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Exam Study Expert: ace your exams with the science of learning
199. Zettelkasten "Super" Notes: with Dr Sönke Ahrens
Enter Zettelkasten: a powerful and sophisticated note-making system for more advanced users.
A secret superpower to help you be more productive, cut procrastination, have more and better insights, and streamline the research/writing process.
Here to teach us how to use the strategy is Dr Sönke Ahrens, author of How To Take Smart Notes and widely regarded as the world's top authority on the art of Zettelkasten note making.
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Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Expert podcast. Today I want to introduce you to what I think for many of you might be a relatively new academic technique really a whole system if we apply it as suggested and that is the Zettelkasten note-making method. This episode follows in something of an annual tradition for us of thinking about our note-making practices Longer time. Listeners may remember, last September we met George Arango back in episode 165 talking about digital note-making methods. So, continuing with that today and exploring other schools of thought when it comes to note-making, I think few are as interesting and deeply thought out as the Zettelkasten method, which we'll learn about today.
Speaker 1:I consider this a relatively advanced topic. It's quite a sophisticated methodology but also a very powerful way to organise your ideas, particularly when your goal is perhaps less about learning for an exam and memorising a lot of information, but rather you're looking to organise your ideas when you're reading and learning and researching, with the final goal of perhaps producing a big piece of extended writing, of perhaps producing a big piece of extended writing. So for a younger learner, this could be an interesting technique to experiment with for perhaps a more substantial coursework or homework assignment or essay. Maybe you're drafting a college essay or application, or perhaps you're writing an extended project of some kind, for example like the EPQ extended project qualification we sometimes do here in the UK, and I'd say the technique perhaps comes into its own when we're looking at its application to more kind of advanced academic contexts. So, for instance, especially the undergraduate essays and dissertations and beyond that, the thesis, even the research paper, even the book, that might come beyond that in your academic future. The idea in a nutshell involves kind of collecting your ideas. Each individual idea goes on an individual piece of paper, an individual piece slip of paper, and then we want to look to kind of connect the dots, draw those links between those individual ideas represented on those individual bits of paper. The word zettel in German means slip, as in slip of paper, and the original zettelkasten method was popularised by a remarkably productive German sociologist called Nicholas Luhmann, which we'll learn more about today, and he kept his note slips in order in a box. A slip box, a zettelkasten that's what the word means. Zettelkasten means slip box in German. We don't have to use the old school paper implementation of it. In the modern times Many people will implement their zettelkasten through digital note-making methods such as the Obsidian note-making tool.
Speaker 1:Now there are many benefits to organising your ideas using the Zettelkasten method. We'll be exploring those as part of today's conversation. We can benefit our productivity, so get things done more quickly, more efficiently overcome procrastination, be more time efficient. Our depth of thinking, our creativity, our ability to draw links and generate insights can sometimes improve, and also the quality of our writing that results at the end of the process can often go up.
Speaker 1:So my guest to help us explore the Zettelkasten method is Dr Zunke Ahrens, who is perhaps the best-known advocate and educator in the world on the Zettelkasten method. Zunker is a writer and researcher in education and social sciences and, having had considerable success using the Zettelkasten method himself, has now set out to teach it more widely and has become quite well known in doing so. He works out of Germany, but is in demand all around the world as a speaker and a coach teaching the Zettelkasten method, and his book how to Take Smart Notes has sold over 100,000 copies in numerous languages, including English, the English translation, as well as in his home country language of German. So we're going to get quite practical today in terms of how to actually apply and implement the technique. So we're going to get quite practical today in terms of how to actually apply and implement the technique.
Speaker 1:But we're going to start with my kind of opening questions to Zunker in a moment by just understanding a little bit more about what, who, the technique is for and what it promises and some of the successes that people have with the technique, so that you can evaluate for yourself whether it's something you might like to experiment with. And then we'll get into some of the practical details of how we actually do it and put it into practice. So, without further ado, let's welcome Zunker to the podcast to tell us more. Zunker. A very warm welcome to the Exam Study Expert podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I wonder if you might just start with a brief introduction to who you are and in particular your interest in the Zettelkasten method.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm a former academic. I worked at university for a long time and since a couple of years almost now I'm an independent researcher. I write yeah, I used the Zettelk custom method to write my last books and felt it is something more people could benefit from. So while writing on my habilitation which is, in Germany, the second thesis after the dissertation it was a bit of a procrastination project, to be honest, to write about writing instead of doing the actual writing, which, of course, is also writing. Now I'm really pleased that a lot of people picked up on that and feel they benefit from the ideas, even though people use it in very different ways for very different projects.
