Learn and Work Smarter

129. Homework Management Tips + Starting Over as an Adult (Q&A)

• Katie Azevedo • Episode 129

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In this Q&A episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I answer two questions submitted by listeners of the show.


Question One: A high school student asks for tips for actually doing the work he has tracked in his homework management system.


Question Two: A young woman asks for advice about moving into adulthood when she was under-resourced as a child.


What You'll Learn:

  • Why tracking your tasks and managing your tasks are two completely different things
  • The role of clarity in task initiation (yes, it's a thing)
  • How to reverse-engineer a big project using only your assignment notebook
  • Why your school portal is a teacher tool, not a student tool
  • How to map your week so you can see exactly how much time you actually have
  • What it means to be under-resourced as a kid — and what to do about it
  • The one question to ask yourself every single night when life feels like a lot


🔗 Resources Mentioned:


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For hundreds of tutorials featuring tips on studying, productivity, organization, learning, time management and more, head to my blog: SchoolHabits.com.

Well, hello, and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie Azevedo, your host. This is episode 129. If you are a return listener or watcher, welcome back. Once a month, I do a Q&A episode where I answer questions that are submitted by listeners of the show. And if you are wondering how to submit questions, 'cause you're like, "Wait, I wanna do that too," it is really quite simple. You head to learnandworksmarter.com, and there is a form right there on the homepage. I have also left the direct link in the description box if you're watching this on YouTube and in the show notes if you're listening as well. But you could also just remember, learnandworksmarter.com, and it's right there. Speaking of all that kind of stuff, if you are watching on YouTube, I would love if you subscribed. If you are listening in an app, be sure to follow the show. Usually, that's a little plus button. And then come and connect with me over on Instagram, I'm@schoolhabits, so that we can hang out between our Thursday episodes. So As I said, this is one of our monthly Q&A episodes. I have two questions today. One is submitted by a high school student. I absolutely love that, and the second one is submitted by a young adult looking for some advice about life. We will see what I can do with that one. You can find a transcript and all the links I mention today at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/129. That is all of our housekeeping, so grab a pencil and let's get into the show All right, so we have our first question, and I am gonna read it. This is the one that was submitted by a high school student."Hi, Katie. I hope you're doing great." I absolutely love that."I'm a high school student, and I want to know if you could help me with the following. I listen to the pod, but I've noticed I find it hard to tune my task management system. I don't really know if I'm doing it effectively. I also struggle to follow my daily progress for tac- tasks, like the smaller doable chunks you assign every day to work on a task. Sometimes because I put many things, but mainly because when the time comes for me to get the work done, I just can't seem to focus and have a hard time getting to it. I don't know why. How can I stick to my planning, and how can I make sure it works so that I get clarity? Thanks so much. Love the show." That is really nice of you to say. Um, and I love the fact that, like, you are asking about task management at the high school level. Um, that already tells me a ton about you, and that is awesome. I work with a lot of college students who could have used this skill back in high school, and those are, like, their words. Like, "I could have used this back in high school." I also work with adult professionals who tell me all the time,"Man, I wish I had started learning this stuff back in high school." So you are in a really good position. I do like to teach this skill to my private clients in, in middle school,'cause that's when you should … I don't wanna say should, but that's when task management becomes important. But the fact that you're in high school asking about this, you're good. And you're right. Figuring out your task management system can be tricky at first because although there are some core principles to creating a task management system there are some pieces that you kind of have to figure out, you know, for yourself in terms of what fits your style and how you think and how you work, and that part can take a little bit of, like, experimenting. Now, today's episode is not gonna be a total deep dive into how to create a task management system, and here's why. I do not, like, please believe me, I'm not trying to be salesy at all. I'm not. Like, have you met me? Like, that's not what I do. But I cannot not mention the Assignment Management Power System program that I have for students literally exactly like you. It is a significant program that's only $47. And I don't wanna say only 'cause I know that for some people, that's, you know, um, still an expense, but it's worth more than that. I made it that price so that it's accessible to