How to STUDY MORE EFFECTIVELY with the Agile Self-Learning method

1. Introduction: Hi there. I'm Steve Lydford and welcome to the Agile self-learning course. Now I've worked as a professional software developer for over two decades now. And it's been a constant struggle to keep up with developing tools, techniques, and languages. In order to help my own self directed study stay focused, organized, and efficient, I developed this technique which I call agile self-learning. The Agile self-learning method, borrows techniques and ideas from education and Agile project management methodologies and combines them into a comprehensive system for self-study. I've refined the method over the last few years and I'm excited to have this opportunity to share it with you in this course. Not just software developers who will benefit from this course. The Agile self-learning technique can be applied to literally any topic, whether it be for professional development in a fast-paced industry, working your way through a large volume of study or for a hobby or pastime. I've seen incredible improvements in my own ability to learn new topics using the methods I'm going to share with you over the next 90 minutes or so. When I think back to the efforts and frustration I experienced in my own self-learning before it started to use early versions of this technique. It really is night and day. And I'm sure you're gonna see the same sort of results by applying this technique for yourself. Now as with any new way of work in it will take you a little while to get used to it. Persevere, and I promise it will transform the efficiency and effectiveness of yourself learning and really help you make the most of your precious personal study time. Let's have a quick run through the topics we'll cover in the course. In the first lecture, we take a look at what and how to learn. Here are going to show you some of the building blocks about yourself learning. We'll look at the importance of feedback and practice, and I'll introduce you to one of the core concepts of Agile self-learning, just-in-time learning. Next, we'll spend some time discussing the importance of finding the right time and place to learn. We'll look at ways of avoiding distraction now share some techniques I found useful to stay motivated them avoid procrastination, the cause of death of so many self-study programs. The next lecture gives a very high level introduction to a workflow management method called Kanban, which will help you to visualize your work and maximize efficiency. Then I'll go on to talk about test-driven learning, which is a technique that I've developed to help keep your learning focused and ensure that you're meeting your learning goals. In the penultimate lecture, we'll talk about the importance of planning your study. And I'll share with you some of the techniques that I use to show that I can fit my study in around all my other commitments. And finally, I'll spend a few minutes bringing all of this together by walking you through a typical learning week. So you can see how easily all these tools, techniques, and processes combine to create a powerful yet flexible self-learning system. As you can see, there's a lot of information patterns and next 90 minutes and no time for filler. So take your time, pause the video and take a restaurant you need to and be sure that you've really understood each section. Before moving on. I've included some notes and other resources throughout the course, but I think you may find useful. However, it's definitely worth having a notebook to hand. And be sure to use the Q and a section of his anything you wanted to discuss with myself or other students. So with all that said, let's dive straight into the first lecture, what, and how to learn. 2. Part 1: What and how to learn: Hi there. In this lecture I'm gonna be talking about what and how to learn. Over the next few videos, I'll be discussing how to choose not only what to study, but just as importantly how to maximize the efficiency of your learning time by identifying the areas of your chosen subject which perhaps deserve less immediate attention. There's a whole wealth of information out there. And it always seems that there's something new to learn. But clearly, no one has the need or the time to learn absolutely everything about everything. Knowing what not to learn is almost as important as knowing what you should. In the first video, in the lecture, I'll begin to show you the ways I decide what to learn. Later on, I'll be showing you some techniques for studying which I found useful. Now these techniques go beyond the simple note-taking and other traditional study techniques that I taught in formal education. And instead focus more on techniques for assessing your progress and using that another feedback to continuously improve your learning. See you next video. 3. Just-in-time Learning: Hi and welcome back. Now starting out in our journeys, learn anything of any substance is a huge commitment. Whether that be photography, computer programming, cookery, filmmaking, or many other subjects. The sheer amount of things that you need to master, and the amount of information available to you through books, courses, websites, blogs, YouTube videos, and other sources can not only seem overwhelming, but can actually prevent you from learning quickly. My personal journey to become a software engineer as a prime example of this. If I look back at the study, I did join my first ten years right in software. I can see that this huge wealth of information caused me to spend, I would estimate at least half of my time learning and practicing skills that have little or no practical use. Let me try to explain. You see when you start out, you have very little knowledge at all. So you will seek out and likely find some material and plants and study time to help you gain the fundamentals. Now this is incredibly useful and definitely will help you ensure you have a good foundation on which you can build your new skill set. But once you've got this basic knowledge, where do you go next? And this is generally where the problems begin. You see having gained a fundamental knowledge of a subject, a whole world will begin to open up to you. But you'll begin to realize just how big that subject actually is. And there'll be topics which you covered join your foundation learning, which we will now recognize as being huge subjects in their own rights. And even more comes about as you dig deeper into those. And pretty soon you can be left realizing that not only as a subject way bigger than you first thought, but that the percentage of that you actually know is getting smaller and smaller the more you discover. Sometimes this can lead to psychological phenomenon known as imposter syndrome, where you begin to doubt your accomplishments and develop a kind of irrational fear of being exposed as a fraud. But do you really need to know everything about a subject to be successful with it? Take filmmaking as an example. In order to make films, whether it be simple videos like they're saw, feature length documentary films, you will need to pay many skills and one of those editing. Now, just that one skill can take a lifetime of learning and practice to master and many followers a career in his own right. But do you really need to master every nuance of editing and every other facet of filmmaking in order to start a YouTube channel or create a course like this? Well, of course not. You need to master just a tiny subset of those skills and honestly successfully complete your specific tasks. And this is the key, I call it just-in-time learning. Decide on a specific target or to accomplish and learn just enough of the skills required to complete that task immediately before you're going to use it for the first time. Now learning takes time, and depending on the complexity of the task is important and your level of confidence, you may want to factor in some additional type of practice. But applying this concept of just-in-time learning means that you can start producing useful work almost immediately. And you're not wasting any time learning skills that you either need or you forgotten by the time you actually come to use it for the first time. Learning has never been more daunting. We have access to the entire knowledge of mankind literally in our pockets. And there was always someone on the internet or in your circle of friends or colleagues who knows more about any given subject, the New Deal, we hear a lot about imposter syndrome. But if you're using your skills to achieve your objectives, you are definitely not an impostor. I let my lesson the hard way. I wasted literally years learning skills which I've rarely if ever used. The real lesson is you don't need to attend all the lessons. You don't have to learn every facet of everything. Learn just enough to complete the task at hand and build from there. It's great to watch videos and read books and articles about areas of your subject we should find really interesting, but which are not necessarily rated the task in hand. But be careful not to go down the rabbit hole and spend hours, days or weeks. Learning skills which you can't put your immediate use. Remind yourself to stay focused level you need to get the thing done and then just get it out there. See you in the next video. 4. Your Learning Map: Hi there. In this video, I'm gonna show you how creating and maintaining a learning map can help you to organize your learning and decide which subjects to study and in which order. And now in its simplest form and learning map is simply a kind of mind-map or spider diagram. As you'll know, the study of new material relies on previous knowledge. So this type of diagram is perfect for storing and visualizing these relationships and dependencies between subjects is a simple learning math which I drew and beginning to study photography. As you can see in the center of the map is the name of the overall subject. And the next level below, directly linked to that other distinct subject areas which I felt were important to study within it. When I say distinct here, I mean that the subject areas of this level wherever possible, should be independent without dependencies on any others. For example, learning how to compose a good photograph does not rely on prior knowledge of focusing lenses or using the settings on the camera to achieve the correct exposure. Also at a later date, if I decide that I want to learn about particular topic, I know which topics I need to understand first in order to have the base knowledge of study my chosen subject requires. For example, if I had a need to study white balance by looking at my map, I know that I need to understand color temperatures first. If like me, you come from the world of software engineering, you can think of the learning map as being analogous to create another high level architectural vision of a system before its development. In other words, this is the system of plans it creates, and here are the subsystems that we think will be needed in order to achieve this goal. Notice how I said we think will be needed. You'll learn in map must evolve as you learn more about a subject and discover there are new topics you wish to explore, perhaps which were not obvious at the start, or that some topics are less relevant than you thought or, um, actually have dependencies which you were unaware of it, the star. And a couple of lectures time. I'll introduce you to test-driven learning, which includes a mechanism for keeping your learning map up to date. But how do you go about creating that initial version? But if you already know something about the subject, you may well already know enough to start creating a learning map. But if this subject areas brand new to you, like photography was for me one great place to start and look in the table of contents of relevant books on the subject. Even better news is you can often do this free of charge by using the look inside feature of the Amazon website. This is very simple to do. Just go to the Amazon store and find a couple of highly rated books on the subject, which seemed to be aimed at the level you're currently app. For instance, I search for beginners digital photography. Then visit the product page of each of the books you've chosen and click the image of the book's cover on the left-hand side to open, look inside. Note that not all books in the store, how this facility you need to look for ones with a look inside logo displayed on the top right, the cover image. Then on the left-hand side under book sections, click Table of Contents. The chapter headings are good candidates for the first level nodes in your learning map, with the subsections being possible subtopics and so on. Do this for a few books. And so you think you have a good starting point, but do remember this is just a starting point. The real power of the learning map comes from the act of keeping it updated. As you become more familiar with the subjects. Of course, you can keep your learning map on paper, but I prefer to use a software application to do this. There are many free and relatively inexpensive apps available. I've used a few, but I'm currently using mind maple. The big advantages to using software to create a virtual map rather than a physical one on paper. And that the map can grow to a huge size without being constrained by the physical limitations of the paper size I've chosen. And I can move parts of the map around to make more space or when I discover that dependencies exist, which I was unaware of initially. In addition to that, many mind mapping applications allow you to store some additional information against the nodes, are uses to store links to reference materials or may have come across, draw my investigations into the subjects, set a priority and mark off completed topics. Lead amounts are such an important part of our gel self-learning that we'll visit again a few times in this course. For now, just familiarize yourself with the concept by drawing initial learning map for a new subject you're interested in and try to explore in some suitable software