34. August Q&A: College Freshman Advice, Annotating Used Books, and Staying Relevant at Work
Episode 34
It's Q&A time again! I’ve gone into the queue and pulled out some awesome listener questions this week, and I can’t wait to share them with you. Remember, sometimes other people ask questions we didn’t even know we had, so that’s your sign to stick around and listen all the way through.
In this week's Q&A, I answer three listener questions:
✅Question 1: A soon-to-be college student asks me for advice for heading into freshman year of college.
✅Question 2: A working professional asks about annotating used books. Do we ignore the previous reader's annotations? Do we pay attention to them?
✅Question 3: A working professional with industry expertise and experience is wondering how to keep her skill set relevant when her colleagues are getting younger
🎙️Other Episodes Mentioned
→ Episode 05: Secrets of a Good Task Management System
→ Episode 11: The 6 Most Valuable Skills for School and Work
→ Episode 12: Are Your Productivity Systems Broken?
→ Episode 29: How to Take Useful Notes from Books
✏️ FREE DOWNLOADS:
→ Daily Timeblock Planner (pdf)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
August 2024 Q&A
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[00:00:00] Hello, you are listening to episode 34 of the learn and work smarter podcast.
Since January 2024 I have uploaded a new episode every Thursday and I've recorded one Q and A episode each month. So that means that this week's episode, which is our monthly Q and A episode, is my eighth round of answering listener questions. And that is you.
If you are new to the podcast and are wondering how to submit questions to be answered on future episodes, you just go to learnandworksmarter.com and there is a form right there on the homepage. Super simple form where you enter your question.
I add it to my queue and I will answer it in one of our monthly Q and a episodes like today. Now, I know I just said that this is my eighth month doing this, but I feel like I spend so much of my time answering questions from the community. I absolutely love that. And it's one of my favorite parts about what I do, but what I mean by that [00:01:00] is as part of my SchoolHabits University course, people who enroll get 12 months access to me.
They get lifetime access to the course, but 12 months of being able to submit their personal questions. And I answer them. So between these monthly Q and a podcast episodes and answering questions of those who are enrolled in the course, I feel like so many of my weeks are spent answering questions.
And I absolutely love that. And I will say here, what I tell everyone inside the course: even if I am not answering your specific question today on the podcast, I invite you to stick around and listen all the way through, because sometimes we hear other people ask questions that we didn't even know we had.
Okay. So I am going to answer three questions today. I have found that to fit under my 30 minute target of these episodes, I can usually get to two questions, but we are going to [00:02:00] shoot for three today. So we are just, we are going to see how that goes.
The first question is submitted by a college student.
And the second and third questions are submitted by working professionals. All right, let's do this.
All right. Our first question is submitted by a student who gave me some background information that I won't read verbatim here. Okay. But she's headed off to college for the first time and will be living away from home for the first time.
And she's asking about advice to have a good freshman year.
All right, I'm going to read the question question. She says, hi, Katie. I recently discovered your [00:03:00] podcast on YouTube, and now I'm going back to listen to all your previous episodes. I love them. And think your topics are so helpful. Yay. I have a question about college. I'm a freshman in college in the fall of 2024 and I'm wondering if you have any advice for first year students? I did well in high school and never really struggled, but honestly think that's because my classes were easy and my teachers were lenient. I'm worried I'll be shocked when I go to college about how hard everything is and I'm getting worried I won't be able to do as well as I did in high school. What are some tips you have that you think might help? Sorry. My question is so long. Thank you.
Okay. First of all your question is not long at all. In fact, a lot of times when people fill out the form to submit their questions, They give me like paragraphs and paragraphs of information. And what I read here on the podcast is an abbreviated version.
I think your question is awesome. And I know that you're asking from the [00:04:00] perspective of a college freshm an But honestly, I'm thinking of the tips that I'm going to share in a moment will be helpful to anybody going back to school in the fall.
No matter what grade level you're in. Okay. So I want to start with some stuff that's more like tactical advice and then move on to a tip that might be more, um, strategic. Okay. If I. If that's the right word.
