Speaker 1: Hello there, my name is Mischa, I'm a DevOps engineer and Microsoft MVP, and welcome to this first video to the playlist about note-taking. This channel is going to be full of tutorials on Linux, DevOps, Kubernetes, all of that, but before we get into all of that information, I think it's actually important that I teach you how to actually process that information, and that's why we should start with having a proper note-taking system in order. So the title of this video is everything starts with a note-taking system, and that's not a coincidence. Everything starts with a good note-taking system. My notes are the cornerstone of my success, and they allowed me to achieve these milestones in record time. I changed my career to DevOps and became a recognized specialist by winning the MVP award in DevOps Engineering, Infrastructure as Code. It allowed me to write over 200 blog posts on my website, grow a YouTube channel to 10k subscribers, obtain multiple very hard certifications, all while working a full-time job, and all of this was achieved in the span of three, three and a half years. So productivity, maximizing the amount of output you can generate in the amount of time that you have, is a super important skill to learn. And the basis of a note-taking, of a productivity system, is a note-taking system. So three years ago I made my career shift to the tech industry. At the time I was a nursing assistant, but I studied at university and I was working in management for a while, but then for a few years, but I was always tinkering with computers in my free time. So then I wanted to make that into my job. So I made several attempts and I failed several times, but then I actually went all in on it and I made it my life's mission to get a career in tech. And when I made that my life's mission, I knew I was going all in. I had found my passion and I was prepared to do anything to make it come true. Now, as I said, I was always tinkering with Linux and computers in my free time. And I had like almost a decade of experience of like scripting, coding, automating video games and all of that. But I didn't have any professional experience in IT. So I had a lot of knowledge, but I also knew that I had to like gain even more knowledge, right? There was so much that I needed to read, so many certifications I needed to get, so much so much to do in so little time. And I also needed to make an income while I was doing it, right? So I needed to make, look for ways to make learning as efficient as possible. And during this research, I came across productivity YouTubers like Ali Abdaal and Tiago Forte. These guys with their second brain systems and notion and, and time management techniques. And it's actually really cool. It's really cool that all of this information is out there now. On the other hand, it's also a lot of information. Like there's too much productivity YouTube. I'm trying to distill all of that down for you. So I noticed one pattern that all of these guys had, and it was a, they all had a well-organized note-taking system. So I knew what I needed to do. I read all of the books. I read their books. I bought them. I read the books. I watched the videos. I took courses. I went really deep into this rabbit hole. And you might say, well, if you want to go into tech, why weren't you studying tech? Well, that's a very valid point, but I was studying these things because it would make my tech studies much more efficient. And that has proven to be correct. That learning a good study techniques, having a good note-taking system has supercharged my productivity and allowed me, allows me to do all of everything that I do. But so I have zero regrets spending the time, but you don't have to spend the time. I did that for you and I'm giving you everything I've learned. So before I started, and it's very likely that you're starting out like this too. You probably have like a Google drive and on the drive, there's going to be tons of folders and in those folders, there's going to be a few notes or a few documents like Google docs, and they all have names and it's just scattered all over the place. And then on your computer, you're going to have like a, you're going to have a documents folder. So here's this documents in there. And in the documents folder, there might be a folder with studies, and there might be a folder with, I don't know, your some, something about your personal interests. So now you have something in Google docs and now you have something on your laptop. And then maybe on an old laptop, you have like even more, like when you were studying in college, you took all these notes and all these notes are studying, are stored in an old laptop. It's very likely that you were just like me, all of your notes are scattered everywhere. There's no sort of system behind it and there's no intention behind it. That's also very important, like becoming intentional about your note taking because we all take these lectures in college. We all sit there, we randomly write stuff down and we read it when we have the test, but we don't actually put a lot of thought into what we write down and how it's going to benefit us in the future. It's really weird that this skill is not taught in schools, right? Like we are expected to take notes, but nobody tells us how to actually do it. So you probably have this scattered system and you probably never revisit these notes. You never use these notes. And why not? Well, because there is no structure in place that makes it easy to find these notes. You need structure, you need intentionality, you need to have a system to this. And it's so important to do this with intention, with a clear plan, because if you don't, you're just going to have a proliferation of notes that you don't know what to do with and that's probably what you already have now. So why take notes in the first place? Why would we take notes? Well, first of all, note taking fosters understanding through writing. Note taking fosters understanding, facilitates understanding through writing. When you take notes in a proper way, then you do it in your own words. So you take a technical concept like a container, right? A Linux container. Like if you don't know what that is, then we'll get into that. But when I was studying containers, the way I remembered containers was containers are like newspapers, like you have these, you can have books or you have newspapers. Books are written with great care. They have very thick covers. They are very durable and suitable, whereas newspapers, they are written once, they have very thin paper and when they get wet, they expire, right? So they are fleeting. And that is how I, this is how I remembered containers. And I still remember it. I can speak to you eloquently about containers with that metaphor because when I was studying containers three years ago, I wrote a note that containers are like a newspaper. And this is how writing can facilitate understanding because you've, if you force yourself to put things into your own words, a process of translation takes place, almost as if you're translating it to a different language. You're hooking it to your own sort of hooks that you have in your mind. Like everybody has their own hooks in the mind. Everybody has their own experiences, previous experiences. Everybody has their own adventures, stories, things you've read, the games you've played. And you can connect all of these things to your unique little things and then use that to explain the technique for yourself in writing. And when you do that, then you're going to remember. So that is one reason to take notes. It facilitates understanding. Secondly, notes can be create, used to create. If you have a big note taking system like I have, like I have over 3000 notes in my system, whenever I want to write a blog post, I just go through my note taking system and see if there's anything cool that I noted down a month ago. And that inspires me to create a video or that inspires me to create a blog post. Like I