everybody. The link is always in the show notes. It's also at assignmentmanagementsystem.com, and honestly, that is gonna give you everything that you need to create your task management system from the ground up. But of course, I'm gonna answer your specific question today, but to anyone who's like, "I don't even have a task management system," that is the best place to go to learn how to build it from scratch. In that program, I teach you exactly how to track those smaller steps of the larger progress, uh, projects that it seems like you're getting lost on according to your question. I teach a strategy in there that's quite simple, and it's effective. In fact, I, I think it is effective because it is simple, as many things are. But the concept behind the strategy that I teach in there is that we're not just tracking what we have to do You know, it's not just about making a list of the things that we need to do. It sounds like you're doing a pretty good job at taking your big projects and breaking them into smaller projects. But we have to track our status on those projects. Did I do it? Did I not do it? Am I partially done with it? And if I'm partially done with it, then what's my next step, and when am I gonna do it? And again, I teach how to do all of that in the Assignment Management Power System. I teach a strategy for using three symbols. Trust me, if you can grab that program, it is gonna be so well worth it. But that's kind of my point here. You do need to track the status of the things, not just have a list of what they are, but where you are in completing them. So let's say that you have 30 math questions that are assigned on a Monday, and they're due on Friday. Well, many well-meaning students who are trying to implement a task management system will do a good thing by saying, "Okay, I'm gonna write down 30 math problems in my…" I'm just gonna say assignment notebook. Now, I know you can use, you know, a, a app or whatever. I'm just gonna say assignment notebook for ease of speaking. Okay. Now, already right there, that is a massively m- more effective strategy than relying on your school portal like Google Classroom or Schoology or whatever it is because that right there is not your learning management system. Your school portal is designed only for teachers to post assignments and for you to get the links to things and, you know, they, they post like the, the URLs and the PDFs and all that, and then for you to submit it, but you cannot manage anything in your school portal, and that is what we're talking about. That's at the core of how I'm interpreting your question. We're talking about managing the status of your projects i- in, in the smaller steps of those projects so then you can keep track of what you've already done, what you're in the middle of, and what you still have to do. And that's connected to what you were saying is like you're having trouble focusing on getting those things done and not doing them when you need to. Now, your portal does not allow you to do that. You can't add your own things to your portal, and that's the biggest misunderstanding there is. But honestly, it does sound like you already know that. I was just throwing that PSA out there to anyone listening who's like, "Wait, I use my portal." No, we are not doing that. So a well-meaning student might say, "All right, I understand that I shouldn't be using my portal, so I'm gonna use an assignment notebook." Again, I don't care if you use an app or a Google Doc, whatever. That's not the point. But I'm gonna write down 30 math questions on Monday because that's when they were assigned. And remember, hypothetically, according to our example, they're due on Friday. Unless you're sitting down and doing all 30 math questions in one day, there's a good chance you're gonna split that up over the week. So let's say that on Monday you get to 10 questions. Great. So where you wrote down 30 math questions on Monday, what do we do? Do we cross it off because you did some of it? Do we, you know, just leave it there because we didn't finish it, so we don't actually cross it off? See, that's where assignment management comes in So what we would do is we need to find a way to let yourself know that there are still ma- uh, 20 math problems left. So on Tuesday slot in your assignment notebook, you would write 20 math problems. Let's say on Tuesday you got to nine of them, so there's 11 left. Great. You'd cross it off, and on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday's slot you'd add… you'd write 11 math problems. So many times these larger assignments that we're working on, we have to move them or pieces of them from one day to the next, and that's the management piece. Now, some students might break that up in advance and say, "Okay, I was just assigned 30 math problems. I'm going to do 10 on Monday, 10 on Tuesday, 10 on Wednesday." And in their assignment notebook, again, again, you can use digital, an app, whatever. I'm just saying assignment notebook'cause it's, like, the most effective tool for most people. Those students would write 10 math problems on Monday. They would write, jump ahead to Tuesday slot, write 10 on Tuesday slot and 10 on Wednesday slot. And so their plan is kinda created in advance. Now, sometimes we have the intentions of doing all 30 math problems in one sitting, but it just doesn't happen 'cause, like, life, right? And then so that's when you would say, "Okay, I