Learning something new? This is how I take notes:

I hop around a bit when I’m learning a new tool/program/etc. Sometimes it’s for a couple of hours, other times it’s for about a week or so. Whatever I do, I’m always looking at some sort of documentation, a blog, or help forum whenever I encounter an issue that needs troubleshooting.

Sometimes it feels overwhelming trying to figure out these things.

What I found that has helped me, is to write out a personal “tutorial” of sorts on how and why you got whatever you’re working on to, well, work. This helps you with a couple of things:

1. Learning how to document
2. Breaking down overtly technical concepts to non-technical or at least more understandable on your terms
3. Improve critical thinking skills: why is this not working? why did this solution work? (or why it didn’t) etc.

Doing this, I’ve started to see how simple is almost always best when breaking down instructions, issues, errors; the whole shebang.

An example:

In using Linux commands: Usually, if I’m trying to get past a step quickly or am just troubleshooting something annoying to get to that next step, I just run the command and keep going, other times I like to understand what certain flags are and why they are used.

Like this command and how I break it down as such:

find / -type d -name "name-of-directory" 2>/dev/null
and file name: -type f -iname "name-of file"

-type d lets you search for a directory name

-type f lets you search for just the file name
-iname makes the search name case-insensitive

2>/dev/null omits “permission denied” results

Here, I’m already familiar with the ‘find’ command and the ‘-name’ flag, but not with the rest.

Basically, this command refines search parameters and also removes irrelevant results.

By doing this, I am able to reinforce what I already know about the command. It also helps to add your own examples to help you understand it more on your terms.