Outline Level-of-Effort and Research Phase

[00:00 - 00:16] So what we're going to do next is a topic research phase and we're going to take a broad pass through all of the existing material that's already out there. And we're going to make sure that one, we're covering all the topics we want to cover, two, we're covering the topics that people want to learn about, and three, we 're identifying topics that we explicitly don't want to cover.

[00:17 - 00:24] So in this step, we're going to be capturing relevant ideas without priorit ization. We're just going to do a broad gathering step and then we'll refine it down later.

[00:25 - 00:36] Practically what this means is we're going to review a bunch of sources online and then we're going to take notes about what topics exist and just do a rough categor ization. So the sources that I want you to start with would be like stack overflow questions.

[00:37 - 00:44] Reddit communities are really, really good to find questions people still have. I'm sure you've seen like awesome lists on GitHub if you haven't look them up.

[00:45 - 00:50] We'll look at popular packages from package managers. We'll look at popular lists for the community.

[00:51 - 01:06] Look at Hacker News or try to find data like the state of JavaScript 2020. There's really any specific community like forums or hangout places or watering holes that you know about and really any other hard data that you can find about what 's popular and what people are interested in.

[01:07 - 01:14] You also want to take a look at the docs. We don't want to copy them of course, but you want to know like where they're good and especially what they are missing.

[01:15 - 01:20] So as you're going through your research, you have to be constantly thinking through like what are people looking for? What are people actually want to learn?

[01:21 - 01:36] I think again, we make the mistake as teachers sometimes making the same mistake that API documentation writers make. Well, maybe it's not a mistake for them, but it's a different purpose, which is you know, we're just sometimes regurgitating an API.

[01:37 - 01:47] And remember the API docs and superficial blog posts, they already exist. Why would someone pay us to teach them the API docs in the same format as they already are?

[01:48 - 01:58] You know, we'll talk about this a lot. So, for now, what you're going to do is you're going to research and I want you to capture ideas as you find them, put them into your outline into the Google Doc.

[01:59 - 02:08] And that will start to build a collection of what's already out there. But also remember, there's no point to just simply copy and paste every item all at once, you know, like every item from an awesome list into your doc.

[02:09 - 02:16] If you just copy and paste, you're not going to learn anything from that. So instead, you're trying to digest and like really look at and evaluate each one.

[02:17 - 02:29] Take note of the good ideas and see these points from the eyes of a learner. Try to figure out like, try to see the patterns that occur over and over and over again.

[02:30 - 02:47] When you look at this through the eyes of a beginner, one, you'll probably see a bunch of blog posts that all cover the same thing. And you'll also see a bunch of blog posts that you feel are like too basic because you're more advanced and you don't even think of these things anymore.

[02:48 - 03:02] So when you find these posts, you know, sometimes you say, well, too many people cover this already, but also a lot of the times it's because like no one really explains it very well. And so think through when you see these posts like, why did someone write about this?

[03:03 - 03:04] Why? What was their motivation?

[03:05 - 03:07] What's their background? When someone lands on this post, what are their expectations?

[03:08 - 03:21] What are what are someone trying to learn? Oftentimes when you look at these blog posts, you'll find posts where they just don't generally go that deep or they're just not that good or sometimes the author even is completely wrong and you'll be surprised that the post was super popular.

[03:22 - 03:43] I feel like when you see a post that was really popular that you think is not that good, that's a really good opportunity. That's really worth paying attention to because if that concept struck a chord with a lot of beginners, there's a good opportunity there to explain it much more in depth and from your perspective.

[03:44 - 03:53] So let me set your level of effort expectations on this. The process of doing just a rough, non-prioritized research of the outline, you 're not going to do it in just an hour or two.

[03:54 - 04:13] This process can easily take me 10 hours. So grab a cup of coffee, plan to explore your topic deeply and even though you 're already an expert, just revisit it with fresh eyes and it'll help remind you of what it 's like to be a beginner and it'll show you also what topics tend to get popular.

[04:14 - 04:24] But as you're doing this process, basically visit all the links that show up and just go slow and take notes. So what I want you to do right now is to just go through these resources and start taking note of what you find.

[04:25 - 04:28] You don't necessarily need to prioritize them. You don't need to order them into chapters, we'll get to that.

[04:29 - 04:35] Just try to take note of the stuff we want to cover and the stuff we don't. In the next video, I'll show you a practical example of how to go about this research.