Frontiers Friday #72. The Nuts and Bolts of Becoming a Deep Learner (Part II)
Frontiers Friday #72. The Nuts and Bolts of Becoming a Deep Learner (Part II)
Obsidian.
I've been taking notes of my learnings for over a decade, and have relied heavily on SimpleNote.
Since May last year, I've made the cross-over to Obsidian. I was reluctant. Some in my profession would call me Resistant. I was reluctant and resistant because SimpleNote worked for me – until it didn't.
In a new video below I took a deep dive into how you can use Obsidian as not only a note-taking app, but more as a tool to extend and enhance your learning, a personalised learning system (PLS).
Related Posts:
A Hidden Discipline That Will Extend Your Mind
Parameters and Samples for Capturing Weekly Therapy Learnings
Before we go into the recommendations, do yourself a favor and download Obsidian. (I have no affiliations to them, just sheer gratitude).
📽 NEW VIDEO FROM MY DESK: How the Heck Do I Begin to Use Obsidian?
Here are the timestamps of what I've covered in this video, which is part I of a video series videos on Obsidian:
- Why as a Psychologist I take learning notes (00:18)
- 5 Key Benefits of Using Obsidian (01:17)
- Getting Started (07:50)
- The 7 Tips on How to Use Obsidian:
i. Headers: (08:20)
ii. Bold (09:14)
iii. Bullets (09:32)
iv. Checklists (10:00)
v. Adding images and pdfs (11:00)
vi. Adding bi-directional linking (13:20)
vii. Adding Tags (15:07)
👓 Watch: Linking Your Thinking
Nic Milo's youtube channel helped me get started with Obsidian.
He also shared uses cases and chats with others who uses the software for their personalized knowledge management (PKM) system.
You'd note from my videos I prefer to call this Personalised Learning System (PLS) and I explained why in the video above.
👓 Watch: Filipe Donadio
Filipe's videos were short and helpful too. His website has lots of useful tips.
WARNING: If you go down the rabbit hole, there's lots and lots of plugins for Obsidian. I will be covering my top useful plugins in coming videos.
👓 Bookworm: How to Take Smart Notes
Who in the world wants to read a book about note taking? I must admit, I felt that way. In fact, I was unintrigued at my first pass of the book.
However, when I revisited the book and focused on how to focus on actual note-taking, linking my ideas so as to promote deeper reflection, this book cover grounds that are directly related.
"If you use the slip-box* for a while, you will inevitably make a sobering discovery: The great new idea you are about to add to the slip-box turns out to be already in there."
* An approach to linking your notes, sometimes called Zettelkasten (German for slip box) method.
5. ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
"As we are living longer, we are thinking shorter." ~ Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson.
Reflection:
Taking notes of your learnings is to take care of your future self.
The Deep Learner course might be for you.
I will take you behind the scenes and unveil the personalised learning system I've iterated and refined over the 15 years in order to extend your mind, and more importantly, translate what you've learned into use, such as in clinical related settings (therapy, supervision, training).
Based on the 4 tenets above to help you for the rest of your professional career, Deep Learner is specially designed to
1. Extend your mind by tapping into the powerful cutting edge science of how we learn best
2. Create a virtuous learning system that pushes you to your growth edge, and
3. Connect the dots and not just collect the dots.
BENEFITS:
1. The deep learner workshop arms you with depth for a sustaining development to become the best profession (and your best self),
2. Embrace a wide array of knowledge, and more importantly, use what you've learned to apply and help a larger percentage of people in your clinical practice.
What Deep Learner is Not?
1. It is not a bag of tricks;
2. It is not a theoretical online course;
3. It is not a pre-recorded lecture, and a poor substitute of face-to-face learning, and
4. It is not overwhelmed with content and no Community Connection.
WHEN DOES IT START?
The course starts the moment you sign up.
The content is "dripped" into your inbox every 3 days for total of 72 days; learn at your own pace.
Plus, it is not subscription-based nor time limited. It's a LIFE-TIME ACCESS to the content and the community discussion!
EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT CODE
Deep Learner is now open and we have an exclusive January discount of 29%! Only for folks on the Frontiers list, the savings from AUD$485 to $344.35 is embedded in this special link (The promo code FrontiersJan is already keyed in for you; you'd save $140.65. This special rate ends on 31st of Jan 2022.)
Learning to learn deeply is one of high leverage skills one can develop. The Deep Learner course is specifically designed for this.
PREVIEW
Feel free to preview the modules as a taster of what's installed. (Click here and go to Course Curriculum Section).
Here's what past students of Deep Learner have to say:
This course is a must if you want to get help in building your own learning system. And I would like to raise a warning finger at the same time, you will need to challenge many of your ideas what will be required of you to become a more helpful therapist.
That being said, you are not alone in this, above all, Daryl Chow generously shares his knowledge and experience in an educational and personal way.
~Bengt Göran Lindberg
Lic. psychotherapist, Supervisor, Sweden.
Daryl Chow has an amazing ability to translate incredibly complicated material into comprehensible, bite size chunks of wisdom which can be applied in clinical practice and in daily living.
Daryl's grounded and gentle style engages participants into a rich, collaborative learning experience. This is the second course I've taken with Daryl (the other being Reigniting Clinical Supervision) and he is truly one of the important voices shaping the field of psychotherapy in the 21st century.
~Keith Klostermann, PhD, LMFT, LMHC, CFT, NCC, AS
Fulbright Specialist Roster, US State Dept.
The Deep Learner Course brings most ordinary learning experiences back to life. I can now more effectively extract the gems from activities that would have been meaningless before.
~ Bert Munger, Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor, Vermont, USA
Dr Chow provides a very in-depth and thought provoking course on what it means to be a deep learner and shows you strategies and tips which will help you not only improve your clinical practice, but your work/life balance as well.
- Melvin S. Marsh, MS (graduate student)
Therapists at the Frontier
Last week, I started the invitation for those who are willing to be part of a community project of share their learnings as therapists. Big thanks to all the emails I've received.
For the rest of you, if you are still keen, I would like to invite you to consider the following:
1. Start capturing your weekly therapy learnings. If you are already doing so, I encourage you to continue in 2022.
2. Whenever you are ready, share your learnings but emailing them to me.
Depending on the responses, I am considering either to conduct a podcast interview with you about your ideas, create an online community to spread the learnings, and/or develop the ideas into a compilation book with each person being the author of each chapter.
Let me know if you are keen, even if you have yet to embark on the project of capturing your weekly therapy learnings. As I write this, I'm tingling with anticipation to hear from you and see what we can create together.
BIG HUGS TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS WHO WANT TO BE AT THEIR FRONTIER!
If you've just joined us, I'm glad you can join us at the "bleeding edge." Feel free to check out the back catalogue of Frontiers of Psychotherapists Development (FPD). You might also want to go into specific topics in the FPD Archives like
And if you want to see past newsletters, click here.
In case you missed it, see the most recent missives
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Unintended Consequences (2 Parts)
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