So I talk a lot about systems on this podcast and about having the right systems in place can help us be more productive and efficient and honestly less stressed out.
So my first tip has to do with setting up some key systems. Now one key difference between high school and college that tends to shock people to use your words, the most is that the amount of free time? Um, or open space that you have opened in a day or a week is drastically different. If you think about it in high school, all your courses are chunked together back-to-back in one chunk of time from like eight to two. [00:05:00] And you don't really need that many systems for that chunk of time in your day, because you're just being like herded from class to class and essentially being told where to go and what to do.
You do need some time management and task management systems to manage your time after school.
Okay. But even then, if you're playing sports and doing activities, Then you're really only responsible for managing a few hours a day.
Now it is not like that in college at all. And that's the ruder rude awakening for a lot of students in college. You may only have one to three classes a day, or maybe even no classes on a Wednesday, right? And you are responsible for managing so much more time.
So regardless of what your time management system looked like in high school, you're going to need something much more robust in college, same thing for your task management system.
Now in high school, you were likely assigned something [00:06:00] on one day and it was due one or two days later, right? But it is not like that in college because your classes are more spread out. Right. In most homework assignments are more like long-term projects. Then you have to manage your own.
Okay. Now that's a lot of lead up and I haven't even told you the tip yet. But the tip really is to put some intentional energy into creating and maintaining task management and time management systems.
Now, although task management and time management are two different things. These two systems often work. In harmony kind of like, um, interlocking gears, I guess if that's a visual that makes sense. If you have a good time management system, but no good task management system or vice versa, then things are gonna fall apart and you're honestly gonna end up probably pretty overwhelmed.
So time management and college, what does that look like?
That means making time visible. That means you know, using a digital calendar or a [00:07:00] paper calendar to put some, um, shape to your days. All right. Blocking out times and days that you have classes and adding buffer time or commute time to, and from those classes. That is actually something that a lot of people forget to include. All right.
It would mean making visible the time that you spend in the gym in your college activities, in the dining hall and yes, including the time it takes to get to and from these places. And then you would identify the days and the time blocks that are Mo that are the most sensible pockets of your week to do the chunks of work.
Now, in college, these chunks of work and study time should create some sort of pattern in your week. Right. If you have three classes on Monday and only one class on Tuesday, then you would probably identify that tuesday has more time in the day for you to work on assignments from your three Monday classes, does that make sense? And then that would be something that you would [00:08:00] probably repeat each week.
So you would know that most Tuesdays you're going to, don't go to the library for a chunk of time to work on your work from the three classes on Monday. All right. So there's like a pattern there.
I'm often asked if digital calendars or physical calendars, like a personal planner are better for this type of thing.
And my answer is it always depends on your preferences and your needs. But in most cases, I recommend a digital calendar. There's a lot less friction there when it comes to adding and deleting events and sort of like shuffling and dragging things around.
Now the second system you need to have locked and loaded in college is task management. Now gone, honestly, are the days of high school where you're given an assignment one night and the next day in school, the teacher reminds you that it's due the next day. That is not at all how, it works at the college level.
I'm so sorry. Okay, so you will have a learning management system, something like a canvas. Okay. Like it's super digital, but I do [00:09:00] not recommend that you use this as your task management system.
This is actually where I suggest that you go with something physical, like a planner. Why do I so strongly suggest that you don't use your learning management system as a task management system? Because your school designated learning management system, your LMS, doesn't allow you to create your own tasks and assignments, and that is something you will need to do in college. So for example, Your learning management system might have an assignment in there for, um, like a lab report. Okay. And maybe it lists the name of the assignment, the details, the due date.
And then obviously that's the portal through which you actually submit the assignment, right? But nowhere in there is a way for you to break down that large lab report assignment and to designate to yourself that you're going to work on the data collection section on Monday and making your tables on Tuesday and writing the analysis and the conclusion [00:10:00] on Wednesday.
