48. Task Management Tips and the #1 Skill for Career Success (Q&A)
Episode 48
It’s another monthly Q&A episode where I answer questions submitted by the Learn and Work Smarter podcast listeners!
In this episode, we dive into strategies to keep life (and learning) a bit more manageable — because sometimes, the most specific questions lead to the most universal insights.
Question 1 (1:45) – a professional asks about combining work and life tasks into one task management system
Question 2 (9:30) – a graduate student asks my opinion about the most important skill for career success as he heads into the workforce
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
Episode 06→ Focus Tips and Job Skills (Q&A)
Episode 11 → The 6 Most Valuable Skills for School and Work
Episode 24 → How to Focus Better: Tips for School, Work and ADHD
Episode 43 → How to Focus When You’re Working from Home
✅Enroll in SchoolHabits University (Curious? Check it out!)
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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 😉
48 November Q&A===
[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to episode 48 of the learn and work smarter podcast. This is one of our monthly Q and A episodes where I answer questions submitted by listeners. If you are wondering where you can submit your own questions to be answered on a future Q and a episode, you can fill out the form at learnandworksmarter.Com. It is right there on the homepage if you just scroll down a little bit.
Um, add your question and I will add it to the queue.
Today I am answering two listener questions.
One was submitted by, um, actually one was submitted last month, but I didn't get a chance to cover it in the October episode. So to that listener who submitted the question, thank you for being patient with me.
We have a question from a working professional, asking for tips for tracking work tasks and home tasks in one system. And then a question from a graduate student asking my thoughts on the most valuable skill for the workforce.
The questions are awesome today. And I can't wait to answer [00:01:00] them.
Remember if these aren't the questions that you submitted, we learn so much from hearing other people ask questions and hearing the answers to those questions because sometimes we hear other people ask questions that we didn't even know we had.
All right. Let's begin.
All right. I'm going to start with our first question, which is submitted by a working professional. I am going to read it right here.
They ask, I listened to your episode about task management and it's very helpful. I'll leave that link down below. My question is about integrating a work task management system with a [00:02:00] home task management system. I work full-time but also run a busy household with lots of ongoing tasks. What are your thoughts on having one task management system to capture everything? Or do you recommend I keep work and home separate?
Thank you so much. And it's actually one that I answered a few months ago, weeks or months ago, I can't actually remember at this point, inside SchoolHabits University, or rather, it was a similar question because the student in there was asking about combining a work and school system because they were working and also in a graduate program.
Anyways, apparently this is a question or something that people are wondering, like combining two um, multiple aspects of our lives because we are all multidimensional. So obviously I'm going to answer it here too.
You probably don't want to hear this, but the answer is it really does depend. Part of learning and working smarter involves experimenting with different systems, making [00:03:00] tweaks here and there, and then re evaluating the efficacy of those tweaks and then tweaking again, if needed- it's a constant process. I would never prescribe a singular system that fits everybody's needs because that is unrealistic.
And we all bring our own unique preferences and ways of doing things to the table. But with that said you did ask for my opinion. And so here we are.
So let's start with something really important, which is the element of collaboration. This is a really important um, angle that, you have to consider when deciding if you're going to combine your systems.
Now, at work, depending on what you do and what systems you use, you may be using a task management system that is collaborative in nature, something like a digital tool maybe that you use in conjunction with your colleagues to work on projects and in track project statuses. status-i?. The statuses [00:04:00] as a team. If your primary task management system at work is a collaborative tool then I would keep all of your work tasks separate from your home tasks, because that just gets really complicated.
All right. Nobody at the office needs to see, that you have your dry cleaning to pick up. You also, you said that you are running a busy household, which suggests to me that there's also going to be collaborative collaborative tasks in that arena too. So, I don't know who is in your household or what ages, but I would imagine that there is some kind of shared calendar or notes app or some kind of way for the family to collaboratively work on and share tasks together.
If this is something that you're doing already, then again, I would keep your home tasks separate from your work tasks.
Anytime we bring in a collaborative element to our task management system, I typically [00:05:00] advise keeping our different arenas separate. And by arenas, I mean, you know, personal work school, things like that.
