Hello everyone and welcome back to the keep productive YouTube channel today we have Ali here
Ali is a fantastic youtuber anywhere dives into everything from student life all the way to
His workers of junior doctors, so maybe you can dive bit warranty want your channel cover. Yeah. So hey guys, my name is Ali
I'm a junior doctor. I work in Cambridge where I was a student and
I've been making videos for about two years a little bit about how to be a more productive more efficient student with evidence-based study tips
but also
Vlogs and things about life as a medical student and now life as a doctor and on the side I do tech reviews of things
Like, you know iPads and Mac books and iPhones and stuff. So, you know a
Little bit of everything but with a theme of productivity running through yours, I guess
Yeah, and you recently discovered notion, right?
Yes, and I saw your videos about notion if you search for notion on the Internet you to see your stuff is amazing
but we'll be diving into Ali's notion account today and
We're also going to be over on his channel. So do make sure to subscribe to him because
Fantastic content right there. Thank you, and we're going to be diving into productivity apps on his channel
So for students if you follow the key productive channel, and you want a police go there because you'll find it
We're gonna dive into the notion count now. So here it is in front of us and what we're gonna do is sort of
Ask Ali plenty of questions about how he uses it
So whoa, obviously you've found notion sort of discovered it maybe a couple of months. Yeah well month ago
I think I've been using it for about a month
Fantastic properly in inactive you said so what's your sort of primary use for it then? How would you say use it?
Um, so that's something that I haven't fully worked out yet
I use it for most of my note-taking needs now
I use the iPad pro with notability for handwritten notes and I tend to use that for things like
Taking notes and lectures but also for planning out rough sketches for videos
They're just like the ability to be able to annotate things by hand. Yeah, but then everything else I pretty much do on notion
So I use it to plan out my videos I use it for my own
sort of medical exam preparation
I also use it for keeping track of things that I've just covered on the internet or podcasts that I've listened to or book reviews
so I'm kind of trying to pull all the content from my life into notion as like a
Second brain almost I don't yeah. Yeah
Yeah, yeah
Do you ever use like use OneNote during university? Right? I used OneNote a bit during University. I used Evernote before that
I've tried it I used bear for awhile
I've tried so many different apps and I'm hoping that I'll find one. Hopefully notion that will become the
second brain the base
So you use it you mentioned for the the medicine side of stuff
So maybe take us through that first short some this is my medicine bit
Homepage still needs a bit of working on but there's what I want to show you
So the MRCP is the membership for the Royal College of Physicians
So that's a postgraduate medical exam that you have to take if you want to be a you know
If you want to progress in your career as a doctor, then you become a member of the Royal College of Physicians
Which is cool, but this is quite hot exam. It's like your medical school finals, but taken up a notch and
I have said and I've started using notion to keep track of my studies in that so this is the let's
Let's take a look at clinical dermatology in oncology
this is one that I've
Started to expand upon so created March 11th 2019. That was exactly a month ago
So I pretty much have been using this for a month
And actually that's good point, um on that note
I'll ah
I really like the the table feature of notion because then I can sort out these different categories
These different subjects by the number of questions that turn up in the exam
So then obviously I know that I want to be prioritizing clinical sciences in endocrinology over something like ophthalmology
That only has four questions compared to 15 and 25. So let's look at clinical hematology and oncology
open it as a page and
The cool thing about notion is the toggle the toggle thing. I don't what's called what's called the toggles? Yeah
Yeah, the toggle cool cool. Yeah
and
And this is just so good because I've never seen such a good toggle feature on any other note-taking app
So what I've done is I've split up the whole of hematology into three categories red cells platelets and white cells
And within that I have tried to split up the subject into further categories
So for example hemolysis means breakdown of blood cells macro City big sales microcytic
Miscellaneous and within each of those. I have their own subcategories. So for example, if we look at hereditary spherocytosis,
This is one that I filled in the other day
Well, I've done ever create another toggle and I've got a list of questions. So what is it? What's the inheritance?
You know, is it like autosomal dominant or recessive?
Help pissed off. Would you be got it. This is just like my
Your way of realizing my way of revising game my way of thinking that okay, if I actually had this condition hereditary spherocytosis
Would it make a big difference to my life?
Presentation is in how would a patient present with it? Diagnosed it? How would you diagnose it? And how would you manage it?
