Read (30%). A book chapter, the official docs, or a course module. Read the official docs first for tools (Spring, Kafka, K8s); use books for concepts.
Build (50%). Apply it the same day in Orbit or a lab. Break it on purpose (kill a pod, drop a Kafka broker, add latency).
Write (15%). Create an atomic note in Notes/ with the Concept Note template: what it is, why it exists, how it works, trade-offs, gotchas, and a diagram.
Teach (5%). Explain it out loud in 2 minutes, write a blog post, or answer a question on Stack Overflow or Reddit.
Reading books well (not just finishing them)
Skim the TOC and chapter summaries first (10 min), then read with a question in mind
One Book Note per book (template) with a chapter-by-chapter summary in your words
Stop every 20 pages and write down the 3 most important ideas without looking
It’s okay to skip chapters. Books are tools, not obligations
Spaced repetition
Use Anki (or Obsidian Spaced Repetition plugin) for facts: latency numbers, isolation anomalies, Kafka configs, K8s objects
Use #revise for skills (DSA problems, design cases) and redo them on days 3, 7, and 21
Retrieval practice > rereading
Hands-on principles
Build from scratch once, then use the library (your own Redis, rate limiter, HTTP server, Raft)
Read source code of tools you use: Spring’s DispatcherServlet, Go’s net/http, Kafka’s producer
Deliberately break things and write down what you observed
Obsidian workflow in this vault
Notes/ = your second brain (atomic, linked). Link every note to at least one topic note (e.g. [[Kafka]])
Use the graph view weekly to spot isolated notes, then link them or delete them
Daily notes in Journal/; weekly review every Sunday