thought I would do t- 30. I have 20 left, and I'm gonna write that on Tuesday's slot now," and you would do that. Now, I'm just picking an example of 30 math problems, but let's say this applies broadly to any kind of larger project. Let's say you have a big essay. An advanced strategy would be to break that essay down into smaller steps up front. At the high school level, typically, teachers are gonna do this with you or for you. They'll say, "Okay, we're working on the intro and the thesis today. Next week you have to have your, I don't know, two paragraph, uh, body paragraphs done. The next week you have to have another two paragraphs, body paragraphs done, and then the following week we're working on the conclusion." Oftentime they kind of break it down for you and give you graphic organizers along the way. Some teachers don't, though. And then especially at the college level, they're not gonna do that for you at all. They're just gonna say, "Hey, your 15-page paper is due in three weeks." So we have to have the skill of being able to break these down. And I, I hate to say this, but I'm, like, I'm being really authentic here. The Assignment Management Power System that I keep talking about, like, there's an entire lesson in there about how to break big projects down, including project management templates in there exactly for how you do break down a project like an essay or something big like that into the smaller steps and plan them out to make sure that they get done. You, you need that clarity. In fact, y- I loved in your question, you even said, like, "How do I get that clarity through this process?" But generally speaking, if you don't have a teacher who's helping you with this, what you would do is you'd say, "Okay, I have an essay due in three weeks. I should probably start that in advance. What needs to happen in order to get that essay done and submitted on time?" And we would work backwards from the due date. That's, like, reverse engineering. All right, so it's due on, let's just say the 21st. We're gonna say three weeks. So it's assigned on the 1st, and it's due on the 21st. So in order for you to submit it on time on the 21st, it should definitely, without question, be done on the 20th. Maybe earlier, but let's say the 20th. So on the 20th, you're gonna do your final edit, which means that by the 19th you should have your conclusion done. You might need two days to work on your conclusion, so on the 17th in your calendar, you would write, you know, um, conclusion due. And in your assignment management system on the 17th and 18th, you would write, "Write conclusion. Write conclusion," on the 17th and 18th All right, now what needs to happen before the conclusion? The body paragraphs. Okay? So maybe you need to work, like maybe you need a week to work on your body paragraphs. So I'm, I'm honestly losing track of like my dates here, but a week earlier from the 17th would be the 10th. So on the 10th you're writing start body paragraphs. And you could even break that down further and say, all right, body paragraph one, body paragraph two, body paragraph three. And you're writing these tasks in your assignment management system. The due dates that you're assigning to them, like conclusion done, that goes in your calendar. But write my conclusion goes in the assignment management system on, or your assignment management notebook on the day that you plan to do that, on the 17th, on the 18th. What'd I say? Maybe due on the 19th, I forget So the due dates go on a calendar, but what you're actually doing goes in your assignment management system Does that make sense? Now, if we were to keep working with this essay example, we would say,"Okay, all right, now I need to write my intro paragraph and my thesis. Maybe I need three days to work on that." So you'd put the due date in your calendar of maybe, where'd we leave off? I don't even know, like the 10th? So maybe, like, the seventh So maybe you would like start that on the, maybe the 8th. So you put the due date of the 10th on the calendar, but on the 8th and the 9th in your assignment notebook, you're writing work on intro, work on thesis. So what has to happen before you even write an essay? Well, you probably have to outline it, maybe do your research, get your sources, get your citations So now we actually have a full week to do that. If it was assigned on the first and now you know you're gonna have to start your intro and thesis paragraph, eh, you know, on the eighth, you have a solid week to do your research, to start thinking about what you're gonna say to get your sources. You could throw in write an outline in there, and then you would add all of those to your assignment management system. So on the first, it would say brainstorm topics. On the second You would say find resources. On the third, maybe also find resources. On the fourth, write the thesis. On the fifth, run my thesis by the teacher. On the sixth, write an outline, something like that. I'm just, like, making this up on the spot, but I went really, I went really micro there. You don't have to get that granular, but I'm just giving an example of what it would look like to really break down something like an essay. Now, the other part of your question, you said you had, were having trouble, uh, focusing when it's time to do it, so that's a completely different thing. so strategies for that would primarily actually be something that you