applications if you think that's how you prefer to manage yours. In the next video, I'll show you the technique I use if I don't know whether a topic is going to be useful or not, how much there is to learn or if I don't understand exactly where it belongs on my learning math. 5. Spikes: Hi. From time to time I'll come across subjects which seemed kind of interest in from the outside. But I'm not really sure how useful they are actually going to be. As you know by now, I advocate learning only what is really necessary to fulfill some function and always try to avoid falling down rabbit holes. In my study. However, it's not always obvious exactly whether a particular topic is going to be useful to me in the immediate future. And there is a chance that by trying hard to avoid rabbit holes, I dismiss a useful subject by mistake. But other times I'll see the title of a topic and a book and I'll have no idea from his name whether I should study or not. In both these cases are employers simple technique known as spiking. Now a spike is a short time-boxed investigation to a topic which only serves to answer the immediate questions such as, what is this topic about? Should I include it in my study? What priority should I place on it? Or perhaps even how long will it take me to learn this subject? If I have a question such as this, I wish to answer before I include on my learning map or planning or longer study period, I'll set aside a suitable amount of time to correct my investigation. I usually find that I can complete most spikes within sort of 15 to 20 minutes, but the amount of time you choose to set aside is not really important. What is important is that you keep to the timebox. If you set aside 20 minutes, keep to that. 20 minutes. Don't fall down the rabbit hole no matter how interested you'll find it in. To answer the question I set myself or spike, I'll usually either read the first couple of sections about that topic in a book or I'll simply jumped to the conclusion, which often gives me enough of an understandings know what the subject is about, whether it might be useful to me, but it absolutely will. Books to hand. I'll look for something online. Maybe. Short summary article or a video. Youtube is great for this. It's very often possible to find a short five to ten minute video about subject, which will just give you enough of an OU to decide whether it's somebody you would find valuable to look into in more detail. You're essentially trying to carry out a cost-benefit analysis. In other words, is the knowledge I'm going to again, by studying this subject is going to be worth the cost of the time spent doing it. If you do decide to continue studying the subject, you just need to add it to your learning map along with links to any useful material you may have found your interspike. If it turns out that learn that particular topic is not going to be useful to you. At least you've got to spend a short amount of time on it rather than losing hours, days, or weeks. Before I move on, I just want to share with you one other reason why I will now and again use a spike. Sometimes I just want to learn something for fun. Perhaps this will be something slightly off my current topic of learning or something completely different even it's definitely important to ensure that your learning it stays fun. And a little off-topic study is definitely one way to achieve that. Just be sure to time box it just as you would for any other spikes. This helps you to kind of ensure that it doesn't become a huge time sink and become a massive diversion away from your original topic. 6. Deliberate Practice: Hi, As I've said before in previous videos, it's really important to make sure that you're learning is fun. You're going to spend a lot of time doing it and it's much easier to be motivated to do something which you are enjoying are usually achieved this by actually having a go at whatever it is I'm trying to learn, taken the new knowledge and apply it into kinda real life scenario. And that is such an important point, you really, really do need to practice. There's actually a term used in educational psychology called transfer learning, which occurs when people apply newly gained knowledge and skills to new situations or contexts. This is the central part of the learning process. You really do need to ensure that you include time for this in your learning schedule. It kinda completes the learning process and really helps cement that new knowledge or skill. Deliberate practice doesn't need to be a really time-consuming activity, but you should definitely find some way to apply the learning yourlist opportunity. I've computer programmers, if I have just learned a new part of a programming language or a library, I'll simply spend a few minutes write a small program which put four I've just learned to use. If you're learning about digital photography and you just learned about the exposure triangle, you could just spend a while with your camera, taken some different pictures, changing the ISO, aperture and shutter speed settings until you're certain that the book theory just learned has been transferred into practical knowledge. It's also about doing this periodically to revise and reinforce old and knowledge. Now I appreciate that this can perhaps be a bit hard of a more theoretical subjects. However, it's really important to try to find a way to achieve this as best you can. It's such a vital part of the learning process. This is perhaps where the tests and conversations with mentors or I'll talk about in the next video, can be extra useful. Anyway, however you achieve it, please remember that in order to really know some of the new must find a way to transfer your learning into a practical skill. Thanks for watching. 7. Feedback: Hi there. What's constructs in any sort of study, It's really important to gather as much feedback as you can and make use of this feedback to make incremental improvements. This is difficult when self-learning, but you can achieve this by critiquing your own work and seeking feedback from others. And then learn the skills necessary to make the improvements that you want to make. This applies not only to what you're learning, but how you are learning too. It's important to take the time to introspective points, join yourself learning to try to spot ways to improve your process. Production. Not be as disciplined as you'd like about your study. You'll find that that really early morning sessions that you've planned a just not working out for you. Whatever it is, it's really useful to sit down for awhile and try to think of some ways to improve your study process. Write down all the things that you wish to be better and all the things that are going well resolved to keep doing all the good stuff and choose one or two items to really make an effort to improve over the next few days or weeks or months. So once you've finished watching this course and your began to try out the Agile self-learning method for yourself. I would definitely encourage you to carry out this exercise, which is commonly called a retrospective on a weekly basis to start with after a while, once you've settled on a process and structure that works for you might want to relax this and do it less frequently that you will know when the time is right to do this. So that covers the how. But how do you gather feedback on what you've learned? Well, you can get feedback from applying your learning, but not just as part of deliberate practices I talked about in the last video. Using your new knowledge in larger projects can also give you great feedback. Whether that's a work or at school or personal projects. Applying your learning within a wider context can really help to see where it fits in with the rest of your skills and knowledge. One of the benefits of the test driven learning technique that I developed is it gives you a very fast feedback cycle to see how you're progressing in your learning. So be sure to check out that lecture later in the course. It's also a great idea to get feedback from others. It can really help to listen to ideas that you would never have thought of yourself as someone with a different view. I'd recommend that you try to find a mentor, someone who is already more advanced than you. And they are able to give you feedback and show you what to learn and more importantly, what not to waste your time with. This allow you to have a much more focused approach to how deep you need to go in any particular subject. They'll tell you what's genuinely useful and what is just wasted. Learn in that you'll likely never got into practice. Now I know that go find a mentor sounds like an easy thing to say, but a much harder thing to do. But it may not necessarily be as difficult as you think tripod and our Shelton social media groups to see if you can find someone willing to spend just a little time with you to help you with your learning. I know quite a few people have used this approach with great success. Then that you would just take an hour or two of that time. And you may be surprised how willing experts are to help out others early on in the journey. Remember, they all started out where you are now and no doubt they had some help on the way. Another way to fundamental is to find a friend or a colleague that is more advanced than you in this topic who'd be willing to help you out? Perhaps there's even some of them that they're learning which you can help them with. Or perhaps I don't know about the Agile self-learning method. And you could offer to show it to them in the return. Time spent getting feedback is rarely wasted. Just be sure to really listen and apply it. And I'm sure you'll see significant improvements in your studies. 8. Learning with other Agile Self-Learners: Hi and welcome to the last video in this lecture, I'll be discussing learning with others. Although it certainly can be if you so choose, self-learning doesn't necessarily have to be a solitary activity. It can be very motivated and effective to meet, discuss, and learn with other people who were studying the same subjects is U. This can be done a number of ways, either physically or online. And there are a few groups, study activities which I've seen work very successfully in the past. The first of these are simple study groups. You simply all agree to study a particular set of topics, perhaps from the same book or online course, and meet regularly to discuss what you've learned. These usually run on our weekly or bi-weekly basis in a similar fashion to book clubs. The meetings can start with a question such as, did anyone find anything particularly difficult with this week's topics as a starter and the discussion kinda rolls on from there. It's worthwhile in these groups to also discuss ways of learning as well as what's being learned. It's a great way to share any other interesting materials and subtropics that members of the group of found at the meetings usually finished with a group of green on the next set of chapters or topics to study and set a date for the next meeting. Another great way to learn together with other people is through group practice. This can really help with the transfer part of the learning process. As a software developer, this is relatively easy. I'll just find a friend or to have a free couple of hours and we'll write some code together using a new technique or technology, which we both in learning. Think about how you could practice your new found skills and knowledge with others. It can be a great way to relax and reinforce your learning at the same time. Although there are many other ways to learn as a group, I just want to cover one more example here, extreme landing. I love this technique and I've seen it to be super effective many times in the past. Extreme Latin is best used when there are a bunch of related sub-topics within chosen subject. I've used it in the password. Software developers learning design patterns for other examples might include therapeutic uses of hydro plants if your group is studying herbal medicine. Or the common forms of figurative language, simile, metaphor, irony, et cetera. If you're studying to become writers. In the first part of each session, each person takes one subtopic and spends a short-time research and prepare your presentation. In the second part, each person in turn presents what they've learned to the group. We usually limit presentations to our lightning talk format with five minutes for the presentation and two minutes for questions. Any questions that can't be answered by the presenter, taken away by everybody to be research further. This really is a fun at an incredibly effective method and I would definitely encourage you to try soon. Well, that's the end of this lecture. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one where I'll talk about when and where to learn. 9. Part 2: When and where to learn: Hi there. In this lecture I'll share with you a few tools, techniques, and tips that I hope will help you get the most out of your learning. Modern life places ever-increasing demands on our time. And our time for learning can often be a hard one thing which needs to be juggled around work, family, exercise, household chores, and many other necessary activities. As this is the reality for so many is vital that you have the right environment and state of mind to maximize the effectiveness of your study time. In the next video, we'll look at choosing the right time to learn. 10. The right time for learning: Hi, Welcome back. Over the next three videos are going to be talking to you about the three factors that you need to consider when choosing the right time for your study, the time of day, and even the days of the week that you choose for studying can have a huge impact on your ability to absorb new information and really learn effectively. Your most effective time for learning would likely be determined by one or more of three factors. Energy levels, unavoidable distractions, and immovable time constraints. These are all things over which you often have little control. So especially recognize them, accept them, and plan accordingly. In the next video, we'll look at the first of these three factors, energy levels. 