But if you are currently using a task management system at work that is not collaborative, then I think it is perfectly fine to join the two together. We live in a day and an age where the line between work and home is not that crystal clear. Many of us work from home and are able to knock out some, you know, home tasks, I guess, during work hours and having a system for everything where everything is housed together, so you can look at it holistically and say, what does Tuesday look like? What does Wednesday look like? That might be the way to go.
Now I've mentioned this in this podcast before, but for projects, I like to use a digital tool called Asana. But for tasks either unrelated to projects or maybe the micro tasks that, um, of those [00:06:00] larger projects, I use a paper planner. I use this single planner for work and for home and back in the day when I was in graduate school, I did put my school tasks in there as well.
Now that is just what I did and what I currently do, and I'm not saying that that is the way to go, right, and you have to experiment. But if you are using an analog system like a notebook or a planner, something that, you know, handwritten or whatever, there are plenty of ways to distinguish work tasks from home tasks, if you feel the need to do so.
You could draw a simple line down the middle of the space, where you are writing your tasks for the day. Right? On the left you can write your work tasks and on the right, you can write your home tasks. That's honestly what I do.
You could use a different color pen for work tasks and for home tasks. You're like, okay, well, anything in blue is this, anything is in black is work. Whatever.
You could put a star next to your work tasks or home tasks, [00:07:00] right? But I am going to return to what I said at the top of this episode, which is that you have to experiment and see what works for you.
Do not go out and buy any new tools or anything like that just yet. Use what you already have.
Try out one system for a few weeks and see how it goes. But if, you know, in your gut of guts that a system isn't working and tweaking, it is out of the question, then scrap it and go the other route. Okay. So for an example, if you're saying, okay, well, I will try to combine the two. And you're going to take an old planner that you have, or even just a plain old notebook where you're kind of just like, you know, writing the days of the week, just before you go out and spend money on tools, right. You can always start with what you have. And if you're finding that the um, combination of work and home tasks is stressing you out, it's confusing, and, you know, there is just no way that this is going to work for me... I usually say, give a [00:08:00] strategy a couple of weeks. Right- three to five weeks sometimes before you can make the judgment call if something is not working at all.
But sometimes you just know, all right, then, then that would be your cue to say, okay, I need two separate systems. Um, but if you've listened to any of my previous episodes, well, if you it's your first time here, welcome. But it you've listened to any previous episodes or maybe watch my other YouTube channel SchoolHabits or you've read any of my content, social media, any of the stuff that I put out into the world, I come from a place of keep it simple.
The simplest systems are the best systems. Because anything that is not simple creates friction.
And psychologically we resist anything that has even one teeny tiny element of friction to it. Okay.
So to recap, if you use a collaborative tool for work or for home, then keep work and home [00:09:00] separate.
But if it's just for you then merging the two could simplify things, and that could be the way to go.
You have to experiment and you have to see what works for you. Okay. I, like I said, either way can work. But you will be the judge of that. Uh, good luck. And let me know what you decide or what you learned from this little experiment.
I can always report back here and let others know in case that is helpful to them.
All right. Let me move on to our second question, which is submitted by a student in graduate school. Okay.
Hi, Katie. I'm in my fifth year of college and I'm doing a four plus one program. So I'll graduate this year with my master's degree.
My question, my question for you is in your opinion, what is the most valuable skill for someone in my position about to leave academia and join the workforce? Thank you for this podcast and all you do.
Oh, you are so very welcome and congratulations on doing a four plus one program as it is a lot of school without a break, but [00:10:00] then you are done and then you're ready for the next phase.
I love your question. Back in episode 11, which is called the six most valuable skills for school and work or work in school, something like that. I do cover what I truly and still believe are the six most valuable skills for school and work. Okay. That would be resourcefulness time management, task management, communication, information management, and the ability to learn.
So I am definitely going to send you back to that episode was episode 11, if you haven't listened already cause I truly believe still that those skills are timeless. They are transferable and they are, you know, honestly, essential for a personal and professional achievement.