mentioned in your question:

clarity. One of the main reasons that we don't do something that we know we need to do other than, you know, anticipation of physical pain, is that we actually aren't fully sure about what we're doing. Because if we knew exactly what we were doing and we knew how to do it, there's hardly a barrier there. I mean, sometimes there is, like if we have emotional dysregulation or ADHD or things like that, but we're just gonna be far more likely to do something if we know what we're doing and we know how to do it. But if we don't know what we're doing and we don't know how to do it, that's where the lack of focus can come in. It can also cause procrastination. You didn't talk about procrastination, but that can pop up here too. And sometimes clarity comes from just starting. I don't want you to expect yourself to have full clarity on the things before you start, because then we just might never start. So let's take this essay, for example. Let's say that you have no idea what to write about and the teacher just said,"Okay, like, we read this book, and you get to come up with your own thesis." And you had no idea where to start. You're gonna have more success coming up with a thesis idea if you just open your Google Doc and start writing things down that you're wondering about the book. I wonder why this happened. I wonder why that happened. And just kind of word vomit on the page. You could also do a little bit of like flipping back through your notes from class. What did you talk about in class? What key themes did the teacher keep, uh, bringing up? Of course, you could Google things too Be careful about AI here because it's so easy to ask, "Hey, I… Hey, AI. Hey, AI. Hey, I read this book and I have to write a paper on it. Give me some ideas for a thesis." But in my experience, and, and I have a lot, that usually comes up with th- some of the world's most boring topics that don't even work. They're basic. They're not new. Things your teacher has seen a thousand times. It might be new to you, okay? But it's not new, it's not thoughtful, it's not creative, and you're gonna have a hard time writing a full essay on a thesis that you don't even care about. That make sense? Again, it might be new to you, but your teacher has seen it a million times. Not impressive and sometimes mega inaccurate as well. But just as I was saying, just opening a Google Doc and putting some thoughts in there. Some of them are gonna be garbage. That is fine. But that's usually when the clarity starts to form and you think, "Okay, if I went in this direction It could look like this. If I went in this direction, it could look like this. You could also do a mind map actually So you take an idea that you're thinking about and you put it in the center of a page, and you have these, like, little branches coming off of it. Do you know mind mapping? I have a video about how to do mind mapping. I'll leave that linked below. That's in my other YouTube, uh, channel, SchoolHabits, uh, YouTube channel. I'll leave that in the description. But you kinda just let your brain wander and say, "Okay, if I'm talking about this, that could be connected to this, that could be connected to this, and I can go in this direction." Now, I didn't lose the, the, um, theme of what I'm saying right now. Remember, this is all about your original… Th- this part of the question is addressing when you had asked about losing focus and, you know, writing the things down that you need to do for these larger projects and then kinda losing focus when it's time to do them. And one of the strategies is to have clarity on what it is that you're doing, and I'm just using an essay as an example 'cause oftentimes that's where there's, like, no clarity. And to just jump in somewhere and just start thinking about and playing around with ideas. A lot of times the students I work with, you know, in my private practice will be like, "Well, I don't know what to say." And I'm like, "Okay, well, we thought about it for .9 seconds." It's okay if we don't know what to say, even, like, an hour later. Like, that's what thinking about something means. Um, the, the, the getting clarity piece, like, just jump in wherever the heck you are, and then sometimes the path reveals itself as you take a step Right? And the clarity starts forming while you're kinda playing around with ideas. Now, another strategy, and this is in response to the part of your question where you said when it comes to time to do the tasks, you have trouble following the plan, and m- you said maybe because you already, you put too many tasks or maybe because you lose focus. But it could very well be that you have too many tasks. And I know we're talking about the smaller things that you have to do, and so individually they might not seem like that much, but a bunch of small things really do add up and consume time. So I know this question is about task management, but I can't talk about task management without talking about time management. So I want to encourage you to look a typical week for you. I know we're coming into summer now, so a summer week is gonna look different than a school week, but a typical week. You said you're in high school, so unless, unless you're homeschooled, you probably

get out sometime around 2:00 or 2:

