Everything Starts with a Note-taking System

hello there my name is Misha 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 all 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 not taking system in order so the title of this video is everything starts with a not 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 recog Iz specialist by winning the MVP award in devops engineering infrastructure as code uh 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 the

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 not taking of a productivity system is a not taking system so three years ago I made my career shift to the tech industry I I I I were at the time I was a nursing assistant and but I 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 I made several attempts and I failed several times but then I actually went all in on it and I uh I made it my life life's mission to get a career in Tech and when I made that my life's Mission I I know I 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 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 um 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 abdal and Thiago 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 and I'm trying to distill all of that down for you so I noticed one pattern that all of these guys had and that it was a they all had a well organized not taking

system so I knew what I needed to do I 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 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 that learning a good study techniques having a good notetaking

system has supercharge my productivity and allowed me allows me to do all of everything that I do but I so I have zero regrets spending that time but you don't have to spend that 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 that 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 are going to have like a uh you 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 uh 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 College you took all these notes and all these notes are studying are stored in an old laptop it's very likely that you 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 and it's really weird that this skill is not not 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 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 it's 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 not taking Fosters understanding through writing no 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 um 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 i i i the way I remembered containers was containers are like newspapers like you have these you 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 stud in containers 3 years ago I wrote a note that containers are like a newspaper and this is how writing can facilitate understanding because you 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 um Adventures stories things you've read 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 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 3,000 notes in my system whenever I want to write a blog post I just go through

my notetaking 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 100 ideas in my YouTube conon 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 the 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 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 5 Seconds well fast forward a couple of months then there the team would have meetings where the Juniors were not included because it was too advanced and then had the meetings with the senior engineers and the managers and then the the senior Engineers they were explaining some project that they were doing and then they thought they 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 in 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 facil 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 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 ziner 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 I figured something out my own meta for but if I'm studying something and I'm unable to write about it I'm unable to take not 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 inser 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 Factory this is a drawing that I created and I'm a horrible artist but at least it 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 at my substack there is an article on there too uh subscribe to the newsletter it will be down below 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 not 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 um not 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 not taking system but if you like 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 udmi courses um here is my course obsidian quick start full not taking system in 1 hour this will utilize the param method in obsidian and with 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 not taking and you know what a ttle Casten is then I highly recommend that you start take a look at this settle Casas and 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 2,000 hours of research and practice condensed into two hours it's everything

you need to know about settle cast method and how to take notes the links will be down below if that is expect like buying these courses is expensive and for you can it's 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 no taking systems uh connect with others and there is like uh 18

Pages 540 Forum posts already about not 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 uh you see the calendar every week we have two we have three hourly 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