Right. You might have an assignment in there that a teacher posted. That's a reminder that you have a test on Friday. But nowhere in there is a way for you to add in the study blocks on, I don't know, the seven days leading up to that test. Do you get what I'm saying?
So, yes, you're going to keep your learning management system and you're going to let all the assignment details and the links. And the PDFs and everything that is related to the assignment live inside the portal.
But I recommend that you have some kind of simple academic planner where you can write down the assignments yourself.
Is this redundant. Not really. Hear me out. So let's say that you have an assignment in your learning management system that is a multi step assignment. Uh, maybe involves reading five different articles and watching five accompanying, um, videos, and then answering questions about each like article- video pair.
It's actually a summer AP summer assignment. I did recently with a student, but [00:11:00] all of them PDFs and video, video links. Okay. They're going to be inside your learning management system. Fine. Okay. Would you copy all that information into your paper planner? Would you copy all the uRLs and the videos.
No, of course you wouldn't, you would leave it in the portal. But what you would do is you'd break down that assignment and do a, into a couple of different steps and write those individual steps in your planner on the particular days that you intend to do them. So you might write, read article one and watch video one. Um, Gothic lit okay, in your planner and on, on for Monday. And you write, read article two, watch video two in the Tuesday section of your planner.
And of course, when you open your planner and you see, you know, what's written inside on those two days, you obviously know to go into your learning management system to get those video links and to get the PDFs.
I was asked recently by a student inside SchoolHabits University, if there is a particular planner that I recommended, honestly, Not really. [00:12:00] The best planner is the one that you use.
I am a fan of the, at a glance planners, as well as the blue sky. You can get those on Amazon or staples or office Depot. They are simple. And that's why I liked them, but more important than the brand of the planner is to pick the right one for you. So, you want to think about size. Do you want like the full size?
Do you want the junior half size? Do you want to get. Um, Paper planner with like a coil binding or it's like mechanically that going to be hard for you to write based on like the mechanics of, you know, how you hold your pen. Um, think about paper thickness if bleed through bothers you. So think about those details.
That's more important than what brand.
And then lastly, I suggest having a weekly spread inside your planner where you can write assignments for each day of the week. So by the word spread, I usually mean. Like, you know, you open up the planner and like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is on one side and you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, [00:13:00] Sunday is on the other side.
So you can see like the entire week when you open up the planner and have two pages open, that makes sense. Like butterfly wings, And then probably having a monthly planner in there as well for big assignments and due dates, not for assignments, really, but for deadline based things that are going to be on your digital calendar as well, maybe like a test or something, or like school break. All right.
And then to wrap up this part about task management and stuff, just a reminder. A task management system is about way more than the tool you use. You need to have a strategy for making sure that you use your system in a way that is helpful to you. All right. So where are you going to store your assignment notebook? When are you going to add assignments from your syllabus into your planner? What day of the week?
Um, Sunday, maybe. Are you going to transfer assignments from your learning management system into your planner? How often are you gonna, you know, look in your learning management system or your syllabus [00:14:00] and see an upcoming test and then open your planner and schedule study sessions on the days leading up to your test.
Now a tip for creating habits is to do the habit that we want to create especially on the days when we don't need to.
So that means, okay, let's say you only have one class on a Friday and you know the assignment is in your learning management system and you don't feel like adding it to your planner, do in any way. Get in the habit of opening your learning management system and your planner every day. And syncing them. Right.
And looking around and making sure that's what is in one place is in the other and making sure that what you have in there has a place on your calendar to get done. And that is actually where time management comes in. Right. Because when we are looking at our T uh, LMS, our learning management system and your assignment notebook, and you're realizing, Hey, I ha I need to plan a few study sessions leading up to next week's test.
Well, then you look at your digital calendar, and you say. Well, [00:15:00] Okay, where are my pockets of time. What is the best time for me to have those study sessions? When is the best time for me to work on my essay that is due a week. All right.
So to recap that tip it's kind of like two in one, but you got to make sure that you have a time management system and a task management system that are functional, frictionless and trustworthy.