30. You may have after-school activities. You may not get home until Maybe you have an after-school job. Whatever your week looks like, you probably have a typical week, and I want you to make time visible I have a free weekly planner. I'll leave that linked in the description box that you can print out. You can use it digitally, doesn't matter. Just, just for this one purpose. If you map out a week and you get realistic about it, you add your commute times, your dinner time, your class time, the time you plan to take a shower, then what remains is the open space that you technically have in your schedule to actually work on your things and to plug away at your tasks And in my experience doing this process with students, they're often really shocked at the result. I'd say about 50% of students are like,"Oh my gosh, I literally only have like 40 minutes a day to do all my work. Like, no wonder I'm not getting to it." And the other 50% are like,"Yikes, I actually have five hours a day to do my work, so I must be wasting my time in other ways that I'm, I'm not even aware of." We know what they're doing Oh my God, the phones. So I want you to discover that for yourself, but you can only do it if you take a week and you map out your very real obligations so that you can reveal to yourself the pockets of free time that you can spend on your work. And then I would say from there, maybe schedule 25 to 45-minute work sessions. You might be trying to do more than that. You might be trying to sit down and work for two hours, which sounds ambitious, but that's gonna lead to distractions. Two hours is too long 90 minutes is too long. I argue an hour is too long. 25 to 45 minutes of concentrated work, you're probably gonna have more success. Take a little break, maybe five to seven minutes with a timer, and then do another 25 to 45-minute work session. Usually what happens when we work in shorter sessions is that we can sustain that concentration for shorter, like a shorter amount of time, and we get done what we need to get done versus trying to work for two hours but we lose focus after 25 minutes, like, anyway, and then we get frustrated with ourself. Okay. I fear I may have rambled in my answer here, but hopefully I covered what you were asking. If you need to go back and listen to the answer, feel free. Again, too, the transcript is at, um, learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/129. And then I am just gonna say this one more time though, the best, most thorough way to not get overwhelmed with tasks, to have a task management system that enables you to track the status of the work you're doing, not just what that work is, but how to know where am I on this project? What have I done? What do I have less l- left to do? And I teach you how to do that in the Assignment Management Power System. It's a mini program. You can get the whole, get through the entire thing in a weekend. So whenever you're ready, come and join me over there Okay. In the meantime, I honestly think it's freaking awesome that you're in high school and you're thinking about this and then you're writing in questions, like honestly, you're gonna be just fine. Well done. Okay, I am gonna move to question two This is actually a pretty deep question. The listener submitted a lot of background information, so I'm actually condensing it here to the essentials so that I can respect some privacy and still capture the essence of what she's asking. All right, let me read the question. Again, I paraphrased it and shortened it a little bit. So if the listener is listening to this, just like I phrased it, most of it's your words, I just left out a lot. So they're your words, I just left out some of the details."I'm twenty-six years old. I'm living in a homeless shelter in New York City. I had a father who abandoned me and a mother who was physically and verbally abusive. I had a mom, but I didn't because I never knew when she would snap. I graduated with my high school equivalency diploma in twenty nineteen, and I'm the first in my family to do it. But my plan after high school was to be a singer. I didn't know how unrealistic that was, and honestly, I didn't even think I'd graduate. Nobody prepared me for adult life. I still want a shot at something good. How do I get on track when no one ever taught me how?" So again, I'm condensing a lot of what you had shared into that question, and I did my best to capture… Most of those are your words, but I did do my best to capture it all. Um, if I left out something, um, my apologies. My heart really does go out to this listener. As I already said, you know, there is more to that backstory, but let's just say that this incredible woman went through a ton, and here she is. You know, actually, I, I, I wanna talk to you directly. Here you are saying, "Wait, I'm gonna take back my life. I am going to ask for help. I am going to listen to a podcast. I'm gonna, you know, find the form and submit a question, and I'm gonna ask it, and I'm gonna make something of my time here on the planet." And right there, my friend, you're doing it. And I honestly hope this doesn't come from… sound like it's coming from