82. Post-Grad Gap Years + Should You Check Email in the Morning? (Q&A)
Episode 82
In this monthly Q&A episode, I answer two questions submitted by listeners of the show.
Question One: A college student asks whether taking a year after graduation to travel will impact their hiring prospects. My answer might surprise you!
Question Two: A professional asks me to weigh in on some common productivity advice about email. I'll bet you've heard this advice before, too ... and I issue some words of caution if it's something you follow.
What You'll Learn:
Why taking a gap year after college doesn’t have to derail your career (and how to do it strategically)
How to turn travel into résumé-worthy experience
The real reason productivity experts warn against checking email in the morning — and whether that advice applies to you
A practical framework for handling email without letting it hijack your day
🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:
SchoolHabits University (Parents, go here)
SchoolHabits University (Students, go here)
Episode 3 – How to Create Admin Blocks
Episode 64 – How to Do Hard Things
Episode 77 – Time Blocking
Never stop learning.
▶ ✏️Get my FREE parent training: How to Help Your Student Handle School Like a Pro — Without Study Frustration, Assignment Overwhelm, or All the Drama (If you’re the parent of a high school or college student, this training is for you.)
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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 😉
Post-Grad Gap Years, and Should You Check Email in the Morning? (Q&A)===
[00:00:00] Have you ever wondered if taking a year off after college will ruin your chances of getting a job leader or whether that popular productivity advice about email that you've probably heard a lot is actually making your mornings harder and not easier?
In this episode, I am answering two real questions from real listeners, and I have a feeling that these questions might be yours too, even if you have never said them out loud. Hello and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. This is episode 82. I am Katie, and this [00:00:30] is one of our monthly q and a episodes where I answer questions submitted by listeners.
If you would like me to answer your questions on an upcoming q and a episode, the process is so simple. Simply go to learnandworksmarter.com, and then right there on the homepage there is a simple form for you to submit your question. Just scroll down a little bit. I will add it to the queue, and hopefully I can get you some answers.
I'm gonna be answering two listener questions today as I usually try to do in these episodes. One is from a [00:01:00] college student asking about an alternative plan for after college graduation rather than jumping right into the workforce. And then the second question is from a working professional who's questioning some common.
Email management and advice and is asking me to weigh in. I always say this on my q and a episodes, but sometimes when we hear people ask questions and we hear the answers to those questions, we realize that we were wondering the same thing, but just didn't know how to ask it. So if these aren't [00:01:30] your questions today, I invite you to listen all the way through, and I bet that you will still walk away with some valuable nuggets that you can incorporate into your own systems.
At least, that is my hope for you. Or if these topics today sound like they would be helpful to someone you know, share the episode with them, that is super easy to do. If you're watching on YouTube, you simply tap that arrow below the video and you can send the video in a text or an email. And if you are listening to this in a podcast app, you just look for that same universal arrow and the process [00:02:00] is essentially the same.
Alright, we are ready to get started. So let's go.
[00:02:30]
So I'm gonna start with a question that was submitted by a college student. I have it right here and I'm gonna read it. Uh, hi Katie. My question is about taking time off after college. I'm going into my senior year and I'm really drawn to the idea of traveling for year after graduation, before getting a job and becoming stationary.
But I'm also worried about how this will look on my resume and whether you think it will affect my prospects of getting hired after my year of fun is over. What's your [00:03:00] advice? Thank you. Well, hello there. And thank you for your question and what a blessing it is to even have the option of traveling for a year right after college.
And I have no doubt that you are fully aware of how amazing an opportunity that is. And here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that you are thinking that traveling after college and jumping straight into the workforce are mutually exclusive. I. But I don't necessarily see it that way. If you [00:03:30] really want to do some traveling after college, I think that you can do it in a way that sets you up to enter the workforce more smoothly after you return from your travel experience.
Now, one way to go about doing this is to deliberately incorporate some skill building experiences into your post grad travel year. So to do that, you start by reverse engineering from the kind of job you want to start once you return home from traveling. And honestly, really spend some time [00:04:00] thinking about that.