And I'm able to have these questions as the first thing I see when I click on hereditary spherocytosis
And then if I want to find the answers
I use another toggle box and that is where I have the notes for it. And I think this is revolutionary because
Previously and I think what almost everyone does when the students is that we make notes on topics
whereas this method of writing questions for ourselves first and only then allowing ourselves to see the notes that
forces us to use active recall which is the most efficient study technique imaginable and I've made a video in my channel if you don't
Have a plug. Yeah. Yeah, I talked about I
fully talk about the evidence behind active recall in depth, but essentially, you know
it's been proven in like hundreds of studies across psychology done on students that
Simply rereading notes and summarizing content from from a textbook
It doesn't actually help whereas retrieving information from your own brain doesn't know
Yeah, so the idea is that for all of these over time?
I'll expand this notion notebook
so that any disease that I want to go to I will be able to click on it and
See and be able to test myself do I really know the answer to these questions?
And if not, then I'll be able to read up about it
Yeah, and another nice thing is I think there's a thing over here where you can like a color code
so let's say green mine color in green if I knew the answer red if I don't know the answer and
I'm hoping that this will be a nice
Yeah, and my studies and in one of the questions now I have you will yeah
obviously like this took a bit of time to set up and and like
You know notion takes a bit of time to understand as a concept in itself
Do you think they're like, how long would it have taken you to create a page like this?
obviously adding all the content but the sort of
The mind behind all of the toggle. Yeah, so I think like after after watching a few of your videos
that was when I had had the idea to actually use this for for studying cuz I I think you
think you did a video with Thomas Frank where he was showing his method for using ocean and I just thought oh
wow, this would apply really nicely to
kind of
Medicine stuff. Yeah, so didn't actually take that long
I think once you get the hang of it
It becomes very easy to just create a new toggle
And then you go the keyboard shortcut slow, you know, for example
Like the tabbing thing and how tabbing creates a new toggle in it and stuff like that that you pick up quite quickly
Yeah it I don't even know many of the shortcuts thing. Yeah beating me
Yeah, I need to learn it
Yeah
But you also met you also to me earlier the so Ali's very much of a self-development individual
He tries to improve himself on a routine basis, which is good
And you you take notes on like podcasts you've listened to things like that
And you started making like almost like a notebook
Calendar yes then maybe yeah take us through that. This is my resonance calendar
so it's like a really pretentious name for a thing things that resonate with me and again like the nice thing about notion is that
You can view it as a list. You can view it as a calendar
You can view it as a table
so what I do is that if I ever come across something that
Resonates with me then I use the iPhone share feature or the mat or you know, though
No, not even open ocean clipper or to put it in the ocean
And then I take I I just write write a few things from there
So for example on the 23rd of March, I was clearly being very unproductive creatively
But I watched a lot of content and for example, Sean Blanc's iPad blogging workflow the sweet set up
So I shared this to notion just so I have it have it for later
And I commented good length and detail in breaking down the nerdy details. I should do more of this so
When I read this particular article, I thought oh, wow. This is a really great breakdown of how he uses the iPad
Maybe I could do an article like this. So I thought I'd share it to my residence calendar
There was this wide combinator podcast interview with mkbhd one of my favorite youtubers
And this is where I took some notes about productionvalue striving for the highest surely good thing
Does that mean I should get the a 7-3 which is now the camera that we're filming this on. So I think
This is is nice. Because now when I consume call, I do it with the intention of okay what I'm actually learning from this
Yeah, and have I got an excuse to put it into my that's it. Yeah a notion thing
I think just just having the app
This is one of those cases where when an app is nicely made it encourages you to do good things
Yeah, for example day one of journaling up encourages people to journal because it's just such a nice app. Yeah
I know she encourages me to think about what I learned from the content that I consume. So yeah, it's perfect
I mean, that's actually give me a lot of good ideas for myself because
So I have a like a new area a calendar that's called inspiration. No, but I just haven't found a use for it
So this actually might be like just be able to take inspiration and ideas
So actually I'm probably gonna steal Ally's idea of it
And take it out and use just go into that use different
The database views to toggle between them depending on how you feel. Yeah, exactly
and and so for example this this was the Tim Ferriss podcast episode with Neil Gaiman that I really enjoyed so I shared that using
Over cost for my iPhone. I was listening to this in the car
So I just stopped by the side of the road and decided to decided to do this
And then I wrote a few notes about it. But also another nice thing about notion is the the tags feature
