said you have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems

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constantly present in your mind although by and large they will lay in a dormant state so i'll show you a few examples from my favorite uh 12 favorite problems but it can be anything

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it can be very concrete to how do i launch a blog that was actually one of my favorite questions for a while how do i uh launch a personal blog then the question arises over time

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like how do like what is the writing process for a personal blog what do i write about how do i set up the blog platform so from that one question more questions

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can emerge so that is basically how i approach it from a very high level so a few examples uh that i have actually uh used as uh favorite problems is how can i

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prove my thinking to make better decisions this was when i was in a very high stakes environment i was informing c-level executives on really big uh review organization that potentially

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affected 20 000 people because i was working in hr so i had to really improve my decision-making when advising systems or approaches then as i got more in into

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mental models algorithmic thinking i started to ask how can i approach new ideas so they quickly benefit me and at a dimensional paradigm in my thinking and then i have

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i had some follow-up questions so what are the top techniques to remember and then internalize knowledge which actually this session is an answer to that question what does my note-taking workflow look

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like steam and what do i create with my notes a little bit more of a concrete example is how can i learn enough about development so i can create my own web apps to make my ideas a reality

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and then i already figured okay i want to make web apps so i need to know html css javascript front-end libraries probably and frameworks i don't know a lot about these three

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bottom questions so i haven't answered them yet but if you look at the follow-up questions what do i need to know about html for example inspector dom accessibility

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these are just terms i heard but they guide me through to a more specific path to what i should learn about so if i learn to use the inspector in a browser

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how can i learn from that that is basically then a follow-up question then uh what do i need to know about css again just some terms that have jotted down and then over time i refine them i

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keep them with me i keep it in my mind i want to create my own web apps i have a an idea for a language learning tool i don't know how to make it reality but this question will set me on the path to

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learning more and building my skill set so that's my little rant about taking or keeping uh 12 favorite problems in your mind once you have those you just need to

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take notes throughout the day don't over complicate it set up a template so you can quickly enter and structure your notes and i'll show in a little bit how i do that setting up a template is really crucial

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i believe because if you don't have any consistency in your notes structure and you're trying to basically figure out or reinventing the wheel every time you take notes that

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will cause mental overhead or it will take up mental space if you have to decide on the structure if you have a template it will also give some peace of mind because it will be very easy to just add a few

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tags to that template and then to not worry about it for that moment obviously revisiting your notes is very important which we'll see in a bit and then just

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write everything on your journals page so if you use obsidian there's a way to generate a daily note i recommend not knowing obsidium really well but i would recommend just throw everything in there

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first and then have some kind of process to further uh process and refine those notes or categorize or structure those notes another crucial idea is to only have one

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idea per note this is absolutely crucial we'll see in a bit what a bad example is and what a good example is but if you are in any way familiar with

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zetsukon which is a note taking approach there's this principle of atomicity so you have per node only one idea if you look at flash card

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advice or how to create good flash cards you see the same principle repeated over and over again why is that because you can only hold so much in your working memory about four items or four related

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uh chunks of information basically so it will help you keep your mental stress down i should say and it also enables you to link one idea

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or one note to another note so that is a very crucial principle and then last but not least explain in your own words i told you before that whenever i was reading an article before i was basically

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highlighting way too much and i felt like i had to highlight things otherwise i would forget if you ask me it's a waste of time to highlight if you don't create your notes in your

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own words with it so it that is basically the crucial bit if you want to learn from what you read because it's very easy to capture a highlight see it again and then you feel

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like you you you um the note will feel familiar but that doesn't mean that you actually know the note so you have to explain in your own words it helps you to check

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if you understood the idea again to richard feynman quotes he said if you can't explain something to first year students then you haven't really understood and the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the

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easiest person to fool so if you think i know this and then you actually have to apply the knowledge and then often you notice i've read i've read about this somewhere but like it's completely out of your

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accessible memory so write things in your own words because it's just way way more likely that you will remember what you've written down so even if you will never revisit the notes if you have

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written something in your own words if you first understood something and then wrote it down in your own words it will stick much better so very important principles to keep in mind

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all right i'll just keep uh going unless you uh you interrupt me you're right so keep it going great great we have about 10 more minutes um

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for me rambling and then i want to show maybe five minutes and then i want to show a few examples of how i take good and bad notes and then also i want to demo quickly how to turn a bad note into a good note

