How To Crush Professional Trainings | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, Jesse, I think we have five good calls

00:00:02.560 | on the docket.

00:00:03.400 | What's our first?

00:00:04.220 | - All right, our first call is about a professional worker

00:00:09.000 | going to a training,

00:00:10.080 | wants your advice on how to approach it.

00:00:12.980 | - Hi Cal, my name is Spencer

00:00:20.640 | and I'm a security engineer and information security officer.

00:00:23.640 | I would like to know how to best tackle

00:00:26.980 | the training opportunity I have coming up in two months.

00:00:29.980 | On two months, I get to take a week long

00:00:33.600 | security training course

00:00:34.920 | that's about eight hours a day and pretty intense.

00:00:37.840 | Some people call it the experience of learning security

00:00:40.360 | through a fire hose.

00:00:41.400 | I've reviewed the syllabus for the course

00:00:44.480 | and I've started reading a chapter a day

00:00:46.080 | on some of the topics in the syllabus,

00:00:48.160 | but I still wanna get the most

00:00:49.460 | out of this training experience.

00:00:51.420 | How do I stay engaged when I have four eight hour days

00:00:54.680 | in a row of really deep learning?

00:00:57.560 | This is also in an area that I'm not as comfortable with.

00:01:01.100 | Any tips and tricks would be helpful.

00:01:03.000 | Thank you.

00:01:03.840 | - It's a good question.

00:01:07.040 | I'm gonna actually go back and draw from advice

00:01:10.280 | I used to give to college students

00:01:12.880 | to help give you some guidance

00:01:14.160 | about this particular endeavor.

00:01:16.180 | Now, first, I'm gonna recommend

00:01:17.720 | not reading those chapters in advance.

00:01:19.920 | I'm gonna assume in a, unless they tell you to,

00:01:23.040 | I'm gonna assume in a training like this,

00:01:24.560 | the idea is they're going to give you the information

00:01:26.920 | you need during those lectures,

00:01:29.280 | backstopped by the textbooks.

00:01:33.080 | So it's not gonna be, we assume you know all these things,

00:01:36.680 | now let's build on that in these lectures.

00:01:38.760 | Most of these type of trainings

00:01:39.960 | is we're gonna be giving you the information

00:01:41.540 | from these chapters of these textbooks.

00:01:42.960 | So it's probably an unnecessary investment of your time

00:01:46.300 | to read those things in advance.

00:01:47.600 | The question is what you do,

00:01:49.640 | what you do during the actual,

00:01:52.420 | what do you do in the actual training?

00:01:54.080 | We just break something.

00:01:55.640 | Off, by the way, off scenes,

00:01:58.840 | Jesse just ripped the microphone off the stand.

00:02:03.160 | So I'm gonna say he's really mad about this training.

00:02:05.800 | I think it screws in, yeah.

00:02:08.440 | He's have to find a right way to turn it.

00:02:10.480 | He was so mad about the idea of the security training

00:02:13.060 | that he ripped the microphone off the stand.

00:02:15.680 | Look, I'm gonna switch to his camera.

00:02:16.880 | He doesn't know I'm doing this.

00:02:17.760 | There he is trying to fix the,

00:02:19.640 | viewers of the YouTube channel can see the devastation

00:02:22.520 | Jesse has wreaked.

00:02:24.160 | All right.

00:02:25.000 | Anyways, Jesse's protest notwithstanding,

00:02:29.440 | what I'm gonna recommend is that you approach this

00:02:33.360 | with the question resolution method

00:02:36.280 | I used to teach the college students.

00:02:38.360 | So the idea is you have all this information coming at you.

00:02:40.760 | You should have printed out in advance.

00:02:42.000 | If they're giving you a detailed syllabus or detailed notes,

00:02:44.300 | have that all printed out in advance

00:02:45.780 | as your guide for what you're going through.

00:02:48.440 | And if you're supposed to take notes,

00:02:49.800 | take notes as they're talking.

00:02:51.180 | But the most important thing is to mark every topic

00:02:53.860 | for which you did not fully understand what they said.

00:02:57.080 | And we have a syllabus printed out.

00:02:58.680 | You can actually just put a question mark

00:03:00.160 | next to those topics in the syllabus, incredibly efficient.

00:03:03.760 | Otherwise, if you're typing notes,

00:03:04.920 | you just very big, bold question mark

00:03:07.280 | or the word question in caps, this thing here.

00:03:10.000 | I didn't quite understand that.

00:03:11.840 | So then when you're done with a session for the day,

00:03:15.600 | you have notes on the stuff that made sense

00:03:18.360 | and you have question marks next to the stuff

00:03:20.880 | that didn't make sense.

00:03:22.560 | And your goal is to fill in those questions

00:03:24.340 | as quickly as possible,

00:03:25.720 | talking to the instructor, going back to the chapter.

00:03:28.280 | This is what I'm always telling college kids.

00:03:29.600 | The goal is making sure that you understand

00:03:31.860 | what you don't understand and you fill in that understanding

00:03:33.700 | as soon as possible.

00:03:34.700 | And that's what I'm gonna recommend here.

00:03:37.940 | So it's all about your capture information,

00:03:39.520 | fire hose, fire hose, great.

00:03:41.080 | But make sure you mark the stuff that does not make sense

00:03:44.560 | when it first comes at you.

00:03:46.340 | And then as soon as possible after the lecture,

00:03:48.580 | try to fill in that gap.

00:03:50.740 | Then you will come away from this training

00:03:52.160 | having at least at some point understood

00:03:54.640 | everything in the training.

00:03:55.560 | That's where you wanna be.

00:03:56.400 | Now you can, if you need to study for an exam later,

00:03:58.440 | you're starting from a foundation

00:03:59.560 | of having known everything.

00:04:01.100 | Studying should be reviewing things you already know,

00:04:03.120 | not learning things from scratch.

00:04:04.880 | You don't need to study for an exam.

00:04:06.040 | You'll have a good basis in all these topics

00:04:08.020 | so that if you have to review it in the future,

00:04:10.320 | again, you're starting from a foundation

00:04:12.580 | of you understood that at some point,

00:04:14.200 | you're not trying to learn it from scratch.

00:04:15.400 | So that's the main thing I would recommend.

00:04:17.360 | And beyond that, just take it easy.

00:04:20.480 | You know, eat well, drink a lot of water,

00:04:23.420 | don't do any other intellectually demanding work

00:04:25.340 | outside of those trainings during those days, rest.

00:04:27.420 | I mean, make it clear that that's your primary thing

00:04:30.560 | you're doing.

00:04:31.400 | (upbeat music)

How To Crush Professional Trainings | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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