Now, if you create, um, like a system or something in September when you start school and it works for a little bit, and you find that, you know, suddenly it's just not working anymore, like you're not reaching for your assignment notebook anymore, don't give up, don't throw it away. Don't start from scratch with something else.
Don't go out and buy something new. Use the one you have and just tweak it. Ask yourself what's not working. What would make it easier to use? What's the simplest tweak that you can make to improve your system?
And then lastly, something that I think will be really helpful as you head off into college is something that's more strategic or [00:16:00] mindset based.
That was the mindset was the word I couldn't think of early up. In my experience. It's not a mindset that many high school students have anybody to is certainly necessary in college. And that has to figure out a way to avoid procrastination. I know you're not asking about this directly, but it's related.
We all procrastinate. I do it too. And I'm not saying that there's some magic strategy for never procrastinating again, but the consequences of procrastinating and college are so much more severe than they are in high school. Procrastination in college snowballs faster in, you know, leads to so much anxiety and overwhelm and like a single day. High school and, you know, you need like a five days of procrastinating to stress you out.
There has gotta be some mindset work around starting things when you don't want to start them. We'll be taking the first step to writing an essay or studying for an exam or whatever your work is taking that first step almost before it feels reasonable to do so. Okay. [00:17:00]
I'd say that getting a grasp on procrastination is perhaps single-handedly the most powerful weapon you have against overwhelm and bad academic performance.
All right. I hope I answered your question in a way that feels doable and practical. I do have a, um, episode all about task management. I will... I can't think of the episode number off the top of my head. I will leave that in the show notes. And I liked this question, as I said, it gave me an opportunity to talk about some strategies I think might be helpful to students at any grade level, not just starting college.
Okay. So question one is done and now onto question two, and this one is submitted by a working professional. Okay. I'm going to read it. Hold on.
Okay. I have purchased second hand books on a topic I am interested in, but the book has already been highlighted and annotated by someone else. How do I go about highlighting annotating and, or taking notes from this type of book?
That is a great question. Okay. Episode [00:18:00] 29. How to take notes actually, how to take useful notes from books. I think that's going to be really important for you to listen to, because some of the strategies that I talk about in that episode, I'm going to share here right now. Fundamentally that you need to know what your purpose is.
Okay. You said you're reading a book that you're interested in. Is it personal? Is it professional? Is it academic? I know you're a working professional, so it's probably personal or professional, but what is it that you want to get out of that book? Okay, because, and then we guide our notes and our annotations- remember those are two separate things. Annotations are things that we write in the book. Um, that we highlight, and then we write little notes on the side and then taking notes on a book is when you extract information from a book that you're reading and you put it somewhere else, usually in a notebook.
Okay. Whether you're annotating or you're taking notes, you have to start with your purpose. Why the heck are you reading the book in the first place? Okay. What do you want to get out from it? What do you want to pull from it? And that is the lens that you look [00:19:00] through when you're reading something and you're going to say, do I need to write this down?
Is this worthy of a note? Is this something I should highlight and take a note on. The answer is well, is that something that you want to learn from the book? Is that something, is that the reason you're reading the book, because hear me out, someone else read that book before you, and they may have had a separate purpose. They may have read that book for an entirely different reason that you are reading it. So they may have highlighted things that, that were important for their purpose that aren't necessarily important for your purpose.
We also can never assume we know anything about the skill level of somebody who read the book before us. Okay. So they might be like, I don't know what I'm highlighting and just sort of like highlighting random things. And you would not want to be led down the wrong path by following someone else's annotations.
So truthfully, if I were to boil this answer down into something simple, I would generally say ignore someone else's highlights. [00:20:00] You can be curious about it. You can be like Hmmm.. They highlighted this. I wonder why. Is that interesting, huh? But I wouldn't let someone else's highlights or annotations inform your use of the book.
Now, the only exception to this is, and I don't think this is your situation, but if you're a student. And it's a book that is provided by the school, you know, like. You know, Everybody is reading catcher in the rye. Right. And the book's been passed along for like 15 years. Well, then chances are students reading the book before you are going to have the same intention when reading the books.