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but first i really believe in space repetition the power of space repetition if you think of space repetition you might have nightmares from school where

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you had to learn the periodic tables for chemistry or you had to learn words for spanish class those are often not really fun things things you want to learn but you are

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made to learn it because you need to pass a class for example so i want you to discard all of that i just want to if you can if you can get over

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that trauma i want you to to start fresh and see how can i actually apply flashcards in a way that is useful so i've drawn quite a bit from michael nielsen in here i have a

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few quotes that will not have time to run through completely but i will link to the article at the end um but basically there are four reasons to use space repetition or flash

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uh the first one is you don't leave learning up to chance you process knowledge much more deeply creativity stems from internalized knowledge and

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space repetition helps you to focus on the stuff that truly matters so it's basically as i'd like to say it's programming your attention it's not just memorizing something it's pulling

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your attention towards the things that you want to focus on like your 12 favorite problems so the first reason don't leave learning up to a chance most often we take notes because we want to

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not lose that bit of information or that bit of knowledge that we encountered but only if you revisit it over time it will actually become useful to you because you need to process it you need to see how you can use a bit of information

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michael i think it's michael yeah michael says when you use flashcards memory is no longer an haphazard event so you really become very

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intentional about what you learn you take ownership over basically what enters enters your mind which is very powerful if you ask me you also process knowledge much more deeply so if you

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elaborate on something if you connect ideas that you learn to other ideas that you already know or to basically your life it's much more likely that it then it

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will uh that it will stick so how can flashcards help you here as uh michael says in augmenting long-term memory he says make king anki so anki is his flash card program

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making anki cards is an act of understanding in itself i'm only reading the bullet parts if you use someone else's cards is to forego much of that understanding so wrestling with the idea to make a card

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already forces you to process that information much more deeply and then by constructing a card you're actually already helping yourself remember something much better

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so even if you would never revisit the card already creating that card will will force you to process that information much more deeply think much more deeply about that information

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then obviously nowadays we can look at everything on the web so that's often when uh so when i talk about flashcards many people say yeah i better can look up everything why would i bother with memorizing stuff well

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we can look up factual information but you cannot look up what you don't know you need to have some kind of mental map of what like what is the knowledge in your domain the domain that you want to

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discover so you need to make knowledge your own in some way so what michael says for creative work and for problem solving there's something special about having an internalized understanding and it

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enables speed in associative thought so knowing your notes database is also uh really useful to connect notes with each other

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but by revisiting those nodes using a flashcard program you actually discover what is in your node's database so that is why i really recommend you use flashcards in combination with your

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notes and then programming your attention so when you know the basics of something you can start to dig into the parts that few people know about so basically you can start to innovate

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and michael says about this by automating away the problem of memory using flashcards you get to spend more time focusing on other parts of learning so basically the concepts itself you don't have to worry

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about will i see this note again no the flash card program will program your attention all right and then we're actually going to do some

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uh i'm going to do some demoing of how to write good flash card questions first a few principles um only turn interesting questions into

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flashcards don't bother with things that you ought to know that you think oh i should know this only do stuff that you really are interested in uh in because

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flashcards will help you remember stuff so don't fill your your brain with useless bits of information uh it's it's great to learn the all the countries in africa

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but if you never are going to africa and never uh are going to do jeopardy for example as a or any other game show it's not really useful probably so so don't waste your time on stuff that you don't

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find interesting again we see the principle of atomicity so ask one question input flash card and create multiple flash cards per note if

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necessary so atomic flex cards are easier to review you can focus on one idea make it crystal clear where you and and then make it crystal clear where you

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stumble when you do so uh here is a quote again from michael i will just read this out loud because i think it captures exactly the problem if you don't make your flashcards atomic

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um what he says make most anki questions and answers as atomic as possible that is both the question and the answer expressed just one idea then he says when i make mistakes with a

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combined question i was often a little fussy about where exactly my mistake was that meant i didn't focus sharply enough on the mistake and so didn't learn as much from my failure when i feel with the atomic questions my mind knows

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exactly where to focus so what is an example of a bad flawless card and a good flash card and i hope i have it open i don't have it open but

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we'll fix that in a bit let's see yeah so here i have a question i have two notes here so let's first deconstruct the note [Laughter]

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i have on my data notes page always a heading called log and then underneath i have basically a journal entry could it could be journal entry that can be