11. Energy levels: Okay, so it's time to look at the first of the three factors are introduced in the last video and see how you can take advantage of your natural energy levels for learning. Most people naturally are times that day and days of the week when they feel most energized and others when they feel a little more lethargic. If you haven't noticed this in yourself, try login your energy levels every hour over the next week. This data will prove invaluable later on when we look at how to schedule effective studies are. When I try this myself, I noticed the regular pattern each day ride feel most energized early in the morning between 68 and around eight until ten at night. I also noticed that although this pattern remain pretty constant throughout the week, my total energy levels dip between Thursday and Saturday. Speaking with others, it seems this is a fairly common pattern, but the exact time is changed person to person, so it's definitely worth checking your own. I'm being honest with yourself. It's very easy to tell yourself that you'll get up super early every morning and study. But that's not your natural rhythm. You simply won't sustain it. As with all girls, it's super important to be realistic right from the start. The difference between studying at a time when you're feeling super energized, enthusiastic versus the time when your feed in tide and less committee can be incredible. Personally, I can find myself wasting a huge amount of time reading and rereading the same texts and even fight and sleep. I get this wrong. I'm a morning person. I love to go out before the rest of my family and spend some quiet time reading and learning before they all gather for breakfast. I find this time so valuable to my learning and to my mental health. I love the feeling of having achieved so much well, it seems like the rest of the world is still asleep and missing yeah, and other sunrise. However, I have many friends who are night owls. I see their code commits all their social media posts or 3AM the night before and wonder how they even managed account for work in the morning. But it definitely works for them. And it's way more rock and roll. In my experience studying when you're in a state of exhaustion, even if you're learning schedule says you should be studying is completely pointless. It's generally much better to get the rash you need and hit the books when you're fresh. One good energize sessions is definitely worth at least three tired ones. Well, that's it for this video. Thanks for watching. In the next video, we'll look at the second of the three factors you need to take into consideration when planning your learning. 12. Immovable time constraints: Hi and welcome back. In this short video, I'd like to take a look at the second of three factors which affect your learning zone. Immovable time constraints. Now, even if you would like to be spending every waking hour studying and learning realistically, you probably have some other time sensitive commitments in your life which cannot be moved. This factor is fairly obvious and you were all worried, know what some of these time constraints are. In most cases you'll simply have to schedule your study around these times. But it's definitely worth thinking about each of them to see if they are indeed completely immovable. Perhaps there may be a way to reconfigure your commitments, to optimize your learning time by asking your boss for flexible working hours all changing the time ends of regular family meals, for example. Some simple adjustments may be possible to provide you with a few longest study periods rather than many shorter ones which I find beneficial, particularly when I'm studying a new or more complex topic. So these are a few of the ways I've found to do with time constraints in order to try to get some solid chunks of time set aside for learning. In the next video, I'll share some ways to deal with the final factor, unavoidable distractions. But before you move on, I would definitely encourage you just to spend a few minutes to note down a list of the time constraints you have in your life. Once you've completed the list, go through each of them in turn and explore whether they really are immovable time constraints, or whether there's something you can do to adjust them in some way to give yourself a good, solid period of study. Thanks for watching. 13. Unavoidable distractions: Hi there. In this video, I'll talk about the final item in the list of the three primary factors which can affect your ability to find quality time to learn unavoidable destructions of the last factor involved in determining your most effective times are learning. I'll talk a little bit about removing avoidable destruction later in this lecture. But some distractions are simply out your control. Fortunately, many instances of unavoidable destruction of fairly predictable and can therefore we factored into your learning schedule. For example, perhaps you have a close friend or relative who calls about the same time each week, or your kids like to come into your office to say hi and talk about their day out again off the school bus. Both of these are very pleasant distractions, of course, but they'll certainly have you put in Daniel book or closing your laptop. So it's best to work these into your learning schedule in advance. That way you won't be so affected by the interruption and you can enjoy the interaction without feeling guilty that you're supposed to be studying other forms of unavoidable destruction and not necessarily completely out of your control either. Everyone has other tasks which you must accomplish during the day, would chop houses to clean mail, to deliver a dogs to walk. The key to effectively managing your time here is to plan to do the less mentally challenging task for the times of the day or less optimal for your learning. When I'm in self-learning mode, I'll try to do as many of these tasks as I can in the early afternoon, early evening when my mental energy is at its lowest. So that concludes our look at the three factors that can have the biggest impact on your study time. If you're able to take into account your natural energy levels can move a few activities around to free up more quality learning time and work to minimize unavoidable distractions, you should be in a much better place to start planning some really effective study. In the next video, we'll take a look at the importance of the physical environment when it comes to studying. 14. Physical environment: Hi and welcome back. In the last few videos, we explored the ways you can try to ensure that you have some quality time set aside for learning. But as well as making time to learn, It's important that you also consider exactly where you're going to be doing your study. That's what we're going to look at here. Now I tend to study in one of three places, home on my commute or in my office. But there are many other places to consider if these don't see your lifestyle. Although these are suddenly becoming rarer each year. If you're lucky, your towel will still have a public library. These can be great places to study, which is specifically set up to provide a quiet environment for reading. They actively encourage silence and provide places you just sit and read. Most public libraries will have computers you can use often free of charge and have decent free Wi-Fi. On top of that, there's a whole bunch of books for you to investigate. Local parks and coffee shops are also worth exploring. If you are lucky enough to live in a part of the world with a pleasant climate. Studying outdoors on a sunny day is certainly a very pleasant experience. However, I was trying to take a physical book rather than a laptop or some other device due to the glare of the sun on the screen, which can make extremely difficult to read. I also study and work in coffee shops occasionally. But I often find that combination of coffee grinders, espresso machines, milk, steam is chatter and jazz music. Far too noisy and distracting for me to concentrate on anything that's really complex. Over the past few years, co-working spaces have become increasingly popular. Many towns and cities. Some of these often run by corporations such as banks and large technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are available to the public free of charge. Others are available for a small fee from specialist co-working and services office companies. Now I've worked in many of these and found them to be a great place to get some quiet study completed. All the ones I've used about excellent facilities include in a high-speed Internet connection and often complimentary drinks and snacks. I found the audio books can be an excellent source of learning, particularly when combining them with another activity such as commuting or exercising, which otherwise would not have my brain engaged. However, you do need to be a little bit picky about the audio books you listen to. I found the audio books are much more suited to books other than those describing deep technical subjects, is it can be difficult to skip back and Redis intersections you didn't fully grasp first-time round. It. Also taken notes whilst listening to an audio book on your commute can be pretty difficult. Wherever is it you plan to study? I find that having a well organized and tidy environment enables me to have a greater focus and limit the time I spent searching for the items necessary to accomplish my goals for the session. Before starting a period of study, I'll spend a few minutes to tidy up my immediate area and remove all visual distractions such as papers, unrelated books, and other general clutter. I also like to get everything that I know need for the session close to hand before I start. I would much rather spend the time learning efficiently in a focused state than being mentally interrupted when I hung around for the materials I need. Okay. Thanks for watching. In the next video, I'll talk a little bit more about avoiding distractions. 15. Avoidable distractions: Hi there. I spoke in an earlier video about the importance of organizing your learning time around any unavoidable distractions whenever possible. In the next few videos, I'll talk about some potential distractions which are easily mitigated or even completely avoidable with a little forethought and planning. But I'm studying. My aim is to put myself into an isolated bubble of learning where I can focus without distraction. One tip for minimizing avoidable distractions is to play some level of artificial friction between you and the possible distraction. For example, if you need to have your phone available to answer incoming calls, but have a tendency to check it far too regularly like me, for messages or social media posts, for the phone into Do Not Disturb Mode and place out of arm's reach. This way you'll be much less tempted to just quickly check. To make this even more effective. You can try placing it somewhere behind you at your direct or peripheral vision, out of sight, out of mind. Distractions come in four major types, or all visual, physical, and mental. In the next videos, we'll look at some strategies are used for minimizing the impact of each of these in turn. 16. Minimising audible distractions: Hi. In this video, we're looking at the first of the four major types of distraction to study, or all distractions. Now most people work or study most effectively in science. However, this is not always entirely possible, especially without some careful planning. The others around. You know, that they're really appreciate some quiet time where you study, explained to them what you're trying to achieve and ask them to keep noise to a minimum wherever possible. For example, I'll ask my kids to play outside for a while or if the weather is bad, which is more often than not when warehouse where I live, I asked them not to use the television in the room next to my office or not play the drums for a while. At least. Some oral distractions are inevitable, so try to delegate responding to them to others. For example, I'll ask my family to answer the phone if they're here at ringing, greet unexpected visitors such as delivery drivers, or deal with the dogs if they start barking. As quiet as you ask others around you to be, it's unreasonable to expect them to make no noise at all. Even if they could, they will always be some other noise such as air conditioning, planes flying overhead, traffic or other street noise. In order to overcome this, I often like to study wearing headphones. I'm lucky enough to own a pair of noise canceling headphones, which my whiteboard me as a birthday present a few years ago. Now the thing that I enjoy most about these is that I can use the noise canceling function without having to play any music at all, which is extremely effective. If you don't currently own a pair, try to find a store where you can try them out. They really are remarkable. They're often quite a bit more expensive than standard headphones. But you may find they're worth the investment for you. If I'm traveling, I don't have my noise canceling headphones with me. I find that listening to music, what I study is a great way of minimizing all distraction. However, I don't listen to our usual playlists as I find that I'm far less able to concentrate if I'm listening to music with lyrics. Instead, I have a separate study playlist, which contains only instrumental music. If you use a music streaming services such as Spotify or Amazon music, a quick search for something like music for concentration or music for studying will return a set as it will play this. Okay, I'll say it for all distractions. In the next video, we'll look at ways of minimizing visual distractions. 