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Orientation for George Kao's Courses › Getting the most from a course
👍 ME TF IS GF 💡 JS

Recommended method for taking notes when working through a course... (hat manual)

Updated Sep 9, 2026

Taking more than one course at a time?


Roughly a third of your time on learning, and the rest on applying it. If you have an hour a week for a course, that is about 20 minutes of watching or reading and about 40 minutes of doing something with it.

The watching gives you insight and direction. Your business changes in the other 40 minutes.


Two courses at once is usually plenty. And if a course genuinely builds on another one of mine, take that one first -- otherwise, order does not matter much.

Orientation - how to study?
Orientation - how to study?
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Comments

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AJ
Amanda Jane

Oh! This is critical advice about how to take and use ANY course well. I wish I had come across this way of thinking about it 4 or 5 years ago (or even 4 or 5 months ago). It would have made such a difference for me. Definitely will start to implement this concept of Hat Manuals beginning today. 

❤️ GK
Reply 2y ago
GK
George Kao Ⓜ️ MasterHeart 🔤 ABC

@Amanda Jane I'm so glad this resonates! Thanks for letting me know. En-joy the new way of working through courses in a lighter, yet more practical way.

Reply 2y ago
CM
Chantal McIntyre 🔤 ABC

Love this so much

@George Kao and just watched the FB Live where you say...."REBEL against the right things, not against my own structures.  Rebel against … self doubt, perfectionism, other people’s demands!"  

I have a question about categories as you also mention projects vs. tasks when doing the Calendaring. I'm confused about how you track or remember your categories?  Would they be all the same category names under a Project that would be easy to remember?  Alphabetical or areas of life?  I can see myself losing track of categories :-(  I depend on my search function to find everything and it's time consuming.

👍 RK
Reply 2y ago
GK
George Kao Ⓜ️ MasterHeart 🔤 ABC

@Chantal McIntyre good question!   My categories are all tied to my calendar somehow.  They exist as time blocks that are daily, or weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.  The same categories also exist in my Todoist (as "projects").  

So when a category pops up in my calendar (when it's time to look at it) I look at that category of tasks in my Todoist to see what's priority to do.

Let me know if that makes sense.

Capture - Categorize - Calendar.

❤️ RK
Reply 2y ago
RK
Roxanne Koh (Therapy Without Boxes)

@George Kao thanks for replying to @Chantal McIntyre's great question. I would like to ride on :)
1) What are the effective ways to decide our categories (e.g., health, work, family - I suppose)? 
2) Just to clarify, you schedule your calendar in terms of categories instead of tasks?
3) What determine the priority of the task in each category?
4) I wonder since you allocate tasks in each category (aka "project" in Todoist), wouldn't you be unable to have a bird eye's view? Tasks in other categories will not be seen. 
5) While I understand that what pops up in the calendar is the cateogories we need to prioritise. What if that category does not fit the context at that time?

Thank you! 

Reply 2y ago
GK
George Kao Ⓜ️ MasterHeart 🔤 ABC

@Roxanne Koh (Therapy Without Boxes) great questions! And, I dive into all this with depth in the Joyful Productivity course -- http://smpl.ro/JoyfulPro -- but you can also get find answers to these in my blog post and free video about CCC -- https://www.georgekao.com/blog/ccc

Take a look at least at the blog post and video, and let me know if that helps :)

Reply 2y ago
SP
Steph Pfennig

ADORE the CCC method 

💡 DN GK
Reply 2y ago Translate to English
RK
Roxanne Koh (Therapy Without Boxes)

Learn it as if it is part of our job :)

(I find uni course more theoretical haha so change it to working) 

Anyhow, it would be great to see an actual example of using the Google doc with link to learn the course :) 

❤️ GK
Reply 2y ago
GS
Gaianna Sophia

I love it :) Will try it out :)

❤️ GK
Reply 2y ago
CD
Clare Downham
That was really helpful, thank you 😊
💡 GK
Reply 2y ago
MV
Mary Veerkamp 🔤 ABC

What a completely novel way of thinking about this. I LOVE to take notes and I'm intrigued by this method that may actually help me to make my notes more relevant, salient, and useful. Interestingly, I had the CCC module on my list to work with today :)

❤️ GK
Reply 2y ago
JS
Judy Solomon 🔤 ABC

Very helpful with the ccc method

Reply 2y ago
CW
Christine Weddle 🔤 ABC

@George Kao, this is a fabulous, helpful post! Thank you! ❤️

👏 GK
Reply 2y ago
CW
Christine Weddle 🔤 ABC

In the first bookmark above, the name is George Kao, not "George Cali"...

In the second bookmark, it should say, "Stop taking notes for everything...add things to your hat manual, not "hot menu"! 😆

Also, in the last line, "Patrick" makes an appearance, but "Patrick" is actually Capture... 🤣



@George Kao

🤣 GK
Reply 2y ago
GK
George Kao Ⓜ️ MasterHeart 🔤 ABC

@Christine Weddle thank you for catching those!  At this time there's no way to edit the bookmarks or transcript, so it's best to see them as rough estimates of what the video says.

But now that you mention it, "hot menu" is way more interesting than "hat manual" 🤣

👍 SP 🤣 TF CW
Reply 2y ago
CW
Christine Weddle 🔤 ABC

@George Kao , there’s a fun idea to play with with — a “hot menu”!!! 🤣

👏 GK
Reply 2y ago
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