'cause that's gonna be the basis for all of the following steps. Now, if you're going into senior year of college, you should have a clear idea of at least what field you're headed into more than if you were a senior in high school. So start from there. Picture yourself returning from your year abroad.
What kind of job would you want to have? And then reverse engineer from there. So let's look at an example. Let's say that you're hoping to get a job in human resources. Okay, well, how can you incorporate some [00:04:30] valuable HR skills or skill building opportunities into your travel experiences? For example, let's say you're currently a native english speaker, maybe you can make a strong effort to improve your Spanish language skills during your travels. That way, when you come home and you start looking for, you know, technically your first job, you'll be able to put on your resume and share inter in your interviews that you speak to languages in any HR department, this would be [00:05:00] ultra valuable.
Or let's say that you wanna go into marketing. Okay, well, what can you do during your year abroad to build the same kind of skills that you'll need to succeed in marketing in any, you know, position at home? Trust me, there is way more to marketing than social media, but let's just play with that one for a second.
So, when you're traveling, can you create a social media account that showcases the various places you went to, but with some kind of [00:05:30] marketing angle, not just look at me at the top of every tower, kind of, you know, post, but something unique that truly shows that you have a particular set of marketing skills.
Maybe start a blog and no blogs are not dead. Maybe a travel blog where you're, again, demonstrating in some unique way that you have the kind of skills to succeed in a marketing position. Now, you didn't say in your question whether you were thinking about traveling to like one [00:06:00] location or to multiple locations, but let's say that you're spending six months in one location and then six months in another.
That is certainly enough time to get a job at some local cafe, maybe a museum, maybe pet sitting in, you know, a, a city abroad, wherever you are. Now, I'm not talking about a nine to five kind of way, but in a way that you are staying in touch with the concept of employment. So when it's all said and done, you have more fodder to [00:06:30] put on your resume and that that gap isn't so gappy.
Does that make sense? So that's what I mean by I don't think that traveling and working are mutually exclusive. If you are serious about getting a job when you return from your travels, I think it would make sense to incorporate some kind of experience during your year away that would let you build up some skills that would make you a valuable asset on your return.
That way you [00:07:00] are not jarred back into the reality that you'd essentially be starting from square one, when it's time to start your job search, um, and that people that you graduated with would already be a year into their careers. And that can make you, you know, feel lousy. And when you're asked about your post-grad year during interviews, you can talk about the skills that you acquired, whether, whatever, you know, job skills you got through some kind of employment or even the underrated, softer, but [00:07:30] just as important skills like, you know, flexibility.
Cultural intelligence, maybe the language skills you picked up from, you know, wherever you went to. Honestly, I think that you can totally make this post-grad year into something that you can use to optimize your positioning upon your return. That's a really cool question, and again, it's an incredible thing that you have the option in the first place.
And if you're a student listening or even the parent of one who wants to get [00:08:00] ahead and learn the skills that actually make school easier, I invite you to check out SchoolHabits University. That is my step by step online course that teaches students how to study smarter, manage time, and stay organized.
These are the skills that go way beyond graduation. You can enroll now at schoolhabitsuniversity.com. I'll also link it in the show notes. All right, we are moving on to our second question. This one was submitted by a working professional who is questioning, rightfully so, some very common email management and [00:08:30] email routine, maybe productivity is what we'll call it, advice, and is asking me to weigh in.
Let me read the question. All right. Hi ma'am. Thank you for this opportunity to reach you. I enjoy your podcast show very much. My question today is regarding email. I hear many productivity gurus, gurus advise against checking email first thing in the morning, and they make a very good case for this strategy.
But a lot of my work depends on email and if I don't [00:09:00] check my email first thing in the morning, I'm afraid I will miss important memos or communications. What are your thoughts on this common productivity advice of not checking email first thing in the morning? Thank you and have a great day. Well, hello and thank you for those nice words.