17. Minimising visual distractions: Welcome back. Now that we've seen ways to set up a study environment free of noise distraction, it's time to see how we can try to eliminate visual distractions. Along with oral destructions, visual destructions of the most light integrate your concentration. The instincts developed over millennia which have helped us to survive as a species, can actually work against us when they tried to have a period of understand concentration. Operands are actually hardwired to notice noise, a movement, which means that movement is the most important visual distraction to minimize. Our brain has a bill in survival instincts, which interprets movement as potential danger and prioritizes immediate investigation, overriding almost any other activity. This is super difficult to overcome. So you should try to set up your environment to avoid potential distractions caused by movement. If you're studying at home or in any other buildings such as a coffee shop or library, tried to set up your workspace and it's not facing a window or generally busy areas such as the water cooler or coffee machine or reception desk. Our peripheral vision is extremely effective. So the very best place to vote without distraction is often with a desktop in a corner against a wall. The view may not be great, but that's kind of the point. Are predisposed and unavoidable tendency to be distracted by movement is the reason that notifications from the various software applications we use day to day or so effective. The designers, these applications have cleverly developed these notifications specifically to grab our attention. One way to combat this is to use the Do Not Disturb function of your computer operating system to switch off all notifications while you're studying. In the next video, we'll look at ways to cope with a third and penultimate item in our list. Physical distractions. Thanks for watching. 18. Minimising physical distractions: Hi and welcome back. In this video, we're going to look at ways to minimize physical distraction so you can get down some really concentrated study. Now, I'm going to assume that no one is going to come along, join your study periods and stop physically poking you or something. Just as a side note, if that is happening, you really, really do need to get that sorted. Instead, I'm going to focus on some of the internal signals that our bodies give us about our physical environment. To start with, let's talk about physical discomfort. It may seem obvious, but I think it is worth station that you should always try to ensure that your study environment is comfortable and at the correct temperature. Study with cold hands or with your shoulders and back AQIM because your chair is uncomfortable for your workstation, is stopping correctly force and use a hunch over or stretch is neither fun nor good for your general health. And other factors. Lighting, having your eyes strain because you're trying to read a light, there's either too bright or too dark, will tie you out really quickly. Having a comfortable physical environment will make your learn in a much more pleasurable experience, among which you'll fill. Just much more motivated to spend time doing. Spend the time to set your workspace up to be as comfortable as possible. This is your home office or another place you use regularly and over which you have some level of control, the time spent doing this properly will pay itself back tenfold. Another avoidable natural physical destruction is that of hunger or thirst. He's just don't study about when you're hungry. And studies have shown that even the slightest level of dehydration as a marked effect on the ability of the brain to process new information. Try to ensure that you're not hungry or thirsty before you start and have some water and healthy snacks or hands. And you can quench any hunger or thirst without losing concentration through the Nita. Leave your study area to hunt around the kitchen for a snack. Food is fuel for your brain as well as your body. So it's important that you eat the right foods. Brain foods are called just that for a reason. If you fill up with junk food and carbohydrate, heavy meals and snacks, you'll find it much harder to achieve not alert focused state. Try to avoid heavily processed food and eat as healthy as you can. You will notice a difference in your mental fitness just as much as your physical fitness. High caffeine or sugary drinks may appear to give you a boost of energy, but that boost is very short-lived. Aside from having a negative effect on your general health, consuming the highly caffeinated or high sugar drinks will actually harm your ability to concentrate for a sustained period and cause a crash. One's initial boost wears off. You're aiming for sustained periods of intense concentration, not just short burst hyperactivity. Well, this just covers a couple of items in this category, but you get the idea that you need to work to make your learning environment as comfortable and non-physical a distraction as possible. In the next video, we'll look at ways to minimize mental distractions, which is the fourth and finalizing analyst. 19. Minimising mental distractions: Hi, Welcome back to this video where I'll show you a few ways I've learned to help avoid mental distractions when I'm learning. Now is boring, mundane, and unfortunate as it may be, we all are things that just need to get done. Whether it's bills that we need to pay phone calls to make things to fix around the house, or just simple chores to be done. These things have a tendency to nag away as our brains will interrupt us at the most inopportune moments of deep thought to remind us that we need to book the car in for service to avoid this wherever possible. I was trying to aim to clear these jobs before I start study to ensure I can learn undistracted. If this is simply not possible at that time, I found that if I have at least planned a time later in the day to fix them, my subconscious is far less likely to interrupt me while I'm studying. Another task that I was undertaken for studying is to turn off email, instant messaging, and social media updates. Have a quick look at each before you start to set your mind at rest. There's nothing urgent there. And to stop your brain nagging at you to check, but be disciplined enough to ensure that you don't consume a large portion of your study in time. Answering non-urgent messages and reading non-important updates. Once that is done, closure e-mail client and social media and messaging apps and set your computer, Do Not Disturb mode. Or even better, put it into flight mode if you don't require internet access. It's Orpheus study. Well, that's it for the four types of destruction. In the next video, I'm going to introduce two topics which I have struggled with in particular, and I know many of you do to motivation and procrastination. 20. Motivation and procrastination: Hi, Good to have you back. In the next few videos, we're going to look at two of the most common barriers which stop people reaching their full learning, potential, motivation, and procrastination. So stay Leninist, tough. It requires a lot of energy and motivation to keep going. You'll likely be used to having a lot more free time and probably trying to squeeze in some learning at times where your brain and body are used to getting some rest and relaxation. But humans are so successful as a species precisely because of our natural ability to adapt to new circumstances and environments. My best advice if you're struggling to get into a cycle of sustained learning or anything really is just to push through and use some means to really force yourself to achieve in the early stages. Habits soon form. You'll find it much easier very quickly, even to the point where you'll miss it if you don't do it, almost negating the need for motivation at all. So we're forming a learning habit is the goal. What can you do to help for me quickly? What I've tried many ways over the years. But the three that were particularly well for me are cues, streets, and deadlines. In the next few videos, I'll show you how each of these techniques can be used to really help you get started and remain focused. 21. Cues: Hi. Let's look at the first of the three techniques which I have successfully used to cure problems I have with motivation and procrastination. Cuz the idea of a queue is that you tag on a new activity, one that you would like to form a habit of onto an activity that you already regularly perform. This is a powerful but simple technique. So powerful in fact, this effect is often felt strongly by people trying to give up bad habits. For example, if you've ever spoken to someone who has tried to give up smoking, they may well have told you that they find it hardest after a meal or when they're having a drink with friends. This is because they've created a strong cue between finishing a mill, for instance, and smoking a cigarette, you can use the same effect to your advantage to help create a new and much healthier habitual behavior. Try to identify an activity that you perform every day onto which you can tag a habit. Almost any action which you perform naturally and regularly can be used as a cue. Finishing your breakfast, taking your shoes off when you come in from work, kissing your kids good night or feeding your dog. Even the idea is that you decide on a suitable queue and from that point onwards, always perform the activity you wish to make into a habit immediately after it spent a few minutes now, going through a typical day and tried to identify one or two activities which you always perform, which may be good cuz are forming a learning habit. Ideally, these would be activities. Afterwards. You would normally have some free time to yourself. For me, one of the first things I do every day is to go to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee. I so then sit down and watch the news on television or catch up on some social media or other messages instead or replace that with learning. Now when I have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, I instinctively go and sit at my computer and start to study the next topic on my list. It no longer requires any effort to do this. It's habitual and actually it would feel pretty odd if I didn't do it. Motivation can be hard at times for everyone to be able to form a habit strong enough that no motivation was required, provides a significant advantage in your efforts to meet your learning goals. Next up, we'll look at a bit of gamification, in particular streaks and how to apply the concepts you're learning. 22. Streaks: Welcome back. So back in this video is perhaps a little odd, but it really works for me. Let's see how streaks can really help you maintain momentum and your learning program. Essentially, a streak is the number of consecutive days in which we achieve your goals are kind of learning gamification. I set myself a minimum target each day and I use an app, original wrote a basic command line app to help me with this. But now I use a mobile app I found on the App Store. And I'll just simply log the achievement of that goal each day. I said a simple question which I need to answer yes or no to each day, such as, did you study for at least 90 minutes a day? For every consecutive data I answer yes to the question, my streak increases by one. Soon as I answered No, my streak is reset to 0. I hate it when my street resets. I mean, I really hate it. In fact, I'm using this technique to help me create this course. I've set a goal of creating the amount of content per day and night. I haven't achieved it yet today. So here a ham for me, it's a really powerful way to motivate myself when I would normally be feeling less inclined to work or study. It may or may not work for you, but it's definitely worth a try. I found it to be incredibly motivating. What might you take this a step further will be to add an element of competition and share your strings with your friends or colleagues. We're also aiming to achieve some sort of sustained effort. So hopefully you can see how streaks may help you stay motivated to learn and curb your procrastination. In the next video, I'll share one last technique, deadlines. 23. Deadlines: Hi, let's talk about deadlines. Now this one goes against the grain for me a little. I've never been a fan of deadlines, but there's known as an ionic. They definitely to work. I think my aversion to deadlines come from the kind of arbitrary deadlines set by bad managers to try and get people to work late nights and weekends. The kind of deadlines that don't stand up to scrutiny, but they're setters can't justify when questioned. However, I have noticed myself a deadline to achieve some learning really does benefit my learning. I don't think it makes me learn faster or for longer periods, where it does provide a focus that prevents me from tendency to wander off pieced into interesting but less for useful subjects. A good deadline must have a reason. So try to set yourself one. Here are some examples I've used successfully in the past. Prescheduled the publication of a blog post explaining the subject. This is usually pretty easy to do if you are using any of the blogging websites. Simply create an empty blog posts with just a title and set it to be automatically published in a few days time. Fade into Learn and right, we'll meet a blank post has published, arranged to give a talk on a subject in a few weeks time at a conference, local meetup or internally at lunchtime to your colleagues. Plan to collaborate on a small pet project with a friend or co-worker on a set date using the skills you are planning to learn. Start a study group where a group of like-minded people gather periodically to discuss what they learned and commit to the next batch of learning. I'll talk about this more in a later lecture. All of these deadlines are fairly arbitrary and more result in nothing more than a little embarrassment or worst if missed by half found they do provide just enough pressure to encourage focused study. Okay? Hopefully those three techniques will help you to remain focused. Do give them a go. I know they can sound perhaps a little bit weird, but I really have found that to be useful. Next up, we're going to continue talking about motivation by looking at the three stages of skill acquisition. 