Speaker 2:I didn't expect that. I wrote the book primarily for students because I haven't found a good study guide I could hand to my students and feel that's really helpful. So I felt the need to write one I can hand to my students, but it turned out they were not the most interested audience, at least not the younger students. The interest increases the closer you get to your thesis and to having to write longer pieces, and I think the main interest comes from professionals, both academic and non-academics.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask who is the Zettelkasten method for? You've half answered my question a little bit, but I suppose for those that are new to the method it might be interesting to just hear a little bit about, I guess, the kind of the role this is playing for these various people so you mentioned, particularly interesting for people kind of either in academia or otherwise working on substantial written and research projects. So just give us a little bit of a sense of what the system is designed to do and how it helps us to achieve that goal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's one of the things that are very simple but not easy to do, and it comes from a professor in Germany, niklas Luhmann, who I studied with an interest in his theory not with an interest in his writing method, but due to the fact that he was so incredibly productive that some of his colleagues wished he would retire because they can't keep up with the reading so fast he was writing.
Speaker 1:I think you mentioned in the book that he's more prolific after his passing, through his works that were published posthumously, than some psychologists are productive in their whole, you know, lifetimes that's true.
Speaker 2:He. He had so many manuscripts and in his office, half finished, almost finished, and then what's in the zettelkasten, which is the main body of his work, so to speak, because all his ideas are on notes, like index notes of the classic index card size, and they were roughly in order to follow an idea. So some have the fantasy of using his subtle cast to write more books out of it. But of course you have to personally understand what you have written. You have to find your way around it. It's a very personal thing, so it doesn't work like that. But during his lifetime he spent most of his time writing notes and writing manuscripts and publishing them.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say it was an afterthought, but the main part of the writing process happened in this in-between space. Most people, I believe, neglect. They write notes, they read, they polish their manuscript, but I think few people understand the importance of taking proper notes and organizing them in a way that a manuscript, an argument, a chapter can evolve out of that, so that the work, when you face the blank page and want to start writing, is already filled with ideas and the writing of the manuscripts becomes something very different. It becomes a rewriting of what you already have, and I think most of us know that, just psychologically, it's much easier to rewrite something that's already there than facing the blank page and dreading the first words and starting all over again because it doesn't sound right. So I definitely was one of the people who had a lot of trouble getting into the writing process, always rewriting the first sentences and feeling a bit worried that it might not lead to something. And then, having already written pieces you put in order rewrite, edit, lowers the threshold of this task considerably.
Speaker 1:I was trying to sort of think about a summary of some of the kind of the big benefits of the method and then you've just been alluding to some of them. I guess I'm thinking there are at least three really good ones. I mean one is, as you were saying, because you've got a clear, step-by-step system to follow. It can make you more time efficient and, in Lerman's case, incredibly productive. You're able to come up with a lot more output in the time available compared to others. So there's a time efficiency dimension.
Speaker 1:I think again, because you've got that clear, step-by-step process and something very clear and easy to do at each stage, that can be helpful in overcoming procrastination, because no one stage of its own feels overwhelming, it each feels very doable. And then I guess the third one is about how it facilitates coming up with original ideas and insights, drawing connections. I guess some of that, that spice, that that can an undergraduate level really elevate the quality of your work far beyond sort of mediocrity and is really kind of essential if you're going beyond that and going into professional research and academia Does that feel like a reasonable summary to you.
Speaker 1:Is there anything significant you think I've missed?