You know, I know exactly what you are talking about because I too follow a lot of productivity gurus. I'm air quoting if you're not watching this on YouTube because I like to keep my [00:09:30] finger on the pulse of all of the, you know, kinds of topics I talk about here on the show. And I think it's so interesting how productivity advice changes over the years.
I mean, a lot of that has to do with, uh, technology and things like that, but I too have heard this warning, I guess warning is the right word. I'm using air quotes again, but whatever against checking email first thing in the morning.
And here is what I have to say to that. Take every single thing that you hear, including the tips and strategies [00:10:00] that I share on this Learn and Work Smarter show with a huge grain of salt. There is no singular system or strategy or a productivity hack that works for everybody. And it sounds like you have come up against an example of that, a common piece of productivity advice that for some people probably has revolutionized the way that they operate at work.
But for others like yourself, that productivity advice doesn't apply and it doesn't make your life easier. And in some ways it might [00:10:30] actually be making your life harder according to what you shared in your question. So I say this a lot on my show, take what works and leave the rest. And that's what I'm gonna say again here to your question.
So before I share some advice that might help your situation, don't worry, I'm going to share some advice. I wanna dive into some of the logic behind that. Common advice about checking your email first thing in the morning, because there is something really important at the core of that strategy, even if the strategy [00:11:00] itself isn't for you.
So. Cal Newport, who is a strong, valid voice in this space, who I admire and I think has a lot of brilliant insights into productivity, talks about this idea of, you know, well, I'm not using his exact words 'cause I can't remember how he says it, but he warns us against getting into the habit of reacting to our inboxes.
So a kind of like inbox reactivity where obviously depending on the kind of work you do, you get emails and they contain tasks and requests from people in your [00:11:30] department or maybe a manager, maybe even clients, and they're asking for things and we feel the need to drop everything that we're doing to meet those requests or respond to the person as soon as their email comes in.
Now, for whatever reason, we have misdefined productivity, I think over the years as just doing everything. And that is not productivity. Dropping what you're doing and shifting your focus away from a needle moving project and valuable work that you are hired to [00:12:00] do just to placate people in your inbox is the absolute antithesis of productivity.
So the warning that's buried in that, do not check your email first thing in the morning advice, I think, has more to do with making sure that you're not just reacting blindly to your emails and that you're figuring out in advance what you need or want to be working on that day. And so if your job requires that you log in and check your email, kind of get the status of [00:12:30] things before you jump into work, then I think that's what you have to do. And you shouldn't feel any guilt or shame around that. That's just your job. And we all have different jobs that require operating differently.
However, it is important to make sure that you have a plan for the day so that your quick email status check doesn't turn into three hours of putting out fires. So what are you doing? When are you doing it? How long are you doing it for? Figure this [00:13:00] out before you begin work for the day so that you don't feel prisoner to the magnetic pull of your inbox and end up with that icky feeling at the end of the day that you worked really hard but got nothing done.
Oh, there's nothing worse than that. And that's where I think the strategy of time blocking can be really helpful. I talk about time blocking in episode 77. In that episode, I do say that time blocking is not necessarily something that we need to be doing every single day, although many people enjoy doing that.[00:13:30]
But even if you were to do a more mild version of time blocking and just pick between one and three tasks, important tasks that you plan to work on each day before you go into your inbox. That can make a huge difference. You write those down and you look at your schedule and you identify when you're gonna do that work, maybe even where you're gonna do that work.
Having this fundamental level of clarity before you [00:14:00] indulge the email chaos for the day can significantly improve your focus, your boundaries, and your ability to dedicate good quality time to the work that matters. It is when we don't have a plan for the day that we feel scattered. The moment we show up to work, whether that's in the office or at home, we grasp onto anything that is familiar, even chaotic and stressful email because we didn't take the time to clarify what we should be doing instead.
And our sweet little brains will always [00:14:30] opt for the familiar rather than the unknown, even if that derails us from our goals.
Personally, I almost always check my email at the start of my workday, not only to avoid that anxious feeling of, oh no, like what if there's something urgent in there? Trust me, I get that feeling too.