24. The three stages of skill acquisition: Welcome back. One common way that people start to become demotivated when learning a new skill is the perception that they are not proceeding as well as they initially hoped. This is perfectly normal when we think rationally, we know that it takes a great deal of effort, patients and practice, and a certain amount of failure to master anything of significance. You may be aware of Malcolm Gladwell's assertion that to achieve expertise in any field requires 10 thousand hours of study and practice. Yet we all still secretly believe we'll be able to master this new thing pretty quickly. Your natural rights. As we start to learn though, this initial optimism starts to fade as we realized just how unskilled We are. Now rationally, it makes sense that we are going to be a novice to start with, but it can still be pretty demotivated. Prior discovered a way to overcome this is a simple trick, but it's quite effective and actually makes lot of sense. The key is to realize that the ability to perform a skill is not binary. You don't move immediately from not having a skill to be an expert. There are in fact three phases. Unskilled, becoming skilled, unskilled. So the trick is to realize this and tell yourself that in this middle phase you are becoming something. For example, if you're learning to paint, there was a great deal to learn before you can achieve such a standard that you can show your paintings in the gallery. You can work away for weeks or months and be no where near the standard you imagine you would be by this stage. This apparent slow progress can be frustrated and causes many people to consider quitting altogether. But actually this is just your natural initial unrealistic optimism, meeting realism smack in the face. So what's happened while you believe your own hype and tried to think of yourself as an artist far too early. You're definitely no longer unskilled, but you're also not yet an expert. You are simply becoming an artist, recognizing that you're in this middle phase and being excited by the opportunities it gives you, but allow you to accept the occasional failure and associate frustration much, much more easily. So remember, anything worth doing takes effort, and whatever you are learning is certainly worth doing. But there are no shortcuts to gain new skills, is gonna take a lot of effort to master your chosen subject. In the next video, we'll talk about that extended effort. 25. Relentless forward momentum: Hi. When auto long distance runners describe how they can complete runs over such huge distances, they often refer to the relentless forward momentum. The idea is that as the energy levels of ebb and flow over the course of a race, they persistently chip away at the overall mileage. Sometimes faster, sometimes more slowly, but importantly, they never stop and give up. A 100 kilometer ultra marathon is run one step at a time. The same goes for your lifetime of learning. There was always something new to learn and it can easily become a daunting prospect. This is really quite normal. In fact. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you're not feeling a little daunting at some stage, you probably just don't realize how much effort is going to take to master your chosen subject. You're almost certainly not be able to maintain a constant level of energy throughout your study. Whether it's through illness, other commitments and opportunities, or simply that you will find it more difficult to grasp this particular subject area. The amount you're able to learn may vary from day-to-day and week-to-week. This can make a huge difference to your sense of satisfaction and your motivation. On a good day we're learning seems effortless. And he managed to achieve above and beyond that which you set out to, the sense of satisfaction will be sky high. And you'll be motivated to try and do the same again tomorrow. But on the flip side, days which are seemingly less productive, can be hard to take, especially if this happens repeatedly over an extended period. The important thing is to accept that this is perfectly normal as the American military and either create and w Abrams junior once famously said, when eating an elephant, take one bite at a time. Mastery of a subject will never be a smooth one. But remember to take heart in the fact that we're making progress in becoming more and more skilled each day. Don't know about sessional to get you down. Don't give up. Just remind yourself that it's a long road and it doesn't matter if you slow down now and again, as long as you maintain a relentless forward momentum. Thanks for watching. In the next video, which is the final one of this lecture, we'll talk about context switching. 26. Context switching: Welcome back to the final video in this lecture. The final short piece of advice I want to share in this lecture is to minimize the cost of context switching. There's a cost we pay whenever your brains, which is focus. Some time needs to be spent building up a new mental model for each task. And there is a risk that you'll relate to fail to recall something you had a memory before the switch. If you're switching from one familiar menial task to another familiar menial tasks, the cost is quite low as the mental model is probably quite lightweight and perhaps well known to you. However, when learning new subjects, switching in and out of learning mode can be very costly. Try to set aside time for learning where you will not be required to switch between tasks, but also try to plan learning session so that you will only work on closely related subjects within the session. If, for example, you're currently studying two unrelated subjects, which is common join formal education, for example, it's optimal to plan for each self-learning session to cover only one subject, and certainly never switch back and forth between subjects multiple times. So that's it. My final piece of advice for setup a great environment for learning. Do spend time to follow the advice and try out the ideas I've shared with you in this lecture. If you have any other tips or techniques, please do let me know and I may well include them in a later update. Bye for now. 27. Part 3: Kanban Basics: Hi there. In this lecture, I'm going to give you a quick overview of the tools I've found really useful for organizing myself learning. Um, really the thing that starts to explain the title of this course are Joel self-learning. Kanban, which means sign board or billboard. And Japanese is a technique for organizing work which originated in the Japanese manufacturing sector since its invention over 60 years ago, it's become really popular in many other industries. I know well, for example, from its extensive use within the software development industry, where the primary benefits of Kanban limiting work in progress, visibility and flow are highly sought after. I use this technique for just about any non-trivial task on working on whether that's complex software projects, hope improvement jobs, right? In this course, in this lecture, I'll show you how this very same technique can be applied to your learning. So you can realize these benefits and improve the way you organize and learn new subjects. In the next video, I'll show you what a Kanban board looks like and some of the basics of how the system works. 28. The Kanban Board: Hi. In this video we'll be looking at the layout of Kanban boards. First-off, we will see perhaps the simplest possible example, but we're pretty quickly, we want to slightly more complex one. Finally, you'll design your own board tailored to best match your self-learning process. The Kanban technique involves visualizing the work to be done on a board. Originally, these were large physical boards, but in more modern times, especially designed software applications are also available. Originally on these boards, work items were written onto index cards or Post-it Notes and are much more common and track through the various stages of manufacturer. The name actually applies to the physical boards as well as the cards themselves. The kanban board is broken down into multiple columns. The number of names of these columns will depend on the specific process you are trying to track. Here we can see perhaps the simplest form of Kanban board containing just three columns to do. Doing and done. As you would expect, the to-do column contains several cards, each containing a single work item. In our case, this will be a specific subject or topic we wish to study. The Doing column contains Ediacaran, which we are currently working. The final column done is where we place cards which had been satisfactorily completed. The idea of a kanban board is the item support from the columns on the left into the columns on the right, usually without skipping columns. In a civil case here, we'll pull items into the doing columns from the to-do column. Once an item is complete, we'll put it into the done column from the to-do column. This process just repeats over and over until the entire to-do column is clear. Now the example we've just seen is probably a bit too simplistic for most scenarios. Most workflows can be broken down into more than three useful steps. Have to think about a process, you know, well, perhaps the way you currently organize your work and try to identify the natural steps within it. As an example, the Kanban board I'm using to organize my work will I create this course has the following columns. To do. Planning, scripting, recording, screencast, recording, video editing, and done in the x2 column. I have all the work items yet to be started. In this case, it's the name of each lecture I want to record, along with some important items I want to cover and some links to material of research. The planning column contains the cart described in the lecture I am currently planning. The third column, scripting contains causes, the scrubber lectures, which I've planned it outlined, but which need more work before they're ready to record. The fourth, fifth columns where I actually record the lectures at the moment. The fifth column contains a single car titled Kanban basics. Not all lectures contain both talking head videos and screencasts. So I may skip a column here. Once I'm ready to edit, I pull cards into the editing column. This is a natural pause in my workflow as I tend to gather a few lectures together before I added them. This is my preferred way of working as an example of customizing your board to best suit your natural workflow. I actually move one color at a time, even though I tend to process them as a batch, this helps you to visualize a work and ensures that no items are skipped. Finally, once electrodes edited is cart is moving to the dem column. Once all cards are in this column, the course will be complete. Easy. This adequately describes each of the usual steps in the process as each one describes either a complete stage of work or a significant natural pause. There's no one size fits all approach to design your Kanban board. Describe the process which makes sense to you and fits naturally with your way of working. Now it's time to design your Kanban board for self-learning. Have a think about the way you'd like to learn and make a list of all the stages you pass through from knowing nothing about the subject to having gained that knowledge. These stages are the candidates for the columns on your board. Now I have seen a tendency among new Kanban practitioners to splits they use into multiple columns unnecessarily and create columns which are simply skipped over most of the time. Well, there's no limit to the number of columns and a Kanban board, I would encourage you to err on the side of fewer columns to avoid redundancy and just unnecessary administration shuffling cards around. You can always add more later if you feel the need. However, bear in mind a Kanban board without at least three columns is really nothing more than a to-do list. Here you can see an example of a board for self-learning, but this is only a suggestion, be shorter customized to suit your particular workflow. For now, just write down a list of columns as we'll be looking at some different options for representing the board later on in this lecture, spend a little time work on this before you move onto the next video, where we'll see what goes on each of the individual cards in our board. Thanks for watching. 29. What's on the cards?: So now that you've decided which columns you need on your Kanban board, it's time to start adding cars to the first column. Exactly what goes onto each card is actually entirely up to you. The Kanban technique itself does not prescribe the content of each card, but it should at least have a title which succinctly and accurately describes a work or learning to be done. In addition to the title, however, you may find it useful to include some additional information. For example, you may want to include due dates. If a piece of learning needs to be completed by a particular date, say a job interview or exam. The owner. Probably not so useful for self-learning, but I've included it here just in case you decide to use this technique for organising your other work, but a wider team may be involved. Category of work. Color-coded systems are popular for this, or you can make use of swim lanes, which we'll look at in the next video. The estimated size of the work item. You can use a time estimate here, or you can use another popular method, which is commonly referred to as T-shirt sizing. This is where you assign a size such as small, medium, large, or extra large. So each card, rather than a time period. Acceptance criteria. We'll cover this in more detail in the test-driven learning lecture later in this course. Links to relevant supporting material such as research or specifications and checklists of subtasks to be completed in order to accomplish the work described. Where do you keep all of this information on the car or in another associated document will depend largely on how you choose to store your cards, either electronically or physically on index cards or Post-it notes. I'll say that discussion for a later video. Next up, we're going to look very quickly a simple way to categorize items on your Kanban board. 