Speaker 2:I agree on the three steps. I don't think it's a step-by-step method. I think it's a scaffold. It provides you with structure, but it allows you to follow the non-linear process of thinking and writing. And maybe that's even the main difference to many study guide methods, which are step-by-step and telling you you start with research, then you read, then you do a summary, then you come up with an idea, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Working with Zettelkasten is different because thinking and writing is a non-linear process. You start with an idea, uh, usually, or you get from your professor a topic to write about and then you start reading about that and that usually changes, uh, your idea about what you want to write. What is the question here? That's interesting to follow. And then you start writing notes and you discover it doesn't lead anywhere. So you need to read a bit more, then you write a bit more, then you take notes. So you go back and forth all the time. Back and forth all the time and instead of um being on a 10 step path where you have trouble going back to step two because it feels like you're going back, um, this is more like a dialogue between your notes and what you're doing and um, you um go in a circle, a little bit like Gardamer's homoerotic circle, with a better understanding and you come up with better questions until you reach the point where you feel, yeah, this is now worth sharing with others. So it's more like you're writing a manuscript which is a snapshot of your current understanding of a topic, and your notes stay in the tattelkasten. You never throw them away, so you're absolutely able to continue that thought.
Speaker 2:That's a better idea of writing that you never reach the point where you know everything about something. You finally understood how things work. Now you tell the world and then you move on to the next topic. Usually it's more like, yeah, you understand something pretty well and you can tell others about it, but then you go back to the topic and understand it a little bit better and find new aspects to take into consideration and the next publication is hopefully a better understanding of it.
Speaker 2:So I think it's an iterative process and one of the advantages is you don't chuck the notes away when you've finished one project. They stay there, they're ready to take part in your ongoing conversation and you don't have to start from scratch again. And maybe there's another aspect to it that when you read something for one particular project, you usually encounter a lot of information that's also interesting, doesn't have anything to do with the project, but then it's good to have a place where you can jot down that idea quickly because it might be interesting for another project. So I wouldn't say the settle custom method is for everyone and I don't think it's the best method to turn to if you are facing your exam next week, next month. But it's a very good idea to build something like that long term if you're interested in continuing reading, understanding, writing and maybe publishing more than just one or two papers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, and so I wondered if we could maybe use what you just said as a bit of a starting point. So maybe one of the benefits is you don't have to start from scratch each time. But maybe we're listening to this and brand new to the method, never come across it before If we are literally starting from scratch. This is day one. What are the basics? How do we get started?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in a way it's simple, but there is a structure. That is important, and the basic structure is that there are different types of notes. And, um, I keep coming back to that because modeling up the different types of notes often makes things considerably more difficult. So I differentiate between fleeting notes, which are just the ideas you jot down on paper, on a napkin or in your journal, whatever is at hand. And we shouldn't underestimate these scribbled notes, because almost all great books started with one of these ideas you scribble down in the morning or in a conversation with a friend in a pub, but most of them don't turn out to be that great. They usually, after a day, turn out to be quite mediocre, or you discover you already had that idea a couple of times before, or it's not from you, it's from someone else, and so it's good to write them all down, but it's also important to filter them out. So filter out everything that is not worthwhile proceeding. Fleeting notes are usually just reminders of what you have in your head. So you have a thought and you write down a reminder of that. What is on paper is usually not a proper expression of the thought, so they need to be processed pretty soon, otherwise you forget to what more complex thought this fleeting note referred to. So you can call it an inbox where you put them and the next step is to turn them into something that is worth keeping permanently. This would be the second category permanent notes. Permanent notes are what we usually refer to when we refer to the notes or the zettel in the zettelkasten.
Speaker 2:In the Luhmann version it was analog on paper and usually there's only one idea on one piece of paper. And instead of adding these notes into a hierarchy of folders or sorting them by topics or questions or field of interest, luhmann would put the first note he wrote in the front of his box and the second right behind that and he numbered them one, two, three, four, five, and he numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And if he then continued with a thought he has written on node number 1, he would put the new node that explicitly expands on the idea of node number 1 right behind it, physically behind it, and branch it out with his ID numbering system. So between one and two it will be one a. Then he can continue with that notes where you have note sequences which are sometimes interrupted by hundreds of notes in between. So to keep an overview overview, he already he also kept an index. So that's just an alphabetical index where he referred from a term like complexity to the two or three notes which are most relevant for the topic of complexity, not all of them, just the ones that give you a good entry into a discussion, into one of these note sequences. So that is basically the permanent note section, which is the main part of it all.