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any bit of information that i've just written down and that i want to revisit at some point in the future so that is my log then in this case i have two notes that

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i just took randomly as i was consuming some content about css and i tag it with learn css so this is my learn log and it's about css same here so learn

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log css why do i point to this because this is log seek it's written in the outline i have the link log on top so anything i

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i nest underneath is automatically tagged with this link block so this enables me to feed it for example in a query so i can say i want to see all the blocks that have

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log learn and css if i say oh i only want to see nodes that are css but are not really a learn log just some kind of wiki i can i can specify that by replacing burn for

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something else so this is a good um flash card i should say or even just to revisit this is a really good

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way i have found so i have on top basically a thumbnail explaining what this branch what this node contains and it contains information on how to select

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html attributes with css then here i have a hashtag q and we'll see in a bit why that is useful i have hashtag q with the question how can you select an

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html attribute using css and then nested underneath i have hashtag a with the answer and then an example so this is an atomic note

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this is an atomic flex card as well because i can say well i want to remember this i add the hashtag card which in luxic turns it into a flash card but we'll see in a

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little bit what that means why do i do this q and a this is something i picked up from first scott young and then i saw it again

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mentioned by jamie mills jamie mills calls it the hq and a method so you highlight you write a question and then you write the answer to the question scott young calls it the question book

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method so basically when you highlight something and then you write a question in the margin of the book this is basically my application of that idea so i have a question i have an

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answer obviously i can just check out answers just by going to the a page but i like to have this question because

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even as i'm reviewing this so for example i want to know how to select an html attribute using css i stumble upon this note instead of directly opening the answer i

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first asked myself how can you select the html attribute using css and i first tried to retrieve it from memory so it's basically already it's already

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almost a flashcard process or yeah practice even though i haven't selected it as card every every time i encounter this note this question i just asked

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myself the question before checking the answer why because over time the more i ask myself the question the more often i look it up the more likely it will be that i will remember

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the answer so over time hopefully i will not have to revisit this specific note as i will have revisited it so often that um that it will just remember it so it's

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basically built in the more i check a specific note i have a little bit of a practice built in to ask myself like do active recall ask myself the question before checking the answer and

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then i have the answer here which is just a bit of documentation so this is a good example let's also show a bad example on how to rework it so here i have something about chaining

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selectors and then the question is what is changing and how do you chain multiple selectors in css so the problem here is it's basically two questions in one

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that's not good that's not atomic and actually i stumbled upon this today and i was like this is not an atomic note i should rework this so let's rework it together i basically would just take this entire

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note copy it paste it and then rework it so i've now two identical notes how i would do this i would first say uh what is chaining

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in css so i just remove this bit then i say changing is when you combine several elements or attributes in a single css rule and then i can basically leave out this

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second part to change select this by separating them by a dot and then i can just leave the example so this is now an atomic note and an atomic

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flash card so what is chaining in css chaining is when you combine several elements or attributes in a single css rule perfect let's rework the second note that i created

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um and then basically i would make it how do you change multiple selectors in cs tests and i say you change letters by separating them by

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an a just leave the example as it is and voila i now have two notes now if i would review them by adding a card uh or card hashtag

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i now am much more likely to remember this because i don't have to keep two pieces of information in mind i only have one

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piece of information to review and think about all right so that is for the little demo hopefully i will have time to demo a little bit more but let's see we're almost out of

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time um so finally i should also um address this so treat writing good

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flashcard questions as a skill it's not easy so i think i have a bit from uh an essay by andy matushak and michael

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nielsen titled how can we develop transformative tools for thought and then he says or they say uh cards are fundamental building blocks if you do it poorly

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then the mnemonic medium works poorly so if you see the note that we just reworked if i kept failing that card because i'm trying to smash too much information in

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that one card it's i'm basically wasting my time and maybe i'm even learning some bad habits i'm not interpreting the knowledge really correctly because i'm i'm focused on too many things

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that can really turn a flash card into a harmful practice so always look out to write atomic notes in your own words making sure that you really

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really understand the idea and then make sure that you only turn correct information into flashcards but otherwise because otherwise you're just memorizing incorrect information

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all right let's take some questions uh before jumping into some ways other ways to review questions to notes because i i sense that there

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will be uh we'll touch on this through the questions nick yeah that's going really well so first of all if in the zoom chat we can give ramzis a round of applause i'm going to do a