So their annotations would be relevant to what your purpose is. But that's not the scenario that I'm gathering from you. It's more like either professional or personal and you don't know why someone else highlighted what they did? I would say, put your blinders on. Maybe look at those highlights with curiosity. But not, um, as an indicator that, that content that they annotated or [00:21:00] highlighted. Is important. I wouldn't do that.
Um, and then make sure that you go back to listen to episode 29, about how to take useful notes from books, because that's where, whether you're annotating or taking notes, I talk about the importance of finding your purpose before reading. Like what is it that when you're close, when you close the book, You gonna say, you know what I got this from the book.
All right. Like, what is the this. We have to have that first. And then we take notes, or annotate from there.
Awesome question. Thank you for submitting it. And I hope that was helpful. We are now going to move on to our third and final question, which I am also going to read.
I feel a little embarrassed to ask my question, but I'm going to ask it anyway because I'm genuinely looking for advice that can help me get unstuck. I've been working in the banking industry for over 20 years. I'm 54 years old. And I think I have another [00:22:00] 10 years left in me before retirement, but I've been feeling rundown lately about my situation all the way.
I have the most experience of anyone on my team I feel at a disadvantage compared to the new young hires at our company. I'm truly an expert at what I do, and I know I'm good at it, but I can't help feel slow and old compared to fresh college graduates who seem to do everything quickly and differently.
I guess what I'm asking is, do you have any advice how to stay current and relevant. I don't want to feel old and slow anymore. Okay.
Okay. Okay. I really feel this question and I really feel the emotion from which you asked it. Let's start with no, you are not old. Okay. And you are not slow. Um, I am younger than you. I'm currently 41. But even, I feel super old when I'm making a YouTube video, for example, for my school habits channel.
And I am seeing other YouTubers in their like early [00:23:00] twenties, creating videos about their, you know, two hour morning routine of meditation and yoga and matcha lattes and journaling. And I'm over here just like literally trying to get my kids out the door. And my lunch packed and like making sure the soccer uniform is washed before I go to work. I know what you're feeling and I think many listeners, even younger than you feel old when we start comparing.
So obviously the quick, but not very easy strategy is to not compare yourself to anybody else. Right. Assuming that you have tried that, and it didn't work. And that has what led you to submit your question here today, let me see if I can take a stab at this.
There are probably two approaches here, a mindset slash perspective approach, and then an approach that might be more skill-based.
So now that I'm saying that out loud, let's actually start with the skills. Okay.
A very real question that you want to ask yourself is, do you have the skills required to do your job well enough? And honestly, it sounds like you do. You said you have a lot of [00:24:00] experience, right? And years, but if you're looking at colleagues around you doing a similar job, but more efficiently or better, then you have to ask yourself, do they have a skill that you do not have yet?
I would wager a bet for all of my pennies that you have stronger social awareness skills and emotional skills and customer service skills and overall people skills than any college graduate then you are working with just because you've been in the position or in the industry for 20 years. Okay, but these kids, these I'm not kids... Sorry.
these new hires, are they possessing a particular skillset that would be useful for you to acquire as well? Is there something related to technology or computers that would be helpful for you to learn? Is there a more efficient way for you to complete some sort of standard processes that are part of your job description and your daily work?
If so then perhaps it is worth [00:25:00] identifying what those skills are and then finding a way to acquire them. It doesn't have to be masters degree level here, but maybe you can ask one of these younger kids to show you how they do it or to explain um, what they're doing or maybe you simply sort of just like observe them.
There is a real possibility that the new hires do have some kind of skill that would make your job easier. And in most cases, that's going to be related to technology.
But be careful here because I want you to keep in mind that different doesn't mean better. If they are doing something differently than you, that does not mean that their way is better than the way you've been doing it.
So the criteria we are looking for here is if they are doing a similar process, more efficiently and more productively and more successfully. Okay, then that would be something that is worth learning.