Speaker 2:And then you have a third category in which are project notes. Project notes are all notes that are only relevant for one particular project and you can chuck them after you have finished that project. But if you put that into the permanent note section you would dilute the permanent notes with irrelevant ideas which are only relevant for one particular project, just as you don't want to have fleeting notes with first initial ideas in the permanent notes section. Otherwise you don't trust what's in the permanent notes section. You want to trust that everything written on permanent notes is well thought through, that you write it as if you write it for someone else, which is the reason. When you look at Luhmann's Zettel, they almost like published pieces. So in his manuscripts you find a lot of sections which are almost identical to what he had in the permanent note section, with quotes, with references, with proper citations. So you need to trust that this is well thought through.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, you have another category, which is literature notes. These are just notes you write to something you've read and, like permanent notes, you can keep them forever. You keep them in a separate place, but, like fleeting notes, you have to do something with them. So it's not worthwhile writing a lot of notes on a book and then not doing something with that. What's important is that you go through what you have written about something you read and think about it. How does this inform? How does this help with something I'm actively currently thinking about in the permanent note section, and then it's usually not enough to copy and paste that into that. You have to think about how does an idea from the context of the book I read is relevant for the thought I develop in the context of my own Zettelkasten development, idea development, and that usually requires a rephrasing, it requires sometimes more information.
Speaker 2:It is an active process of doing something with what you read and that's very different to what most students and most everyone reads and that is pretty passively doing a little bit like highlighting, underlining, writing some comments in the margins. But the problem with that is you don't actually develop your own thoughts, or only in your head. But the head is pretty unreliable. But the hat is pretty unreliable, it doesn't hold too complex thoughts.
Speaker 2:If you want to think properly, I believe you need to write, and you need to write your own words. You need to write your own argument. So as long as you don't intend to hand over the process of thinking to AI or others, I think there is no way around writing for yourself, and the whole telecast method is about putting you in a spot where you need to write your own words yourself, develop your own thoughts, and that is the reason why I said in the beginning, it's not for everyone. Not everyone is interested in developing their own ideas and it feels like a daunting task, but if you think about it, you don't have anything else than your own understanding of something. It is a process hard to delegate to others for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:I think it's really interesting. I mean, we've talked on the podcast in uh, in recent times over the last year or so about the, the, the idea of cognitive load theory, so this idea that you know, one of the important implications of that being that we can kind of only kind of think about or process so much information in our own brain, our own working memory, at any one time. And what I find really interesting about the method and I think when I was describing it as being step-by-step I didn't mean it so much as it's a linear, strictly one, then two, then three, then four, and you can never go backwards I think the aspect I was kind of particularly kind of excited by was more that it's very sort of split up into separate tasks. You know, because so many of us will sort of look at that blank sheet of paper. You know we might do the reading and maybe we'll, and maybe something that looks a bit like the fleeting notes.
Speaker 1:We'll jot all that in a big workbook or digital file somewhere and then we'll go straight from that to writing up the finished product and almost by adding those more steps and adding, for example, that step of permanent notes where we're almost coming up with those little essay fragments, where we're almost coming up with those little essay fragments you know you were saying that you know what's on the permanent notes you know can often read quite like little fragments that are in the final thing. You know it's in your own language, it's in your own words, it's referenced. And then once you've done that, you've got these little fragments that you can reorder and organise and come up with a structure, come up with an argument, and then you can put the final thing together and then you can edit it. So we're kind of breaking up what is, you know, kind of quite a big unstructured task and adding a lot of structure and kind of process along the way, breaking it down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's well put yeah.
Speaker 1:From your experience of teaching this. What are some of the things that people find difficult about the method, or maybe kind of points of friction, um, points of points of challenge in terms of putting this into action, and are there any ways, uh, to sort of overcome those, those challenges?