a place of condescending to you when I say good job, I'm proud of you, but I mean it with total sincerity. Good job. I'm proud of you. That comes from the middle of my heart. With that said, I definitely don't have all the wisdom out there. I'll share with you exactly what you asked for today. I'll share my perspective on what skills are required to go from childhood to adolescence into adulthood. You a- that was part of your question phrasing. I don't know if I read that part here, but basically, how do you… Like, you were missing the skills to go from childhood and adolescence into adulthood. You've also asked me specifically what I've taught my kids, so I'll talk on that. But I don't want the message here to come across like I have it all figured out because I most certainly don't. This is my first time at living too. But let's backtrack a little bit to the first part of your question, which was how do you transition, or like, what skills do you need to transition from childhood to adulthood? And I wanna start by saying that I don't, I don't think you're behind at all I think it's awesome that you're recognizing you need these skills, but you're not behind due to any fault of your own. You were under-resourced as a child. Your family situation was the best it could be. It was what it was, and you did not have a lot of resources available to you. And a lot of times we look up at people who seem to have their lives all together, and we think, "Man, they must have just figured that all out, and I must be doing something wrong, and they must be better than me." But in many cases, the people we want to be like and aspire to had resources available to them from a young age. And I'm not saying that they didn't work hard either. Both can be true. I know plenty of people who had every resources at their disposal when growing up and literally did nothing'cause they didn't do the work, right? But through no fault of your own, you were under-resourced, and when we don't have resources, it's hard to build the skills that we're talking about. Also, when we're younger, we learn from… You know, we learn adulting skills from those around us, and it sounded like your mom was doing the best she could to have just put food on the table, and therefore, you did not have an adult figure in your life to learn skills that were, like, not survival-based. It seems like the skills you learned were basic survival skills. A lot of people don't even have those. So you probably learned resourcefulness. But in terms of task management and time management and skills like that, that may not have been modeled to you. And so it makes sense why you're feeling behind, but I just want to say that you're in a good spot. You're asking about these skills, and these skills can be learned. With that said, based on your question, you wanna move forward. You wanna create a good life for yourself, and that's gonna include goals. Okay, we're gonna start there. Goals can exist on many different levels Big goals can be scary to some people. Big goals can be exciting to some people. We all have different feelings about goals. But I would say based on what I know about you from your question, I would stick to shorter scale goals. So maybe, you know, the next six months, the next year, maybe five years, but let's start with the next six months or a year. I would not look ahead and say,"Where do I wanna be twenty years from now?" I mean, gosh, there's so much that we don't have control over that could happen between now and then. But I want you to get a little bit of clarity about where you see yourself in maybe six months to one year, and then maybe at some point after that, five years. Start there. It's not easy to come up with an answer to that because it-- that's often a hard question. It's very hypothetical, and it's abstract. Maybe you can do some journaling. Maybe you can start by writing down a list of things you would love to do, things you definitely don't wanna do, things that make you happy. Write a list of your current skills. What are you good at? Are you a really good listener? Are you good at making people feel heard and understood? Could there be something about, you know, connected to being a mentor or working with younger kids who've been through something similar to you? Do you have a lot of empathy? Could you start at an animal shelter? I'm assuming you eventually wanna get out of the shelter that you're living at in New York City, I would That's a goal, right? I hope that your shelter has resources for you. If they do, take advantage of them. Sometimes there are community centers or programs at libraries where they help people in homeless shelters get back on track through connections and practice interviews and building resumes and things like that. But I think it's important to start with where do you wanna be in six months to a year? Having a vision is the first step of creating hope. And if you're on this journey to use your words to have a good life, there's got to be hope in there. Now, I feel a little silly pivoting from hope and goals to something as mechanical as task and time management, but the reality is that we do