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physical one but if you can just do your digital version that would be awesome this is really great stuff i've taken a lot of wonderful notes yeah all right i'm going to put a uh a link in the chat

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because if you want to have these notes uh i guess you will also release this recording nick so i'm putting the link to the deluxe blog in the chat it's blog.logsy.com

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next week you will get a newsletter uh if there's already a recording you will get it otherwise to the week after with all my notes and probably a an article version of this session so definitely

00:38:56

sign up for the for the newsletter and then maybe just jump into into the q and a i see that are they ordered by number or votes no so i'm

00:39:08

going so it depends yeah you can go by most up votes if you see that so denny's at asking why lockspeak over obsidian um i'm not going to go too deep into this

00:39:22

but uh because i've already mentioned it i think for me it's really the outline structure it's the effortless effortless navigation between branches filtering out information for me that really helps

00:39:35

to reduce overwhelm um but then christian is asking what is let's see if i do answer live okay

00:39:48

so what is your approach to combining personal ideas and knowledge like code references i don't have my personal graph open now but basically i just use it in the same

00:40:00

graph and i have different tags for different processes so for example i have personal ideas of stuff that i want to do i have a query set up for my quarterly review so i just tag things appropriately and then

00:40:14

nest all the related blocks underneath that block with the tags that is basically my main approach um that's the eric eric is uh asking

00:40:30

what to do when you have a large stash of notes already that don't conform to a new way of note-taking uh eg no tags no backlinks do you have suggestions for triage yes have real life

00:40:43

projects just do projects for which you need notes and then check your notes database first so do some text searches no matter what tool use it will have some kind of

00:40:56

text search so not every tool fully depends on on notes or text or whatever go through your notes tag them as you come across them and use them and

00:41:09

i would say having real-life projects will help you identify what notes are useful and what notes you need to keep in mind that is the the best advice i can give

00:41:22

have a have a use case for your notes so that you see them again if not why would you go through the trouble reorganizing them if you're not going to use them so just do uh do just in time

00:41:34

structuring basically a few notes and then as you find a structure that works for you turn it into a template so that your future notes will all be properly structured and uh and tagged

00:41:47

um [Music] danny is asking uh can you share a permanent note that you have finished distilled with references and sources i have an example but to be honest i

00:41:59

don't really use that at a cost i've used it for a while but i i notice and i will show this in a little bit that i was just spending way too much time on each and eve each and every

00:42:12

set of custom cards basically writing way too much refining them way too much whereas these little atomic snippets tend to be much better for me so i can show it very quickly

00:42:26

let's see um oh that's the resources i should show the other ways of reviewing so i've said that i'll cast in here

00:42:37

and then for example let's see if i have one tagged as a card already no not yet so um let's see so if you're familiar with uh with robin

00:42:50

book club uh how to take smart notes this is basically uh the approach so i've a highlight here my fleeting notes underneath and as you can see here the reason why i quit doing

00:43:03

this i just write way too much it's it's like this is basically overwhelming so i like to write in branches a branch is basically so bench branched like this

00:43:16

you should see it as a yeah like a branch like that it's basically a paragraph but see how many paragraphs there are this is just way too much so that's the reason why i

00:43:30

stopped doing a zero custom i think there's still a use case for cell custom if you're an academic or writer i think for most people it's way overkill what i've just shown you the

00:43:42

the question and answer method the the the question book method that is for most people more than enough so you have atomic notes about one particular piece of knowledge and then

00:43:54

you can always link them to to other to other ideas so don't really don't over think it too too much um

00:44:08

let's see so matt is asking i'm having trouble reconciling the idea of a daily note or a journal and having only one idea per node any tips or ideas

00:44:23

on this so if we we take this outline of the the session you can basically regard every single of these headings as a

00:44:34

notes and then within that note i have more notes so basically even this block is just the note that is connected to the to the block above it so that's why i love outliners

00:44:46

i put everything on my journals page and then just create a parent block which is like a thumbnail of what is underneath and that way you write atomic notes because

00:44:59

you create branches in a tool like obsidian you would need to create separate pages probably so you would have a page for who am i why take notes why use logic if you want

00:45:11

to keep it atomic so in my case is i have why take notes and then underneath i have two more branches to learn new topics and to upload your thinking so that is really how you can

00:45:24

see that the the power of an outliner helps by putting everything on one page but then still have a way to structure it and silo information if you want

00:45:39

um five more minutes i will go through a few more questions so martine is asking i'm a bit confused with the 12 questions do they change