30. Swim Lanes: In some circumstances, it can be really helpful to categorize the work items on your Kanban board. In the case of Agile self-learning, it may be useful if, for example, you're learning covers two or more unrelated subjects areas. If this is the case, you may prefer to use swimlanes on your Kanban board to separate out the subject areas. Swimlanes amount horizontally across the board, as seen in this example. And a swim lane effectively acts as a separate Kanban board. I'm always hesitant to use this technique because it can have an impact on flow and visibility. I have used it in the past on software teams working on more than one project at the same time. Or to mark a lane for high-priority items such as bug fixes, which need to be dealt with immediately, and may have a separate release cadence to the rest of the software. As I mentioned before, if you're studying two or more distinct or perhaps even completely unrelated subjects, you might want to consider using this technique to keep those items separated. It's really up to you and the way you prefer to visualize your work, okay, now you know everything you need to actually create your board. In the next video, I'll take you through a couple of options for representing your ball. 31. Visibility: Representing your board: Hi. Traditionally kanban boards are large fiscal affairs which until software driven alternative started to become more popular, occupied a prominent position within NDT. Physical boards can take any form. Often whiteboards or wars are used, which allow the whole team to gather around to discuss items. Unless you have the space to do this. And you always tend to do you're learning in the same place. I would suggest creating a more subtle portable version. The necessity for a whole team together and discuss the items on the board is not really relevant for self-learning. So a smaller version is sufficient. A simple piece of A3 cardboard can make an effective board and it can be laid out so that can be folded in half and easily carried. The column should be drawn on using a marker pen and smaller 1.5 by two inch potion. Those can be used to represent your learning items. I've also seen effective personal Kanban boards made in the first double-page spread on the inside cover of an A4 notebook. Many people prefer physical kanban boards over their electronic counterparts. Mostly I think they prefer the tactile experience of working with index cards and enjoy the sense of satisfaction of having finished with a particular item and physically moving it to the next column. One big advantage that I've found as a person working across multiple software delivery teams with large physical boards and team areas, I'm able to walk past and get a sense of the current state of play and identify any impediments and potential bottlenecks at a glance. Although large video displays permanently display in the electronic board also provide the same advantage as part of Agile self-learning. It could also be motivation to be able to see your progress permanently on display. However, in the past few years, and electronic software based kanban boards are becoming increasingly popular and offer several advantages over the traditional physical boards. If you're like me and you spend a lot of time using a computer software Kanban board can be a really good option. One obvious advantage is the portability of your board. Your board can be available to you across any device with an Internet connection. Most software based boards off a web-based interfaces, and many include native mobile apps, although perhaps less relevant for self-learning, the portability of electronic Kanban boards delivers an interesting side effects. Collaboration. Using an electronic board, you can instantly share your board with others and collaborate on projects without the need to be in the same physical location. Most common software, but also allow you to add much more information to a car than simply the title. I often had way more to a card on an electronic board than I could ever felt on a post-it note on index card. I can add due dates, tick lists of subtasks, doubt acceptance criteria, and has many nodes and links to researchers I like. I find it really useful to be able to have all the information right there in one place. If I'm working on a physical board, I'll tend to create a document on my computer with the same name as the card where I'll store all this information. One final advantage of electronic boards is that many would allow you to view the history of the cards and gather starts to help analyze the flow of your work. And the cards are there forever with the full context attached rather than consigned to a part of used cars in a drawer or wastepaper bin. I've included links to some of the most popular software applications which include kanban boards in the resources for this lecture. If you come across another way that you particularly like, please do, let me know and I'll include a link so that others can check it out too. Once you've had a look at physical and software boards and settled on the one that you prefer. Set up your ball with the columns. You missed it early on in the lecture and start adding a few cards for the learning items you want to cover in the near future. Forgotten too many just for now, perhaps just two or three, just to get used to the board. 32. Flow: Hi and welcome back. Once you build a board, whether physical or electronic, then add some card and start using it, you begin to notice one of the key benefits of kanban flow. You'll notice that some cards stay longer than others. Well, it costs tend to gather in one area of the board, revealing bottlenecks in your workflow. You'll also start to get an appreciation of exactly how much learning you can expect to complete in any given timeframe. One major reason I recommend the use of Kanban is its ability to improve the efficiency of your self-learning. And by efficiency, I mean, getting items from to do to done through however many stages you've identified in your personal workflow as quickly and smoothly as possible. I just want to say a couple of minutes here to introduce you to the theory of constraints. The theory of constraints was first described by an Israeli management consultant called EM Gold Rush and his 1984 book, the goal is theory states that every system has room for improvement and that the current performance of a system is bounded by his most limiting constraint. Following that to its conclusion, removing the most limited constraint will have the effect of instantly improving the performance of the overall system, which will then be limited by a different constraints. I find it useful to think of a system as a chain consisting of many individual links. Under extreme tension, that chain will fail is weakest link. In other words, the performance of the overall system is bounded by as most limiting constraint. If you work to strengthen the weakest link, the performance of the overall system will be improved and the new limiting factor will be the next weakest link. Anytime we spend improving the performance of anything but the weakest link is just wasted. The theory of constraints provides a set of five focusing steps designed for identifying and eliminating constraints within the system. Step 1, identify the most limiting constraint, the one that bounds the overall performance of the system. Step to make quick improvements to the throughput of the constraints. This can be thought of as making the most of what you have. Are there any obvious measures that can be taken to prevent this part of the system being the most limiting constraint. Step 3, review the other connected parts of the system to ensure that they support the needs of the constraints. For instance, in a software system is one part of the system flooding the constraining part with requests could according code cache some results or we optimize and other ways to reduce the number of requests. That for if after applying the previous steps, the constraint is still limiting the overall performance of the system. Elevate the priority of the work required to fix the bottleneck and proceed with this work until it is no longer the motion limits and constraints. And the final step is to repeat the process. This step is a reminder that there will always be a part of the system which limits the overall performance. After all, if there was nothing preventing the system from achieving better performance is throughput will be infinite, which is clearly impossible in the real life system, by rigidly applying the theory of constraints and thereby acknowledging that the performance of a system can always be improved. You can see there will always be opportunities to work to remove constraints. However, the theory should only be applied until the system performs comfortably as required. Any time spent working on performance improvements beyond that is likely wasted as assessable, never be pushed to those limits. Therefore, it's important that you're able to monitor the performance of the system according to requirements in order to know not only when they had been breached, but also when they're being consistently achieved. By applying this technique to your own self learning and observing the flow. You'll begin to see areas where the overall process or more likely individual parts of it can be made more efficient. Look to identify the things that are getting in the way and slowing down your learning and what to remove those constraints. In the next video, which is the final one in this lecture, we'll look at one more technique for maximizing flow. Thanks for watching. 33. Work-in-progress: One of the key benefits of Kanban, But listed way back at the beginning of this lecture was limiting work in progress. In this video, I'll explain this in detail and show how this can be a real benefit to yourself learning. It sounds almost counter-intuitive at first. But by limiting the amount of work we are doing at any one time, we can vastly increase the amount of work we do overall. Limiting the amount of work in progress, often simply referred to as WIP, makes it easier to identify inefficiency in a Kanban workflow. It does this by helping to identify bottlenecks to which we can apply the theory of constraints and prevent large cues from building up in any one area of the board. More specifically to the era in which we're interested, self-learning, limiting work in progress will mean that you are forced to concentrate on one particular learning subject at a time, which is generally a much better way of learning over context switching between subjects. Learning is one of my favorite things to do, and I always want to learn more. So work in progress limits Give me a great tool to keep you on track and help you focus. Context switching between learning tasks doesn't come for free. It takes time and really degrade your focus. It's almost always better to work through any issues and complete a learning task rather than pausing the current item, maybe never to actually come back and complete it and start a new subject. In other words, whit limits discourage us from impeding our own learning flow. To apply work in progress limits, you simply need to set a limit for each of the columns on your board and only poor work into that column if there is sufficient capacity. Some software Kanban boards allow you to set a hard witness it. But on those that don't or on physical boards, just make a note of the WIP number in each column header and be disciplined about applying it. It'll take a little experimentation to get your WIP limits, right, but it's much better to start with a lower limits and relax and later than the other way round. It probably doesn't make much sense for the first and last columns on your boards have Whitman emits. But every other column should. The exact number will depend on your specific workflow. But I would suggest having certainly no more than two items in progress in your learning column. You may prefer to batch them iTunes, which is fine. In which case you'd want to have a slightly larger WIP limit on those columns. But it's important to keep the batch size is as small as possible. Before increasing the witness on any column, be sure to understand the cause and apply the theory of constraints to any bottlenecks. I've often found that I've been able to keep WIP limits low by showing them my work items are sufficiently small and that they contain all the information I need to complete them. So to wrap up then, kanban is a relatively simple, yet highly effective technique which can greatly improve the focus and speeding your self-learning provided that process is followed with a little discipline. One of my favorite parts of using Kanban to manage myself learning is the huge sense of achievement, motivation I get from having all of the progress I've made so easily visible, you just can't beat the feeling of moving a car, describing a subject you thought you'd never get the hang of into the tub and column. If you find all this Kanban and theory of constraints stuff as fascinating as I do are highly recommend you read The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim and Kevin Behr, one of my favorite books on the subject area. I'll include a link in the resources. Be sure to spend some time to design and evolve your personal learning Kanban board, and impose some work in progress limits. Or we strive to keep the board up-to-date and only pull items into a column with capacity, investigate, and fix bottlenecks as soon as you observe them. And I'm sure you'll notice the very positive effects that this simple technique and a half. Okay, that's it for this lecture. Thanks for watching. See you in the next one. 34. Part 4: Test-Driven Learning: Hi there and welcome to this lecture where I will introduce you to a technique which I call test-driven learning. Now, any of you that have worked in the software development industry will no doubt at least heard of the extreme programming development practice of test-driven development or TDD. Test-driven development is a simple three-step repetitive process which is used to enhance quality. Although it can be difficult to master if a software engineer is prepared, but enough deliberate practice to master this technique provides many benefits. Now, full introduction of TDD is certainly outside the scope of this course. And to be honest, if you're not a software engineer is not going to be of much use to you. However, to a software developer, test-driven development provides the same kind of benefits as first providing a proof before developing a new formula does to a mathematician. Or the double-entry bookkeeping does to a bookkeeper to ensure correct accounting. All of these techniques are essentially a way to introduce some rigor into a process to ensure that the final product is correct and complete. While correctness and completeness sounds like a great thing to be aiming for when we're studying. So I developed test-driven learning as a simple technique which I applied to my own self-learning to introduce this same level of rigor. In the next video, we'll take a look at the technique in more detail. Thanks for watching. 