You're not stupid: How to learn difficult things with Obsidian

I've spent the last six months using the free writing app obsidian and it has completely transformed my learning it can do the same for you and I'm going to show you how this video is not sponsored by obsidian it is sponsored by brilliant more on that later I've been learning the wrong way my entire life I mean I didn't realize it at the time I thought I was doing it properly it seemed to work for me and then about 6 months ago I started experimenting with different learning techniques and note taking systems which is when I discovered the free writing app obsidian this is the obsidian website download it here install and you will see this it doesn't look much and if you're a firsttime user you could at this point easily decide it's not for you don't do that instead create an empty vault in a location if you're choosing call it what you like it doesn't really matter mine lives in an obsidian folder inside my documents folder put put yours anywhere and then with crln this will happen your first note I have a note here on Python and this is where we start to see obsidian strengths in this note I can link to other notes that I've written which creates a note Network that obsidian will let me visualize like this now you see the advantages of obsidian it's your web of thoughts ideas research and readings and it will be as transformative for you as the worldwide web was well for the world here's why when you write traditional notes they're usually for a one-off piece of probably ephemeral work if you do store them they're all separate ideas from one set of notes can never connect with ideas from the others they're locked up with obsidian each time you write a note you're adding to previous notes nothing is ever lost because it's all part of a network your network your network of knowledge traditional notetaking traps your creativity your notes could be full of hundreds of tiny insights unable to connect with each other obsidian frees them and allows multiple connections creating a chain reaction of idea making this is the network effect applied to your learning and ideas and it turns out this is how our brains work a lot of research has been done into this over the last 20 to 30 years and I've linked to an article called teaching the science of learning which summarizes a lot of it fitting new knowledge into an existing knowledge Network helps to develop deeper understanding and summarizing in your own words something that you've read or watched also improves memory and understanding this would be a good time for me to recommend the book make it stick teaching the science of learning which discusses these methods and others in detail I think obsidium will transform your learning workflow and outcomes this is what you should do install and start using it don't create any complex systems at this stage just start a new node note and write what should you write something that interests you a thought about a topic you're learning or a summary of a book or a course chapter that you're doing or a link to a YouTube video with a brief explanation of the video and why you liked it tag it you do that by writing a hashtag and then a word those tags will form some of the links in your network and then create another note can you link the new note to the previous one and just keep working with it like that creating and grow your network the links between different thoughts and notes will start to inspire new ideas as you become more comfortable you can develop a more sophisticated workflow or you can adopt systems by other people there's the zettle Casten method which is effective but a little confusing for beginners there's a book on the zetel Casten method called how to take smart notes which uh I wouldn't recommend it for beginners just start with the basics get to know how to make notes link notes and use tags and then explore as you get more confident you can explore some of the other obsidian features like the canvas and plugins there's a lot to discover obsidian has inspired me to develop my network as fast as I can I'm currently working through my library summarizing all my books and going back through my notes putting them all into obsidian if that weren't enough to convince you there are lots of other reasons that I really like obsidian the notes data is stored on your machine in plain text files it's private and there's no proprietary format that could be a problem in the future you can also sync it with your mobile phone you do have to pay for that feature but it does mean that you can use obsidian whilst not sitting in front of your computer my biggest regret is I didn't have a system like this years ago go to obsidian MD download it and then work through the getting started section of the help page and then get started you're watching this video which probably probably means you're interested in coding and data analysis which can be quite difficult but there is a free and easy way to learn them from brilliant.org the sponsor of this video if you want to become a more effective learner then you'll love brilliant it's the best way of learning math science and data science interactively we learn by doing you can watch a video about how to tie a shoelace again and again but you'll only learn it when you give it a try and it's exactly the same with coding and data analysis interactivity is at the part of brilliant their interactive questions challenge you they make you think about the subject in different ways and with each interactive question you're deepening your understanding brilliant has thousands of lessons going from beginner to Advanced so whatever your level there'll be something there for you you can learn computer science AI data science or neural networks data skills are in high demand and you can learn these with their new data analysis fundamentals course where you get to work on analyzing and drawing inferences from real data with brilliant you can build a daily 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Channel: Python Programmer

Views: 121,132

Keywords: obsidian, how to learn, learn with obsidian

Id: QXIa0NAycGo

Length: 6min 16sec (376 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2023