So I've tagged it as email favorite
Which means I've mentioned this in one of my weekly newsletters where I talk about my favorite things from that week
but also is monthly favorite because I've mentioned it in one of my monthly favorite videos and
It's just a good way of keeping track of of stuff
So for example, you know
I've tagged things with podcast if it's a podcast so that if I'm looking to recommend a podcast instead of thinking about Oh
What was that pop? Yeah, because I guess we both listen to so many
Yeah, I just kind of have a quick flick through this and be like, ah that Farnam Street podcast wouldn't evolve was really good
Yeah, I'll give you a link. That's it. Yeah, it's been well handy. It's okay Oh everything you need in one place
Yeah, very neat. And you also standard to use it as well for video management in terms of the
YouTube sign, uh, that's right. So I don't in terms of this like Kanban board. Yeah, that's that's a word
Yeah, where's that come from? I think it was a 80s technique at Japanese 80s technique that they used in a factory
I can move stuff across and then they adapted it to the Kanban. Muhaha. That's why yeah
So I've got you know if I ever have an idea for a video
I'll put it in here and I'll put I'll put sort of a date where
Aspirationally I would want to publish the video where as which is where the calendar comes in as well. So
That was this video. I can first it came from memorizing essays. I intended to make how to spend an Apple pencil video
Oh, yeah, I saw you do that earlier. I was like Jesus that's impressive. So let's actually move that across over there
And yeah, you should make it stupid. Yeah, I'll make it at some point, but
So then if I've planned a video or put it in there actually
You know what printing to tip students we plant that notion for students
You just drag them across the statuses and it helps nice to keep a good idea
The way you're sort of going with it
do you do you ever add like obviously you've added there like the text central and
You've added like a sort of script inside the card
Yeah, and that helps you just a generally plan the structure of the video, right? Yeah, absolutely
so like there was it that that when we were doing earlier on my channel productivity app
So just kind of handing a quick structure. Sometimes I do write out a bit like a proper script
yeah, actually if I if it's like a
like a
Keynote video almost where I've put in so much effort into a single video. I will often write out a script
Especially if it's a video where I'm talking about the evidence behind things. I kind of remember that other top of my head
So yeah. Yeah, it's just
pretty solid all around for planning planning videos
I love it, and maybe we talk about a few the ways that students could potentially use something like this
How would you see like?
Maybe a first year that wanted to actually just start using notion as a way to organize
How do you give them any introduction tips?
I
Think the tips I would give is that just to kind of watch how a few other people use notion
So I think your channels but it's perfect to that and then that'll hopefully give you some ideas
One thing I really would recommend is this thing of if you're making notes you write questions for yourself
Hmm so that it forces you to use active recall
You can also use notion as a sort of calendar you can use it as a to-do list
You can use it as a planner you can use the time Toby. There's so many different uses for it
and I think it can potentially get a bit overwhelming but just kind of seeing how other people using it and
Starting small like starting with one thing. Maybe just using it for your notes
And you can you know, drag-and-drop your lecture handouts like I've done with this particular PDF
Starting smaller than over time. You won't be like, oh, this is another use for notion and then it kind of expands
Yeah, I like that and anything is as well as like I think like you very soon to me
you want to start with like a skeleton of something then to actually add the flesh later to it because
Like you can go crazy with notion like adding all the icons covers all the details
But you know once you've got the general structure
Then you can add all the good stuff after I think
And I think that's a really good tactic for students as well
Like even with this even though I only studied hematology that day I still you know put in all of the different subjects
So I have an a you know bird's-eye overview of what this exam is about and also with any hematology
I've created my bird's eye view
Before I've gone deep in to certain things
It's very easy to get bogged down in the details
But I think what notion does nicely is that encourages you to have a bird's-eye view of your your subject
So that's why I recommend for students
Aspirin Thank You Ali for coming on today, but you can go and find his YouTube channel description below
I just to mention as well. We've also been doing another one
so if you're a student looking for productivity advice and tips we do we talk about
That directed directly
That's it
So feel free to go and follow Ali and also I need a little sort of student hub that you can duplicate
It's got a simple planner coursework and lecture notes ability. So duplicate it into a notion
Give it a bit of a play around design it to your own needs and give that a try but of course
Will will be doing some more features on it that soon
So, thanks very much guys, make sure have a great week Thank You Ali for coming on
Thank you for having me and subscribe to a spoke and hit the like button as well. Thanks guys