35. The Test-Driven Learning technique: Hi there. Like test-driven development, the test driven learning technique follows a simple three-stage repetitive process. The basic idea is that you just keep repeating this cycle over and over until you're learning is done. The three stages and the test driven learning cycle are stage 1. Write a test stage to learn just enough to pass the test. Stay Shri, revisit your learning map. Let's look at each of these in turn. Stage 1, write a test. Before we begin learning any subjects you should always try to write down exactly what you are trying to achieve. You need to define some success criteria to help you focus and so that you know when you're done. One of the biggest benefits of instructor-led training, such as private coaching college courses are online training programs, is that the instructor has provided a specific curriculum for you to follow. A good instructor will design this curriculum to provide you with a route to learning where each lesson in a particular subject will build on the knowledge gained in previous lessons. More importantly, though a good instructor will provide focus to ensure that you cover all the most important areas of the subject in detail and don't get bogged down in the less vital parts. This kind of guided focus is easily missed them yourself learning, which can result in a self-learning program which takes way longer than is really necessary. In the worst-case, this can cause you to run out of energy and enthusiasm due to a lack of progress and may even eventually lead to you giving up altogether. As a primarily self-taught software developer, I've fallen into this trap more than once. Software development is a huge subject and it would take more than a lifetime to master every aspect before I started developing and using some of the techniques I'm describing this course, I would often waste huge amounts of my valuable learning time disappearing down rabbit holes. Investigating subject that we're at best only distantly related to the subject I set out to learn. And we're often have no immediate practical use. And I dread to think of how many hundreds of hours I have wasted learning subjects that while interested in at the time, I've never actually made any significant use of the Internet age is certainly not made this focus and easier. While it's true that having always the entire knowledge of mankind at our fingertips gives us incredible opportunities. It has made it much easier to fall down these rabbit holes of learning. Although the worldwide web is now used for much more than simple webpages, the primary purpose of Tim Berners Lee is original design was to allow Internet users to not only share their documents, but to provide a simple way to connect them using hypertext links. However, this means that it's incredibly easy to lose focus, simply serve interest in links, and end up far away from our original goals. To prove this point, try visiting a page on Wikipedia and clicking ten random links. I can almost guarantee that you will end up in a place with a best only a tenuous link to the original page. In order to counter the tendency in temptation to wander off on some interesting but potentially worthless diversion. You should always write a test before you start to learn these subjects. I don't necessarily mean a quiz, but more a criteria to keep you on track and to know when you're done. As learning is focused on increasing your abilities. I've found it helpful to begin these statements with the phrase. Be able to, some example tests maybe be able to describe the MVC application architecture. Be able to decide on the correct hyper focal distance when composing a landscape photograph. Be able to calculate the percentage increase of two values. Be able to list the core practices of Extreme Programming. Be able to apply a layer mask to multiple layers in Photoshop. Just remember to keep the test concise, unambiguous, and measurable and the learning goals small enough to achieve in a short period. Of course, if you are studying for some kind of formal examination or interview, and I've access to some sample questions, these can make excellent candidates we'll test, however, ensure that they are concise, unambiguous, and measurable so that you can focus on small learning chunks. Any larger essay style questions, maybe best broken down into smaller parts. If you're studying for a job interview, be sure to look for lists of like the questions on the Internet. Many interviewers will simply grab ten or so sample questions from Google rather than spend the time to write their own. As an example, I've just searched for nursing interview questions, teaching interview questions and store manager interview questions and all return and many pages of results stage to learn just enough to pass the test. Now it's time to begin learning. You should already have a list of suggested learning materials attached to the cart and you're learning back walk. This will give you a place to start and help to focus the session on learning, rather than trying to find relevant information. While you are learning, keep your test in mind. As soon as you are satisfied that the success criteria has been met, this subject can be considered dumb, and it's time to move on to the third step. Resist the temptation to continue, even if you have found some interesting related areas which you wish to explore. Stage 3, revisit your learning map. This third step helps you to keep track of your learning and to keep it relevant. Often as you're learning in particular subjects, you will discover new areas of knowledge linked to your current subjects. Sometimes these are the entrance to a relevant rabbit holes, but many cases are important or interesting areas which is simply didn't know existed and have uncovered join your research. So once you have learned not to partial test, you should open up your learning map, mark off the item you have just learned as complete and add any new subject areas you wish to explore to the map. This step will help you to continuously evolve and grow your learning map and provide subject areas for future iterations. Just as importantly, it provides a mechanism for keeping your learning focused on the success criteria of the current subjects and gives an outlet for their natural tendency to explore, albeit at a later date. The three stages of test-driven learning, uh, designed to be followed in a repetitive cycle. Never be tempted to skip a step. Well, that's it for this video. In the next video I do a quick wrap up of the test-driven learn a technique and give you a few pointers to help you get started with it. Thanks for watching. 36. Following the cycle: Hi there. In this final video of this lecture on test-driven learning, I'll aim to help you get started with this technique so you can use it to increase the effectiveness of yourself study. As I mentioned in the last video, the three stages of test-driven learning are designed to be followed in the repetitive cycle. Never be tempted to skip a step. Now is easy to stray from the path and start to learn something without writing a test first, perhaps because you've found a subject so interesting. Learning can be incredibly addictive. However, this will inevitably lead you down a rabbit hole. Court didn't lose focus and to lose the benefits of just-in-time learning. It's also tempting to skip the last Stephens and not revisit your learning map, perhaps intending to do it later. In my experience revisited you're learning about later rarely happens even with the very best of intentions. And you run the risk of missing out on some interesting or important than and opportunities later on. So it really is best to be disciplined and stick to the three-step cycle. The cycle is designed to provide an almost robotic, factory-like method of optimized learning, which will soon fall into a habit. But in order to allow the habit to be formed, it must be particularly disciplined, especially while you're new to the method. This technique builds on the lessons learned from other industries which have successfully introduced simple rigor into their workflows in order to achieve faster, more focused on high-quality outputs. Although the process can fill laborious and dogmatic to begin with, do persevere and spend some time, but it's become accustomed to the flow. Like anything. It becomes much more natural with practice. And I've seen huge benefits when applied to my own learning. As the title of this course suggests, you should remain agile throughout your learning and not be afraid to make changes or drop individual practices if you're not seeing the benefits. However, if you do choose not to use a test-driven learning technique is described in this lecture. Be sure not to lose the value it brings. Maybe you've discovered another technique which brings the same or perhaps even more value. If you have, please do get in touch. I love to learn more about it and give it a go. Okay, that's it for test-driven learning. Please be sure to check out the resources for this lecture. And I'll see you in the next one where we'll be looking at creating a weekly learning plan. Thanks again for watching. 37. Part 5: Your Weekly Learning Plan: Hi there, Welcome back. Back in the earlier lecture when and where to learn, I talked about the importance of finding the right time to learn the advice. In this lecture, we'll take a stage further and look at how you can go about coming up with a more precise plan view we could learn. Now I tend to plan my learning on a weekly basis any longer than that. And I find that things crop up too often, which means I have to make changes to the plan which I find irritating. I'll assume you'll be using the same weekly time period of your planning for everyone's lives are different. So if you feel something different may suit you better, experiment with it and see if it works for you. In order to give yourself the best chance of having a successful week, it really is important that you spend some time to sit down and plan out not only what you're going to commit to learning, but just as important exactly how you're going to achieve it. Study time for me is very precious and I'm certainly not prepared to waste it by working in an unstructured and haphazard fashion. In the next video, I'll show you the technique are used for planning my learning sessions for the week. 38. Your weekly schedule: Hi there. In this video, I'll share with you the quickest and most effective way I've found for planning my week of study by following the advice of the lecture on when and where to learn. You will by now either know or be in the process of conducting experiments to find out your own personal optimal times we're learning. Now. And this is so important to maximizing your learning deficiency and can have such a huge overall impact that I strongly encourage you to watch that chapter and follow the advice within it if you haven't done so already. Now you'll make use this information to plan out your schedule for each week. To create your weekly learning schedule, you'll simply take your optimal learning times and map them onto a diary for the week. The idea of this exercise is to plan your study periods to occur as often as you can during any optimal learning periods. We don't clash with other direct commitments. This is much easier to do if you're disciplined about recording all your planned activities for the week, both work-related and personal. My process for doing this is quite simple and involves three separate diaries. The first diary contains all my work-related appointments which is shared with my colleagues or use a secondary to schedule all my personal equipments which are shared with my family. Finally, the third diaries, weekly recurring entries for my optimal learning times. All of these diaries maintain using Google Calendar, which allows me to create as many diaries I like under a single account and toggle them on or off as required. So if I just want to look at my work schedule, I can just view that and then I can overlay my diary, a personal commitments if I so wish. Once a week I overlay the optimal learning times diary too, so that I can plan my, we can study. I'm sure many others schedule and applications will share this functionality and I find it incredibly useful. I've got my learning schedule for the week onto my personal diary. The schedule is set by finding as many one to two hour sessions as possible. Jury, my optimal learning times which don't clash with either personal or other work commitments. Sometimes it's just not possible to fit all of your learning time within your optimal learning periods due to some other immovable commitments. If this is the case, you'll need to find other times we study, but be careful about this to ensure that your schedule is realistic and achievable. For example, try not to plan to study at times when you. 39. Planning each session: Hi. In the last video I showed you the way I work on my schedule for the week. Now that you have that works out, it's time to plan exactly what you want to achieve. Johnny session. This time spent up front will mean that you can truly focused on in each session and get straight to work, making the most of the precious time you have. I also find that having a plan for the week and asked me to start thinking about the subjects in general and what I want to achieve even when I'm not actually study. Each session should have a goal which you estimate as being achievable. Join that session. Start with the highest priority item on your backlog and break that down into smaller chunks if necessary to fit in with your available plan time. Now is a good time to ensure that you've gathered all the learning materials you need. A stopping a session to hump or books or other materials is both wasteful under strategy. For each of the week sessions, consider the following questions. Do you have a clear, realistic, achievable written goals for this session? Do you have a way of testing your comprehension at the end of the session? Do you have all the necessary materials listed and easily accessible? 