What are you techniques on recording what you’ve learned?

Question

Good day BP community,

Since I’ve become a member of BP I often scroll the forums and see some of the same Real Estate Rockstars answering questions or providing guidance and opinions.

Some replies are brief, others lengthy and structured (like an article). Being new to REI I'm constantly learning and want to record the information I'm learning via podcast, forums, books, etc. Being able to quick reference this information when needed seems a tall task.

My question for the community. How do you go about organizing all the information you've learned throughout your REI journey? Is it a journal, word document, voice notes? Have those methods changed since you've first started and how do you organize them?

Regardless of where you are in your journey, all responses welcomed. Thank you in advance!

Brian Spinos · Answer

an idea: on your laptop: create a folder, and in that folder create files by categories, then create as many files, subfolders as you want, keep organized, and you can even search for key words in the future!

Naphese G. · Answer

@Jonathan Bombaci

Absolutely helped, awesome feedback! Thanks for sharing

Jonathan Bombaci · Answer

If you don’t use it you’ll lose it.

My experience is the best way I retain real estate knowledge is by using it first hand. When you need to know something I believe in “just in time learning” afterall its not what you know it’s who you know that matters. Read what you can, network until it hurts, and get out there. Recording all the information in the world on short term rentals isn’t going to help you if you get into long term rentals and vice versa. Plus the industry is always changing. Anything you know about 1031s might be obsolete in a few years. And the same goes for landlord tenant laws in many states, and in MA rules can change by town, county, or sitting judges predisposition. Knowledge is great but in my opinion it’s useless if you’re not actively using it, and it could be very dangerous if you’re accessing wrong or old information to solve new problems.

I know this didn’t answer your question but I hope it helps. I have journals upon journals with notes on all sorts of topics, seminars, and guest speakers. I’ve recorded training videos and written very long articles on all sorts of topics. Once I’ve put down the pen I very rarely go back to them. Once I use the knowledge in a real life experience I know it’ll be there in my head to call on when I need it, and if I’m unsure about something I hit up google, biggerpockets, and/or someone in my network to get what I, or anyone else on my team needs.

I hope this helps,

Best,

Jon

Jeff V. · Answer

I realize this post is 2 years old but someone may have the same question.
I use Microsoft One Note for Desktops, it's free and stores your notes in notebooks with tags that are easily searchable for reference later.

I have notebooks for Note Investing, Real Estate Investing, Information Technology, and Digital Marketing.

Usually, something that I'm studying falls into one of those categories and each notebook has subcategories. For Example, my Note Investing notebook has Sub Categories for Consolidated Note Resources, Goals, Note Buying Criteria, Foreclosure Timelines and Costs, State Specific Notes, Systems for The Note Business, Collection Time Tables, Note Conferences, Bankruptcy in Notes.. etc.

Each of those subcategories can be broken down further into Pages or combined subcategories into sections such as Courses and Webinar Notes and have sub-sections for each course or webinar you attend and their associated notes.

As you can see this structure can be very organized and scale well. You can also share the notebooks and collaborate on them through Office 365 if you so desire. One final tip is to store the Notebook files on your OneDrive and make them accessible and synced across devices while still keeping them private.

What are you techniques on recording what you’ve learned?

What are you techniques on recording what you’ve learned?

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