Now. If you have identified that there is a skill gap and you don't think it's something that the younger. Uh, you know, [00:26:00] colleagues could teach you, then you could likely find out how to develop that skill on YouTube. I mean, we don't jokingly call it YouTube university for nothing. The key to getting what you need though from YouTube is to know exactly what you are looking for. So a simple YouTube search for how to get better at technology is absolutely not going to give you any kind of helpful answer.
But if you know that your colleagues are using a particular type of banking software-
sorry. I know nothing about banking software. So forgive me if this example sounds super dumb, but let's say your colleagues are using a particular type of software to complete a process more efficiently than the way you are using that software, then you can find a tutorial on that exact skill, being specific in your search query.
Now, I don't mean for this at all to be a shameless plug for SchoolHabits University, but I am going to mention it here because it's relevant. I first created SchoolHabits [00:27:00] University for high school and college students to learn academic skills that were required for learning things like task management, time management, organization, study skills, note, taking things like that. But when I first opened the course for enrollment in 2023. I got so many students who were adult professionals. It blew my mind. I was like, oh no, are you the parent?
Like. I'm like, oh my gosh. I had no marketing at all related to the professional industry. Um, I never marketed the course to anyone other than high school and college students. So, yes, I was absolutely shocked when adult professionals, some of them I'm in school as well as going back for like advanced ed or whatever, I was shocked when they enrolled. Now, since my first enrollment, I've continued to attract working professionals to the course, despite me still not having one bit of marketing materials or advertisements for anyone other than high school and college students and graduate students.
When I [00:28:00] talked to adults professionals inside the course, and I learn more about them and I answered the questions I've come to learn that these people are looking to develop the skills that they wish they had in high school. And now they wish they had in the workforce. Things like organization and task management and time management. Yeah. These are skills that can be taught and they can benefit professionals just as much as they can benefit students.
Now, I said it wasn't shameless plug.
It's not, I am sharing this because it's part of the course I mentioned earlier. But I offered 12 months of Q and a opportunities. And I do receive questions similar to the one that you submitted here. These questions are from adult professionals, looking for ways to say relevant, current competitive and valuable in their specific industry.
So, I know we just spent a few minutes talking about potential technical skill gaps, but I want you to consider the possibility that maybe you have some systems skilled, best skill gaps. Like in the way that you operate from day to day, your time management and your task management, email [00:29:00] management organization, things like that. Because that is a possibility that I want you to investigate as well. Okay.
We're running long here, but we're going to, I'm going to finish your question. My second piece of advice, doesn't have anything to do with skill really, but more about mindset and perspective.
Maybe at the very least what I'm going to offer here will remind you of something that you've already known. And that is the value of the other things that you bring to the table. Good valuable employees like yourself are not only valuable because of how fast you work.
You've been in the industry for, you said 20 years.
And it's my guess that those younger employees who have been joining your team over the course of 20 years, have not knocked you out of your position. So that means that you are providing value to your company in a way that is not measured by seconds and minutes.
Maybe it's your leadership skills. Maybe it's the way you communicate with others. Maybe [00:30:00] it is your people skills, which I mentioned earlier. Perhaps your super power is critical thinking and. Um, problem solving and your analytical mind. Maybe it's their actual industry knowledge. You have literally 20 years worth of knowing more things than any of the new hires probably put together.
These are what we would consider soft skills. If you're listening to this podcast on like an app or something I'm using air quotes around soft. These skills are so massively valuable to every single industry, right. And they're not the skills that they teach you in college. These are the skills earned through experience and time, which you, my friend have.
So the next time you're feeling old and slow maybe you need to remind yourself that you're the one with the skills that cannot be taught. Right. And those are the skills that are what any company [00:31:00] worth their salt is looking for and an employee.
So from one old and slow person to the next, keep going. Keep showing up. Keep evolving. Keep developing your skills when it would make sense to do so. All right.
That brings us to the end of the episode.
If you found this helpful, I would love if you could share it, leave a review, subscribe, follow the show. All of the things that honestly makes such a difference and an impact in helping me spread the word. And with that, I leave you with my best advice, which is to never stop learning.