never, never sit here and think, what should I make a video about? Better yet, I have a backlog of over a hundred ideas in my YouTube Kanban where I have listed down all of these ideas that already are written out in the notes that I have in my system. So every time I create, I just sit down, pick up the notes that I have already before, stitch them together and create something new out of it. And finally, there is reference, reference. What do I mean by that? Reference means the ability to look up information and refer to it. So if you have a well-organized system that has a good structure to it, and that you can use search on, then you are able to store and retrieve information super quick. So when I was a junior engineer, I joined the team and I took notes on everything, everything. The seniors were teaching me things, I wrote them down and then I had that in my system. Well the funny thing was like when we were doing new projects, I was always documenting them in my own system and also in the proper documentation system. But then the seniors very quickly figured out that I always had it saved in my system. So very quickly they started asking me questions about, Hey Misha, how did we set that up the other day? Or how did we fix that problem? Well, I always wrote everything down. So it took me two seconds of searching. And because I had a system in place that facilitates that, I had the answer within five seconds. Well fast forward a couple of months, then the team would have meetings where the juniors were not included because it was too advanced. And then you had the meetings with the senior engineers and the managers. And then the senior engineers, they were explaining some project that they were doing. And then they thought they didn't have some information available and they said, Oh wait, wait, we have to call in Misha, Misha knows it. And then I was called in and within a few seconds I had the information. Well if a manager sees that happening three times, instantly you are a senior engineer because you are being dragged into meetings because you have the information and doesn't matter what your years of experience are. You are going to be perceived as a senior engineer because you're able to look, to have the information, look it up and explain it eloquently because you understand it deeply because you wrote about it in your own system. And because you are writing blog posts about it in the evening by creating. So recap, writing notes properly facilitates understanding. They allow you to create things, blog posts, videos, and they allow you to reference things very efficiently and quickly. So to expand on this even further, this writing, right? So if I can't write about something, then I don't understand the topic. I don't understand the topic. And let me share another quote with you. Clear thinking becomes clear writing. One can't exist without the other. William Zinsser. Okay, so I'm just going to take a sip of coffee while you digest that. If I can't write about something, I don't understand the topic. So as I was saying about these containers, right, I figured something out, my own metaphor. But if I'm studying something and I'm unable to write about it, I'm unable to take notes in my own words, it means I don't understand the topic. It means I need to dig further into it. Clear thinking becomes clear writing. One can't exist without the other. William Zinsser. So writing is thinking on paper. Writing is the basis of everything. Writing is the basis of study, of content creation, of eloquent communication, writing good emails, writing, writing, writing, writing. And guess what? How do you practice writing? By writing, by writing a lot, by writing a ton every day. And how can you write a ton every day? By taking notes on everything that you do. So my system is based around two fundamental principles, input and output. And let me open another drawing that I did, a factory. This is a drawing that I created and I'm a horrible artist, but at least it gets the point across. So you need to start seeing yourself as a factory, a factory that takes input like conversations, blogs, articles, YouTube videos, books. All of the content you consume is input to your system, goes in this ear. And then the factory is processing, it's processing all this information, writing it in your own words, it's putting it into its own categories, it's attaching it to the hooks that I mentioned to you before. And then you can use that input as output for other things, blog posts, emails, videos, courses, social media content. And this is going to be a separate video, but one, one of the biggest hacks to stand out when you're looking for a job is to have a social media presence, to have a proper online presence. There's a look on my sub stack, there is an article on there to subscribe to the newsletter. It will be down below the link down below. But on there, you will find also an article about the importance of your online presence. And I highly suggest you read that. And if you have a good note taking system, this allows you to generate this output to have a blog, to have even videos or start a YouTube channel, to write on Twitter every day, because you just use the notes that you write already. You just post them to Twitter and there you go. So you have to become a factory that takes input, processes it to create products of some kind. That's how you need to start seeing yourself as you begin this journey into DevOps. So in the next videos, in the next editions of the newsletter, we are going to dive into further note taking systems. We're going to dive into all of the tools that you can use. We're going to dive into the methods that you can use with these tools. And in this playlist, I'm going to explain everything you need to know to start building your own note taking system. But this is going to take a while for me to finish all these videos. And if you are eager to start already, then I highly recommend you take a look at my Udemy courses. Here is my course, Obsidian Quickstart, full note taking system in one hour. This will utilize the PARA method in Obsidian. And in one hour, you have a fully configured Obsidian vault that you can start using to take notes already. Or if you already are a little bit into the rabbit hole of note taking and you know what a Zettelkasten is, then I highly recommend that you start, take a look at this Zettelkasten course that I created. It is already receiving five star ratings and it is like, I am so proud of this. It's basically my life's work. I spent a lot of time and effort into the research, into the work of this. This course literally is over 2000 hours of research and practice condensed into two hours. It's everything you need to know about the Zettelkasten method and how to take notes. The links will be down below. If that is like buying these courses is expensive and you get much better value if you just join my school community, which will also be linked down below. This is currently $30 a month. And then you get unlimited access to all of the courses that are already here. You get unlimited access to the community where you can ask questions about note taking systems, connect with others. And there is like 18 pages, 540 forum posts already about note taking, DevOps, Kubernetes, everything you need to know. All the resources you need to become a DevOps engineer are in the community or going to be in the community. And there are many experienced engineers, myself included, you can ask questions. And here you see the calendar. Every week we have three one hour calls with me directly where you can ask questions. And every day we have a study hall where we gather to study our certifications and take notes together. So either take a look at my Udemy courses or buy a one month membership to my school community and you get unlimited access to everything and you can get a taste of what it is like to be in a truly supportive community. All right guys, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next video.