00:45:50

regularly do you ask different questions or do you ask different questions of different sources so these questions are basically what you are thinking about in your work and life

00:46:03

so in my case i review my 12 favorite questions every quarter so i have a quarterly review i go through my questions see which ones i basically accomplished for now and which ones need more attention

00:46:17

i've written on my personal blog about it so i'm going to put a link in it so ramses.blog i have a series of five articles titled how i take smart digital notes and i speak

00:46:31

exactly about this so i look at what's ahead in my job in my life and what i would need to focus on so i'm actually thinking of moving next year to southern europe

00:46:43

you know for tax climate for the climate itself the weather and i'm doing research what country has basically for remote worker like me has the best tax system and then i do research about that but

00:46:57

that's only a relevant question right now until i move and once i'm there i'll already everything set up so i can i can remove that question for for now uh or for then

00:47:10

all right um let's see um [Music] and then i'm going to do this last question uh by [Music]

00:47:23

um one idea per note or um oh no let's see oh yeah regarding one idea per note are you considering a note to be a page or a block

00:47:35

uh a note is a block a notes can be a branch a notes can be a page depending on how you structure your notes i regard notes as individual blocks and

00:47:49

branches so basically as i've shown already this branch which has three blocks in total including the the parent block is a note but this single block is also a node

00:48:02

it's just uh it's just in the silo of this branch i prefer to think in branches because i put everything on the journals page i don't want to think about where on what

00:48:14

page do i put this i have pages basically only for individual projects and areas so if you're familiar with building a second brain and the parrot method my projects and areas are basically

00:48:28

pages so for every area i have a page in my graph for every project i have a page in my graph and on those pages i have uh individual

00:48:40

let's see i can i think in this graph i have yeah so i have a very simple structure so here i have area slash log seek and as you can see here i have basically

00:48:53

um i see this is empty right now but i have headings that are branches so this is how i cut up the different parts of an area or a project so

00:49:08

my change in thinking went from page based thinking to thinking in blocks and branches so i think that is the biggest problem for most people when they get to

00:49:19

an outliner most people still think in individual notes in individual pages whereas with an outliner you really need to think about branches so series of blocks

00:49:31

all right that is the last question i am answering for now because we are coming up at the end of this session yes we are ramses this has been absolutely amazing and i'm just so

00:49:45

thankful that you could hop on here and really simplify something that can be overwhelming and that's the sense that i received personally from this you know looking at the the block based outliners and i know that's not giving it justice

00:49:57

but i'm just trying to articulate it in some way and those can be so overwhelming but how you laid this out and how clear it is i think we'll have a lot of people seeing what is possible and that

00:50:10

learning log and how you went about it um part of what we're having people do in each session is have takeaways and i encourage you to share those we're running out of time so share those on twitter but what is a

00:50:22

takeaway that you had or if you can throw them rapidly into the chat what is a takeaway you had i have so many myself ronnie had something earlier learning is becoming like risk management welcome to the

00:50:35

information society i thought that was a good one nice so there's some other takeaways coming in um but where can we learn more um i we've thrown him in the chat a few times but what's what's the place that

00:50:48

you recommend is it the log seek blog yeah so i'm going to put a few links i'm going to repeat block.luxeek.com so that is our own blog from the team we launched the two weeks ago

00:51:01

and basically now we are sharing how we use loxi but also have community contributors share in written articles how they use lockseek and then if you want to see how others

00:51:13

are using uh lexique there's the community hub and i've also put that in the chat i thank you nick yeah it's hub.lux um

00:51:24

which is basically a knowledge base with uh videos and templates created by lexic users so it's a lot of youtube content that i've indexed and categorized a

00:51:37

little bit so if you want to have this outline if you want to have the recording and then a written version of my talk here definitely sign

00:51:49

up at blog.blockseek.com where um from where i also sent the the weekly official lockseek newsletter so you stay up to date with what's new in luxeek with plugins themes community

00:52:03

events and basically useful content from around the web by fellow community members that's amazing and i'm actually i'm going there now and i'm signing up and

00:52:14

putting the email address as we speak so let's give one more virtual round of applause from this thank you so much for being here for for being on your a game and giving us this amazing presentation so thank you thank you and we're going

00:52:27

to be closing this one out all right thank you all and i hope to see you soon all right [Music] [Music]

00:53:01

you