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Corey Johnson
Corey Johnson

Posted on • Updated on

How do you record your learning?

Here are the survey results: https://dev.to/johnson_cor/recording-your-learning-survey-results-kjc


I have a problem, and I want to understand if others face the same kinds of issues I do. I've tried bullet journaling, handwritten notes, and building fancy Google Docs.. Yet I always seem to either lose my notes or never look back at them, even if I need to.

I'd really appreciate anyone willing to take like 5-10 min of their time to fill out the survey, almost everything is optional to fill out :)

Top comments (6)

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desi profile image
Desi

I have a physical notebook that I use ONLY for learning notes. I also have a bujo, but keeping notes separate is important.

For additional reference I do also keep a sort of online doc but it’s much less formal and I use it more to just track dates, so it’s easier to check through my notebook.

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johnson_cor profile image
Corey Johnson

I love how flexible bullet journals are! It's hard to keep online docs up to date, I prefer physical notebooks for learning.

My problem is I kept switching notebooks for things like work, mobile development studying, doodles, and they all got mixed up

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desi profile image
Desi

What about several traveler’s notebooks in a cover? One for schedule, one for notes, one for doodles etc...

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jadekin profile image
Karen Pinzás Morrongiello • Edited

I will love if you share the results! It is interesting to know what other techniques people use to learn. Let's see... If I am learning from a book or course, I usually take my notes in Notion and on paper, depending on the purpose of the note.

If it is related to the specific thing I am learning, I use Notion for my notes (for example: I am currently learning go and wrote the types of variables there). If it is related to the code, I upload it in a repo that I create for this new knowledge and I link that to my Notion. However, if during my learning, it is mentioned some concept that I don't know or I would like to check more, I write it on my "check it later" notebook (for example: I was checking some book and I was mentioned the Strategy Pattern. It was not related specifically to Go, but it was importante to check it later). For me, Notion works really well for this. I would like to add some graphics and all in my notes, but I think I need a tablet for doing that quickly.

There are some cases that I do handwriting notes during the learning process, mostly related to algorithms and math. In that case, I usually re write my handwriting notes into Notion and I put more information that is interesting.

For me, that is working really well. The idea is to have that knowledge save until It is not needed anymore, because I already understand the concept. There are other notes that I wrote two years ago and I still have them. For that reason, I automatically associate Notion = learning, and the search works really well to find things.

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johnson_cor profile image
Corey Johnson

Ah; I had not heard of Notion! It looks pretty neat! I'll share the results for sure.

I really like the concept of blocks that Notion uses, have you run into issues with dead links though? Or does it have a fancy way to import the data in a link?

For me I've always wished I could have the super fancy, well designed notes, but every time I drag an image into my notes my formatting goes off the rails. Maybe using a tablet would give you a bit finer grain control over sizing on note attachments? Every time I use an Apple pencil I'm like "So much potential, but so little support for the way I want to use it".

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zejnilovic profile image
Saša Zejnilović

Hi, I think your questionnaire is lacking to support my answer so allow me to answer here. I had the same troubles as you do, so hopefully, the answer is beneficial to you.

I never took notes. I always gave my undivided attention to the person speaking and every proper presenter, in the end, gives you his slides or notes. If it is a book or a video, I just make a bookmark if something really interested me. Then I loved to discuss with people about the stuff.

I know it is weird, but I found out that general notes keeping always just slowed me down. This is even how I finished my bachelors.

PS: This does not apply to maths. I had numerous notebooks full of calculations.