But there is one more skill that I would love to throw in that list. And to be honest, I think it kind of tops the list because none of those other skills would be possible at all, if you don't have this one skill in place, and that is the ability to focus.
Yup. Focus is a [00:11:00] skill. Anything that we can get better at is a skill. All right. Even if you have ADHD or executive dysfunction, there are strategies and tools that you can use to help you improve your focus skill. Hey, notice I'm not saying focus harder, cause that is impossible. And that is not a thing. Okay.
Think about it.
If we can't focus on doing something challenging for a decent amount of time, multiple times over and over, what good is any task management or time management skill that we have.
Okay. Focus is the skill that amplifies all of the other skills. If we can't focus, we can't learn. If we can't focus, we can't take notes.
If we can't focus, we can't read. If we can't focus, we cannot complete our goals no matter in what contexts those goals exist- in our personal lives, in our academic life, in our career.
[00:12:00] And focus and attention are essential, no matter what kind of job or industry you end up in after graduation.
So whether you are in sales and you need to pay attention to long rambling customers on sales calls, or maybe you're an investment banker and you need to closely watch the markets for hours and hours at a time, I don't actually know how investment banking works. I imagine it involves like staring at TVs and numbers and computers for a long time. Okay.
Um, maybe you're an attorney and you need to read pages and pages of litigation, or you're a teacher and you need to write lesson plans in design assessments. That takes concentration. Maybe you're in construction and you need to focus on something physical that is part of your job- that still requires attention.
All of these things require focus and attention. And that is foundational. Now, sad story. Sad note rather; our attention span has gotten frighteningly short. I don't mean to sound [00:13:00] cliche and blame social media like we are always quick to do, but for this case, I absolutely am pointing fingers at social media.
We have gotten addicted to some kind of sensory change every three seconds.
The next time you're watching a TV show or a movie notice how the camera angle changes at least every three seconds. Watch any YouTube video and you'll notice that the camera zooms in and out or the shot changes or are they throwing B roll at least every three seconds, not my YouTube videos. I just have like set up the camera and talk because I am not a professional videographer and I'm running my own show here and I'm doing the best we can.
Okay. Anyways, why is this? Why has everything in our world been reduced to three seconds. Because companies know that they are going to lose us with anything longer than that.
And that is so sad. All of [00:14:00] the good things in life require concentrating for longer than that. Deep conversation with family and friends, reading a book that challenges the way we think actually taking the time to actually think about something that needs a solution- problem solving, right?
Learning new content that can enrich our lives or advance our careers. These are the important things that require the skill of focus.
You know the expression, use it or lose it. Right. We often hear that in terms of our physical body. But the exact same adage is true for focus and concentration.
If we keep giving into this distilled highlight real version of entertainment and consumption and if we don't regularly ask our brains to focus for longer periods of time on something a little bit challenging, then we are going to lose it. This is not woo. This is not pseudo science. This is real life. And I see it all the [00:15:00] time with my clients.
So my honest answer about what skill I think is the most valuable for anyone in your position- a soon to be college graduate, headed into the workforce- it would be the ability to focus on hard things for an extended period of time. Heck, if you're listening to this episode and that is not your situation, like you're already in the workforce, that is still my advice to you.
If your attention span has shrunk or you've been distracted really easily and that is impacting your work, do something about it. There are things that we can do to improve our focus. And no focus harder is not a strategy, especially if you have ADHD, but there are still things that we can do to improve how long we can pay attention to a single task for a period of time.
Probably the most effective strategy is to try to train your focus for longer periods of time. Start with your baselines.
That means get a general assessment of how [00:16:00] long you can focus on hard things before getting distracted. And then you go from there.
So you would do, and then like, hold on..., let me backtrack. If your baseline focus is let's say seven minutes. Okay. That's as much as you can give a demanding task before you're reaching for your phone before you've zoned out, whatever, then you would try to focus on something for 12 minutes the next time that you are working on something challenging.
How do you know that 12 minutes have passed? Well, you use a timer. Okay. And if you can't focus for 12 minutes then you would try that over and over and over again until you can. You keep putting yourself in a position where you're telling your brain, Oop, Nope. Not reaching for my phone yet. The clock's not done. I still have three minutes left and get back into it.