Speaker 2:well, there are technical aspects and there are psychological aspects. So for the technical aspects, few people want to build their own settled custom with pen and paper like Luhmann did. It just doesn't make sense for most people. There are some who see the benefits of writing by hand as important enough to not have the advantages of the digital. So you can't do a full text search in your pen and paper version, you can't copy and paste in your pen and paper version and after amassing thousands of notes it becomes a logistical problem so you can't move any more as easily as before or travel with it. I had that problem when I lived in Asia for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:I paid a lot of money to get all the notes moved.
Speaker 2:So that was one of the decisions to go digital. That's a technical aspect. Then there are apps available and I think there's more and more development that is not built from the mindset of folder structures, letting topic structure ideas emerge bottom up, especially the apps that have bidirectional linking. That means if you link to one node you see on that node where you link from. That makes building a network quite easy and nice to handle. So there are Obsidian, there are Tanner, there are Logsack, rome Research, there are others, because many people ask how do I do that exactly?
Speaker 2:I spent a lot of time developing this course where I teach to put it into practice with Obsidian, because I feel that's the best app available at the moment and it's the most future proof. It's simple markdown files. It's not stored in the cloud, but you can if you want to, so you have full control over your notes. You don't have to pay a subscription and lose access to your Lifeworks. So I think there are a lot of reasons to choose that app, which is why I explained it on that example and I use it myself. That hopefully answered a lot of the technical questions.
Speaker 2:The psychological hurdle for most people and I'm not sure if that's surprising or not is the challenge of writing your own ideas. Many are trained in school to give a proper account of the ideas of others, so you write an essay about the book you read or you expand on an idea or a question you've been given, but subtle custom forces you to ask yourself what is worth writing about? What is the open question? That is not answered in any of the books I've read and puts you in the driver's seats of being a researcher and I think students are researchers as well, Even if you discover later okay, someone else has already figured that out. It's a discovery that involves the same kind of journey of going out seeking information and judging the information.
Speaker 2:So this method really forces you to not circumvent the challenge of thinking for yourself, and I think that's the most beautiful part of it, but it's the most challenging. And so many people wrote to me saying, well, I really don't know how to write notes, so I give account of my own ideas, and this is not to be misunderstood as writing opinions about something. It should be rooted in facts and proper information and arguments and it should hold up to scrutiny. But there is this misconception either writing about something that's out there and reality and fact, or I write about my opinions about that, and that that's not what this method is about. It's about immersing yourself in your best understanding of reality and what a topic is about and then trying to push your understanding of it. And, yeah, I think that's challenging, but I think, think that's that's the challenge we seek when we learn and do research yeah, no, it's not.
Speaker 1:Not not an easy skill to develop, but I guess the more we can have a, have a good structure in which to which to practice that and develop that, that's only gonna gonna help nurture that, that skill. I I guess, um, no, it's really interesting. Thank you, so I'm just out of it. You mentioned you had made the switch to digital, I think yourself. So, uh, do you now? Do you now use obsidian? Is that your personal tool that you use?
Speaker 2:yes, quite a few years now. I I switched three times and I I don't intend to switch ever again because it's always a hassle, I bet I I started with an app deliberately designed to as a digital telecast and three uh from someone I uh know from university. We were in a lumen reading group together and I liked it, but it's a bit old-fashioned, clunky and you never know if he is able to develop it further. So when Roam Research came out, I switched to that, but it always made me feel like I'm in a distance to my notes. So it's a weird feeling.
Speaker 2:Some people have the same feeling when they read books on Kindle, that you're less immersed as if you read it printed, and Obsidian allows me to immerse myself, to forget the app. So I don't think about Obsidian when I write in Obsidian, I'm really focused on the writing itself, and it allows you to have multiple notes open at the same time so you can develop your ideas on note sequences, which is maybe the most important aspect of that, because it's always contextualized. So, yeah, I like that and um, that's that. That's the reason I explain the method on the example of Obsidian.
Speaker 1:So your work has obviously been followed by many, many people and had a big impact on a lot of people. I'm just curious have you had any nice stories or kind of case studies? People have kind of adopted the method and it's sort of really clicked for them. And it's sort of really clicked for them. I mean we obviously had the Lumen case study and how incredibly productive he was able to be in his lifetime. Any other kind of nice success stories you might be able to share with us? Well, it's nice to see People have adopted it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's really nice to see your name in the thank you notes of a dissertation or published book. And then there is one coaching client of mine. He used it not to write but to develop ideas and keep notes about his own coaching practice. So he he used to send me an email whenever he managed to finish a contract for that many dollars Felt like. That method helped him to secure quite a considerable amount of wealth just by having his ideas on hand if when needed, so that's quite nice. His ideas on hand if when needed, so that's quite nice.