need good task and time management to reach our goals. So for example, if you have a goal of moving out of the homeless shelter into some kind of housing, that's gonna require money of some kind. Money comes from employment, some, you know, impartially. Employment happens when we can find a place that matches our skill set. I mean, and you may already be working toward that. You might already be like, "Katie, I'm already employed. I already have this. I just am, am where I am." I'm just basing this off of the information that I have. But that means that there, you know, would have to be some kind of task management involved to even do research about jobs. That's where community resources enter the picture that I really hope you have access to, maybe through the shelter or through New York City itself. I talk on this show a lot about, you know, apps and digital calendars and all that, but let's just throw that out the window right now. Can you get access to a notebook or a notepad? Sometimes there's just free ones hanging around that are kinda like marketing materials for companies. Can you snag one and a pen? I feel like that's honestly all you would need to just get started keeping track of some of the things that you probably have in your head, like what your six-month goal is, what your one-year goal is, what your goal is maybe for five years. That could be pushing it out a little bit. Maybe writing down the names of the people who you know who are current connections, writing down lists of things that you need to do that will help get you toward your goals. That's task management at its most basic core, not keeping things in your head, and especially if we're under a lot of stress and external situations that we don't have control over which heighten our stress and cortisol, then we're gonna forget things even more easily. So start by just keeping an ongoing list. If you have access to a phone, maybe you do because you're listening to this podcast, you can use something in your phone, you could text yourself. No fancy tools are required at all, okay, for a basic task management system. But the reason I'm emphasizing how important it is to start writing things down is 'cause that's the first step in things becoming real. Things that live in our head only live in our head. We have to give them shape. We have to make them real. So if we have a goal for ourselves, sure, it starts off as an idea in our head, but that's all it is. The moment we write it down, we say,"Wait a minute, this isn't just an idea anymore. This has a shape." And the minute we start breaking that goal down, it's like, "Okay, like, what do I need to do to reach that goal?" Then the idea starts to become a and that's where the hope lives, in the plan. When you see, wait, this is actually possible? Like, that idea I had for myself for one year from now, five years from now, that's actually possible? Because look, I wrote these things down, and, like, they make sense, and, and I can do this. I can do this one step at a time. I do have a podcast episode from a few weeks ago called The Five Secret Skills of Adulting. Um, I think that's episode 120, 125 or 26. I'll leave it linked below. You know what? I believe it was you too. I could be mistaken, but I think that you saw that episode. You may have watched it on YouTube and left a comment. Someone left a on that. Guys, I, I read all the comments. So say hi. It might have been you. I'm trying to remember. It might… I might have gotten you mixed up with somebody else. But if you haven't watched or listened to that episode yet about The Five Secret Skills of Adulting, I'm gonna direct you there. But I do think it was you. So I, I think you saw that episode or listened to that episode. So in addition to task management, I really do stand by those five skills. It was emotional regulation, accountability, execution, communication, and delayed gratification. Those are the skills that you take one at a time, and you practice them. And even people who are really good at those life skills weren't born good at them. They had more resources when they were younger. They probably watched people who were modeling those skills, but they practiced it over and over and over again. You didn't have those resources. You didn't have people modeling it for you. So your strategy will just be to practice them over and over and be okay with that bumpy progress. Now, another part of your question You asked was what are some of the things that I taught my kids? When I read your question, I was like, "Man, I don't know how to answer that in a way that's helpful." I'm gonna do my best, um, because again, I don't want this to come across like I have everything figured out. I definitely I have two kids, fourteen and fifteen, and at times it's really, really hard, even though I'm so blessed, and they are really terrific kids and make good decisions. I think one of the most significant efforts I've made as a mother in terms of teaching my kids has been to encourage them to be themselves. I know that through the middle school years it can be like insecurities and drama and pressures and conformity, but I always gave my