Now this might take weeks. But all good things take time. Right. And then the next round, once you can hit 12, might be to increase it to 17 minutes. If we're going by like five minutes or something. And to go from there. This really does work.
Now another strategy could be [00:17:00] to put yourself in more situations where there is nothing else for you to do, except concentrate on one single thing. Maybe you go on a walk without your music without your phone so you can just think, maybe try to build a reading habit where you're reading just. 10 minutes a night and then maybe 15. And maybe 20 over weeks. Right.
You know, I'm going to tell you a funny story. A few weeks ago. Well, I think it was months ago at this point I had an MRI on my foot. I'm fine. It's the stupid thing. Like a Morton's neuroma. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me anyways.
So I have this MRI on my foot. It's the only my foot was in the machine, but it was obviously still loud. And the people running the MRI put headphones on me, of course, to protect my ears and they asked me what type of music I wanted. And I, I knew that this was something they do in MRIs. Cause I'd had an MRI before. And I remember the music being all like staticky and kind of like more annoying than anything.
But I thought to myself, [00:18:00] oh, I told them no, I told them now. Um, no, thank you. And they said, oh really? You don't, you know want music? We have this, we have this. And they're like, rattling off all our options. And I told the woman, I was like, actually, no, I just have some thinking to do. And she looked at me like I had like 15 heads, like she had ne- never heard somebody respond like that before. Um, and the reality was I had planned to use my MRI time to think. I actually had a problem that I needed to solve, not like an anxiety issue that I needed to ruminate on.
Of course. I have a whole bunch of those too! But I had it a very specific, it was related to a business thing. Um, um, problem that I hadn't found a solution for yet. And I had been drinking from a fire hose for like, you know, days up to that. So I got all my input. I did all my research and I just needed some time for all of the research that I had been accumulating to sort of like work [00:19:00] together and percolate and sort of push a solution to the top.
That's thinking. Thinking takes time. It really does. And I feel like that might be something that, um, Like we don't think about it enough or we don't
acknowledge that, you know, we know reading things takes time. We know doing things takes time, cooking a recipe, baking cookies, all those things take time. But did you know, thinking takes time too? Like actual hours in the day? Anyways. If we can't focus for more than just, I don't know, three seconds at a time, if we can't focus for even three minutes at a time, then we can't think. We can't be creative. We can't generate, we can't problem solve.
And like, isn't that part of what makes us human. The ability to think. And create and problem-solve? I don't know. I don't know, but the way that this woman looked at me, She, I mean, she, I don't think she could even process what I was saying.
But anyway, long story short, I solved my problem in my MRI machine and I got my [00:20:00] answer. Just saying anyways, if we can master our attention, then we can master thinking, right.
Then we can master time management. We can master task management. We can master communication. We can master resourcefulness. We can master information management and we can master how to learn. Those are the six skills that I argue are the most important skills, right? In episode, I think it was 11.
Now, I do have a few other episodes where I talk about focus.
Um, episode 24, I share a ton of tips. In fact, that episode is called how to focus better in school and work. And I talk about that, um, concentration training that I just kind of rattled off quickly in this episode- I go into detail kind of like step-by-step.
Episode six is another Q and a episode from a few months back where I talk about job skills and focus.
So you might find that episode helpful.
And then episode 43 was how to focus when you're working from home.
Okay. I have homework for you listeners, if you're up for it. Try [00:21:00] testing your focus baseline right after this episode on something that you are working on today.
Try focusing on a challenging task. Note the time that you start and note the time that you start to lose focus. And that gives you your baseline. And then aim to add a few more minutes each day, this week. You will not know until you try.
All right. That wraps up the two questions for today. Remember that you can find all the links that I mentioned, including those additional episodes about focus at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/48. And then also on the home page is where you will find that very simple form where you can submit your own questions that I am happy to answer on an upcoming episode.
I truly appreciate you tuning in today and sharing your time with me. And as always, never stop [00:22:00] learning.