40. Learning materials: And self-learning, you can think of choosing good study materials to be like choosing a good school. So it's definitely worth spending some time here to discuss the selection of learning materials as they are such a fundamental factor in the success or failure of your study. I found it useful to consider the following factors when selecting the materials, I'm going to use my own self-study alignment of goals before choosing your learning materials for each session. Sure, you have a clearly defined goal against which you can evaluate the suitability of any specific material. If you're lucky, you'll find great learning material that exactly matches your goal. However, this is rarely the case in reality. So you may need to find materials from several different sources to satisfy your needs. It can be tempting to continue reading, watching, or listening to interest in topics even when it's no longer exactly aligned to your current goal. But it is much better to stay as focused as possible. Stop or not. This new topic you're learning map, noting down the location of the interesting material you've just discovered. This focus is one of the goals of the test driven learning technique, aims to achieve trusted sources based on your self-learning on credible information is vital. If you've ever formed foul of this and spent time learning what you thought was great. I want to find out that you've been reading a biased or poorly researched article, you'll know how frustrating it can be as the ability to self-publish information both on the web and imprint grows. So does the need to carefully assess the reliability of your sources. Try to evaluate learning materials against the following four criteria. One, authority is the author of well-respected or authority on the subject. Do they have an established body of work in the area? Has the material been edited and published by well-known source? To accurately can you quickly establish the accuracy of the source material? Doesn't material reference verifiable data gathered from a reliable source. As the author carried out sufficient research subject before publishing. The presence of a bibliography could be a great indicator here. If you're still not sure, try to find multiple materials on the same subject and be sure they back each other up. Three. Objectivity. Does the source of the material have any basis for biasing the asker in one way or another. So they worked for a company which acts in this area or they paid by advertisers were off some other political, cultural, financial, or other bias. For currency isn't material up to date. Older material may well have been superseded by newer studies into the topic. Most of my studies are in the area of software development and particularly fast-paced industry. So I have family in particular challenge in the past. Now it's always worth having a look online to see if you can find reviews of books or articles which helps establish that credibility, but definitely don't rely on them. Match in your learning style. Having materials to study that match your learning style will help to ensure that you get the most remote people learn in different ways. So just to sell your teachers and school had a teaching style which she did you but perhaps not others. Not all self-study materials will suit all learners. While some people prefer to read information from books, papers, and articles, either printed or electronic. Some people will prefer a video or audio. It really depends on how you best consume and remember the information presented. And this may change depending on the type of subject you're learning. For example, when learning about historical subjects, I prefer to read from an electronic book. But when learning about a new computer programming language or technique, often find that videos are better medium for me. The way the information is written or presented is just as important as the physical or virtual form. Some writers and present as impart information in a way which seems to naturally fit with the way you think. While other presenters who are equally skilled and knowledgeable may present the same information in a way which you find much more difficult to consume. Experiment with different authors and mediums to find the style which best suits you and actively seek similar pieces. This effort will certainly be worthwhile, is it will make your learning faster, more effective, and much more enjoyable. Accessibility. One final factor to consider when choosing your learning materials is accessibility. There are four main areas to consider here. Portability, legibility, availability, and cost. Portability. If like me, you do not always do your learning at home. Portability can be an important factor. Carrying bundles of textbooks on your daily commute is never fun. So perhaps consider electronic versions or scan the pages you need for later access on a computer or tablet. Legibility. This is about ensuring that the material that you are plenty uses easily consumable. Try to ensure that the previous level of knowledge assumed by the author matches your own. It can be very frustrating to spend just as much time looking up unfamiliar concepts or vocabulary as you do study it. If you have any difficulties, such as dyslexia or poor eyesight, try to find materials which are accessible to you, such as books printed on colored paper or in a larger font that he is tiring and fighting against these conditions can make it an exhaust and activity and ultimately less effective. Availability if you're using materials which will tie into the axis, try to download them in advance if possible, to ensure your study time is not wasted trying to connect to some sort of unreliable coffee shop Wi-Fi. If you're planning to buy books or use books, my local library, and show that you've plan far enough in advance to be sure that they're with you in time for your plan session. Finally, cost. The affordability of learning materials does vary from person to person depending on personal circumstances. But if cost is a concern to you, try to utilize free resources from the internet or local libraries and secondhand bookshops. I've had great success purchasing second and books for just a few pennies online. Well, that's it for this lecture, you should now have the tools to plan out a period of really effective study with credible materials which suit your learning style and needs. It might take a little while to get this planning done the first time round, but you will get much quicker at it once you've done it a couple of times. In the next and final lecture, we'll look at pulling all of this together to see our full period of Agile ourselves learning works. Thanks for watching. 41. Part 6: The Agile Self-Learning Method: Hi there and welcome to the final lecture in this course, where I really want to bring together all the tools and techniques of Agile self-learning. I've shown you over the last hour and a half or so, so you can see how they all fit together. To do this, I'm going to walk you through what for me, you might be a typical learning week to show how I fit the different types of session together to ensure that I get the most out of my study. As I mentioned earlier, you don't necessarily need to do this on a weekly basis. Maybe you prefer a two or three week cycle, but a weekly cadence suits my life well and allows me to plan without fear of my schedule change in too much. So on some days, I'll actually my planning to do this. Take a look at your schedule for the coming week and planet your learning time and your diary. Tried to commit to a fixed time, but be flexible and realistic about when you're going to be able to fit this all in. To be most effective, you need to work out when you learn best. To do this, you need to look at your energy log and consider other factors. You can see the lecture on when and where to learn to see more information about this. To work out what I want to learn this week, I'll look at my study map and create a backlog for the week. In the backlog I'll maintain a list of everything and prioritizes weekly based on just-in-time learning. I'll create a card on my Kanban board for each of the items I want to learn that week, each Kabul have learning goals and some started learning materials. The learning goals should be concise, unambiguous, a measurable, and the learning materials should be ready and available for you at the start of each study session. You need to remember to plan in time for other activities such as reviews, deliberate practice, spikes, and study with others, as well as your learning sessions. On Monday, I've plugged in my daily check-in and a couple of learning sessions. Let's have a look at exactly what happens. Joined the daily check-in. Jordan daily check-in, I'll cover three main areas. What I learnt yesterday, what I learned today, and any blockers. Considering what I learnt yesterday is useful to reinforce learning, check comprehension and retention. Record this an organised into a library of summaries and eight memoirs of each topic you learn, this can become a really useful resource to you. This also helps identify areas that you may need to go back and spend more time on. Thinking about what your land today really set your commitment for the day. This should be based on the time you scheduled in the planning session. And finally, I'll look at any blockers. This is anything that's impeding me from achieve my learning goals. This might be access to learning materials and other commitments. Things that will distract you, build any paying that dripping tap that needs fixing or any other tasks that you need to complete. Wherever possible, you should aim to clear these first to ensure that you can learn undistracted, or at least ensure that you have time planned in later in the day to fix them. On Tuesday, I've planned in my daily check-in and a learning session, but I've also planning some time for studying with others. This may be a swap where you teach someone something and they teach you something else. A study group where a bunch of you get together and learn the same subject together. You could look at extreme learning that we saw earlier in the course. Or maybe a group of you could come together to practice what you've learned. Wednesday again as a simple day with a daily check-in and a couple of learning sessions planned. Now on Thursday have my daily check-in, a learning session and a spike. Spike I'm using to find out more information about a topic which I think I might want to learn, but I'm not too sure yet. So on Friday I have a daily check in plan and a learning session, but this is when I also carry it, my weekly review. For any students of system thinking, you can think of the review as being a reinforcing feedback loop. You get this feedback from yourself by applying your learning, perhaps at work or on pet projects. And your weekly review, which is a retrospective look at the week's learning. During the weekly review, you should consider a number of topics. Firstly, what you learnt, this point is really good to go back and review your daily summaries. Look at what topics you enjoyed, what topics you didn't, what topics you need to spend more time on, and other topics you'd like to explore. What worked well for you during the week and what didn't work so well. Ideas from proven that you would like to try. And finally look at how you could further reinforce what you've learned this week. Can you find an opportunity to teach it to others maps? On Saturdays, I plan on a good period of rest. It's really important to be able to recharge your batteries, refresh yourself, and be ready for your next week of study. If I have some energy in the evening or early afternoon, and sometimes I'll do some deliberate practice. So that's a quick run through a typical learning week for me, which shows you how all the techniques we talked about in this course fit together to make a really comprehensive study method. Do feel free to customize it to fit your needs. But if you're going to change it, make sure you still get the value of all the individual sessions I've described. And I said for this course, thank you so much for watching. And I'm sure that apply in the Agile self-learning method I described will help you in your journey towards mastery of whatever it is you want to learn. Be shorter, revisit the course and a few weeks once you have the basics of the method in place to validate your implementation, and maybe pick up a few extra tips which you might miss the first time round. I'll be updating the course based on feedback and any other further refinements I may make. So be sure to check back periodically. I'd be really happy to discuss anything about Agile self-learning with you. I'd love to know how use the Agile self-learning technique and what you've learned using it. I really hope you've enjoyed the course and please do leave a rating and review. It really helps. All that remains for me to say is good luck and happy studying.