But also because it is part of my job, I need to know if a client emailed me or if a student inside School Habits University is having trouble with their login or maybe submitted a question to that month's q and a session, and I [00:15:00] want to reply to them directly. But I also rarely ever do that without making a plan for the day first, so that I'm not susceptible to emails, toxic, magnetic pull, so to speak.
I. In most cases, I'm personally making my plan the night before as part of my shutdown routine at the end of the day, that's just how I operate. You may find that you prefer to figure out your, you know, one to three priorities first thing in the morning when you wake up, or maybe on your commute to work, or maybe even [00:15:30] when you're drinking your coffee in silence, or maybe even when you sit down at your desk right before you open your email.
Does that make sense? So the bottom line here is check your email in the morning if you want to. No shame, no guilt. But make sure that you also start your day with some attention around one to three high priority, high value projects that you have to or want to work on. And you've got to [00:16:00] promise yourself that during those blocks of time when you're supposed to be working on all those projects that you have identified as important that you are not going into your email inbox the moment you get itchy or agitated about a project. Stay in the project. Resist the temptation to just check your email real fast as soon as the project gets hard or boring. This is all part of concentration training. If we always give into that inner voice that says, hold on, let me just like [00:16:30] check something real fast, right? Then we are strengthening that knee jerk response and we do not want that. But the opposite is also true. Every time we hear that inner voice and we ignore it, or honestly, it, acknowledge it, and then ignore it. Right? Then. We strengthen our ability to stay focused on a task. And in today's world of three second attention spans. The ability to stay focused on something is a unicorn superpower. Let me add real [00:17:00] quick that if you are regularly working on projects that are really hard and that is the reason for your distractibility, then I strongly urge you to listen to episode 64 called How to Do Hard Things.
That's where I give you seven practical strategies for doing difficult work. Now, these strategies can reduce the resistance that you feel towards your tasks, which makes them easier to do. Which reduces the distractibility that pulls you away from that work to focus on something easier [00:17:30] like email. Okay, and one more strategy that you might find helpful, and that is to intentionally schedule one to three admin blocks in your day where you deliberately go into your inbox and handle whatever's in there.
I say one to three 'cause it really does depend on your job and how long you schedule these admin blocks for. Some people might get away with a single, you know, hour long block, or maybe you need three half hour blocks spread out throughout the day. I can't make that call for you. I talk all about admin blocks in episode [00:18:00] three, where I share step by step how to create and implement effective admin blocks where you can get the most bang for your buck, so to speak.
If you haven't listened to that episode, you should. I'll put that link in the description box and in the show notes. Again, everything that I mentioned today you can find at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/82.
But my point is that if you create that admin block intentionally, you can help quiet that inner anxiety that [00:18:30] often bubbles up when you're trying to use your grit to ignore your email until your work is done. When we know with total confidence that we will have time to manage email, let's say from 10 30 to 11, we're gonna be more likely to work with less email anxiety from nine to 10 30.
And when that voice comes up that says, wait, what if something really important in there that I need to know about, like right now, we respond by telling ourselves [00:19:00] I will get to that in an hour. And let's be real. If there were a real emergency, we'd get a phone call because no one sends true emergencies via email.
It might be the person's emergency, but it's not yours. I say this all the time on the show when I'm sharing any kind of productivity strategy in intended to help you learn and work smarter, But the ultimate skill is the ability to hear a piece of advice and to have the open-mindedness to [00:19:30] try it out.
The self-awareness to evaluate whether that strategy is working for you, and then having the flexibility to tweak that strategy over and over and over again until it gives you the result that you want. All right. I hope that answer was helpful. As a reminder to everyone listening or watching, if you have your own questions you would like me to answer in these monthly q and a episodes, fill out the form at Learnandworksmarter.com.
Again, scroll down just a bit and you'll [00:20:00] see the submission form right there in the homepage. Thank you for spending time with me and remember, never stop learning.