Speaker 2:But my heart is probably in academia and when I feel that it helps people to develop new, interesting ideas worth sharing, yeah, having said that, it's not for everyone, it's um, you can also. I think there's also personality type you maybe need to to like collecting stuff and playing around with ideas, putting them together. I think there are personality types which are much more straightforward. They like to put down an idea they have in their head, collect the stuff and not get distracted by possible other ways you can expand it to. So it's good to think if you can imagine yourself spending time in a dialogue with your own notes and tinkering around with ideas and hoping for this moment where something clicks, something magical happens and you realize something, because you stumbled upon an idea you have written down a year ago and it resonates with something you're working on right now. You need to like that process, I believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, really interesting, really interesting. Well, zunker, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your wisdom on the Zettelkasten method, this episode. It's certainly big food for thought for me. I've been sitting here listening to this and thinking should I take the plunge and set up Zettelkasten in my world? Because, as as you, as you might know, I teach how to learn effectively and how to study effectively for exams and that bit perhaps you said you might not use a Zettelkasten for so much.
Speaker 1:That's, that's my speciality and I'm thinking, you know, I have a lot of ideas on how to do it well, and I teach that a lot to my own coaching clients and here on the podcast. And you know, I'm sure there's things that I've thought about or read or kind of insights I've had that have just kind of got buried because I never recorded them, and I'm thinking, you know, maybe this could be quite a good thing for me. So I will reflect on that and maybe in a few years' time you'll be in the dedication section at the front of my next book. So thank you so much once again. If anyone is interested in finding out more about your work and the method, perhaps is there any way you might suggest we go next. And of course there's the, the book which is up behind my left shoulder you mentioned. There's the obsidian course. Yeah, feel free to just point us in the right direction for where we might go for more information.
Speaker 2:Probably the website takesmartnotescom. If you as a student or an early career academic, if you're interested in the course, scroll down to the bottom of the sales page and you find a small printed link where you can get students discount or early career discounts. So I try to to make it available um for for everyone. Yeah, I think that that's that's the best way to start, but, but what I hope to get across is that it's all about your ideas. So this method doesn't teach you how to think. It just provides a structure to get these ideas lingering somewhere in your head on paper and, hopefully, better the world.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me for that installment of the Exam Study Expert podcast and I hope you enjoyed learning about the Zettelkasten method. If you've enjoyed today's content, you may also want to take a look at some of our related material on note making and other elements of the academic research and writing process. In particular, I mentioned episode 165 back in the intro, withia rango. Uh, that's a nice intro to to some uh to the world of digital note making generally and kind of a nice compliment to what we've talked about today in the deep dive on zettelkasten. Um, I'd also highly suggest episode 192, an academic writing masterclass a really excellent outline actually, of the key steps to success in academic research and writing, helping you streamline and be more successful at the different points. I learned a lot from that. That was with exam study experts very own academic writing specialist coach, dr alex hibble. Alex also director of studies at oxford university, so safe to say she knows her stuff there.
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Speaker 1:A growing number of platforms, including Spotify, now also let you leave comments and interact, and we do read those and we often reply to them, and it's really, really great to see your thoughts there. So if you're going to try out Zettelkasten and want to share that excitement, or maybe you've already tried it and want to report back on how it's been for you, for better or for worse, we'd really love to hear from you. So feel free to leave us a comment. You can do that in Spotify, of course. If you're listening to us watching us here on YouTube, you can do that down in the comments in YouTube too. So please do that and we will look forward to hearing what you have to say about the Zettelkasten method. Thank you so much as always for listening today. It's been such a pleasure to have your company and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks ever so much and wishing you every success in your note making today.
Speaker 3:head to the website for a write-up of this episode, as well as lots more top-notch advice and resources. That's examstudyexpertcom. See you next time.