Navigating the Maze

Information Overload? Slightly Overwhelmed?

There is a lot of information here at WA, and if you are like me it can get a little overwhelming. I'm not saying that the information is difficult to understand, I'm saying that the "amount" of information is immense and manoeuvring through it all can become a task in itself. If you are just starting out with WA, you may feel overwhelmed and even a little confused on how to successfully get through all the courses and not lose yourself.
Using the Bootcamp course (Phase 1) as an example. You start the course, read through maybe a couple of days worth of material, but within those pages have links to videos and other course pages, that again have links to other pages. And so on. With me, I feel obligated right away to follow those links and read the material, until another link happens, click, and then read and follow more pages. Doing any of the courses here can compel you to link jump to get all the information you can. This may be fine for some, but you can easily lose yourself in the courses this way.

Some people may have good strategies on how to navigate the material, keep their places within the courses, and some may even have such good study methods that they take notes critically on all of the course material. This post is not about those people who have successful strategies to get the most of the material here at Wealthy Affiliate, but even these people may appreciate what is to come in the post.

I am one of those people that do link jump while doing the courses, for I have to follow it now otherwise it wouldn't have been placed there. What I do like to do while I am doing this is to outline the course using its headers, tasks, links, and anything else that I may feel might be important. And then I can place notes within the outline for anything that I deem important to remember. This is all good and fine, but I like to do everything on computer and every program that I had available use to do this was either too complicated for the needs, too flashy with its interface, or just not quite right.

Stumbling through the Chrome App Store I did find a little gem that I am using--not only for WA--but I'm using it for all of my writing, blogging, or even brainstorming. This is an actual screen shot of the main page of the program:

I know the size of the screenshot makes the text hard to see, but there are 5 topics on the main page; Work, Personal, Wealthy Affiliate, My Stories, and Honk'n'Holl'r (my personal blog). Each topic is a separate outline. You can add as many main headings as you want, and for any purpose. From this perspective it looks just like a sheet of paper with a small bullet list on it. And that is exactly what it is--and a whole lot more. Each of the bullets are click-able, and when hovered over a '+' sign appears and then small dialogue menu opens. The bullets also are either plain black, or have a grey halo around them. The plain black bullets have no subheading hidden beneath their main headings, the grey halo bullet does have subheadings. Clicking on the + sign will expand the outline and remain on the same page, clicking the bullet will open that heading as a new page with all subheadings expanded. As new pages open the deeper you go into your outline, your position is shown across the top in a directory style manor such as: Home > WeathyAffiliate > Day Three > .


I have another screenshot with my Wealth Affiliate Heading expanded by only using the + sign to remain on main page:

And again by clicking the bullet with the heading opened as its own page. We are only one level deep at this point so the tree structure above the Wealthy Affiliate header is Home >

There seems to be no limit to the subheadings for the outline that I've run into so far. I have gone several headings deep in some topics, and can go deeper. The program fluidly expands or collapses is headings, so navigation through several deep layers of outline is quite easy.

It is as simple to use as a plain outline program, but there is much more to it, yet the interface stays just as simple. You can add # hash tags to any heading which really helps for many things. You can add notes to any heading which can be visible or hidden. You can use the dialogue menu to mark any heading as completed which will mark the heading with strike through text. This become a really handy task manager tool used this way. Completed headings can remain visible, or you can select to hide them. When you hide them they are kept in a handy menu button at the top menu and can easily be made visible or reviewed. The program will allow collaboration, and it also has a feature where it will email you the changes you made to your outline in a day, not the whole outline, just the changes. (If you are a procrastinator, or find it hard to set goals and become motivated, that little email feature really shows you how much you have accomplished and motivates you to do more!)

This little program really helps me manage--not only the course material here--but anything I do with writing that needs some sort of organization before putting pen to paper--er, I mean fingers to keyboard. With WA, I simply cut and paste the main course headings into the program, any links that I encounter with in the course becomes a subheading under that course's particular section. I may add a note to any of the headings for clarification, and add hash tags to any of the headings that require some sort of action eg, #followlink, or #todo, or #importantTask. You can also search and sort the entire outline using hashtags. This makes it really easy to jump to different areas, or find similar topics in a very deep outline.

I found this program just recently, and now I wonder how I have lived without it. The program is called Workflowy. It is a web application, and is secure. Being a web app, it has an upgrade option for a price (which is very low acutally), but you can also use it free with a monthly quota of usage. I'm not sure how much usage before it is full, but there is a handy gauge at the top that shows you your usage in real time. For free users there is a referral program to earn more space by referring others to Workflowy. Workflowy is available in the Chrome Web App store, or you can use my referral link workflowy.com/?ref=10a20f4c

This little gem of a program is really helping me "Navigate the Maze" that is Wealthy Affiliate, and I hope that if you do try the program you will find it just as helpful a tool that I am finding it. I thank you in advance if you do use my referral link for the extra space will come in just handy :)

Thanks for reading,
TTFN
Frank