kids the space to be their quirky little selves unapologetically. I can be a little quirky myself, um, and I don't deny that. I roll with it, and I never, ever apologize for it. You don't like it, step aside. And I've tried to model that for my kids. Um, and it did… And they're, they're, they're beautiful, confident kids now who have their quirks, and we love them. Additionally, a core value in our family is honesty and transparency. Of course, we wanna be gentle. We don't wanna be tacky and abrasive, but in my family, we call a duck a duck. We are very direct. We are kind, but we are direct. We communicate openly. My husband, like my core family, my husband, me, my son, and my daughter, the four of us, we always know what the other one is thinking and feeling about something pretty much at all times. We do not sweep anything under the rug in my nuclear family. That is something that is very important to me and my husband. The idea of something festering and going unsaid personally makes me sick to my stomach, and I want my kids to know how to express themselves and to feel safe doing so. So that's something that I've taught them. I've also taught them, or I should say we, my husband's in this too, taught them not to fear hard work. We do hard things in our family. We've been through hard things. We do hard things. We try hard things. We try new things. And I don't come in and immediately save my kids when they're struggling. I'll let them fail. I'll, I'll let them know that they're loved as they're falling and failing. Um, and I think over time, they've learned that failing and falling is just a, a whoopsie in most cases. If they make the same mistake over and over and over again, okay, well, now we're having a different conversation, but that's just something my husband and I try to instill in our kids. And then the last thing I could probably… To be honest, I could do a better job at it. I want to do a better job with this one, and it's something that my dad always said to me, and he said, "Have fun." And I know that sounds really cliché, but I would be like, you know, going off to school, and I'm all stressed about, like, the five AP exams I had and, you know, the really important field hockey game that was gonna be that afternoon, and my dad would hear me out and then be like, "Have fun." And I remember growing up being like, "What do you mean have fun? I'm stressed." But I get it now. We can take things seriously and do hard things, and there can still be an element of teeny-tiny, you know, bit of joy in it. I sometimes have to remind myself of that, but I try to say that to my kids 'cause hard things are a lot harder when they're funless. And then the last thing, I know I'm going in circles here because I opened this by saying how important it was to have a goal, right? That you're working toward and to write down that goal so that it becomes real. So this might sound contradictory to that, but it's also important to take one day at a time. You've been through a ton, and even the most resilient people in the world can still have scars from what they endured, and we can't just ignore our prior experiences just 'cause we want to move forward. And so sometimes one day at a time really is the best way to go. So ask yourself tomorrow, what can you do tomorrow? What is one tiny thing that you can do tomorrow that when you go to bed tomorrow night, you're gonna say to yourself, "I am so glad I did that today." I'm not saying wake up and have the most productive day ever. I'm talking about one thing. What is one thing that you can do tomorrow that when you go to bed tomorrow night, you'll be so glad you did it? Take a moment to think about that. And then the next day, is it possible to do that thing again? Or maybe take another step in that direction. Everything is one day at a time. Everybody in this entire world is only given one day at a time. And so we do our best to look at the day ahead of us and say, "What is something I can do today that will move me forward?" Even if it's a teeny-tiny step forward. Can I talk to somebody? Can I journal my thoughts? Can I write a to-do list? Can I make a call? Can I reach out to the resources available at the shelter or at the community center? Can I go to the library and maybe find a book? Not just read the whole book in a day, but maybe just go to the library and find a book that's connected to something that makes you happy. Or maybe it's connected to the goal that you have for yourself. One day at a time. But honestly, the fact that you're submitting this question to the show and that you're thinking about your future, man, just like I said to the student who submitted the question before you, he was a high schooler asking about task management, and I was like,"Wow, like that is really awesome that he's thinking that early about it," and I wanna say the same thing to you,

and I'll repeat:

You're not behind. You were under-resourced as a child, but how awesome that you are here saying, "Hey, now is my time to do something different." I sincerely wish you all the best. I hope you have a beautiful and rich life. I have no doubt you will. All right, folks. That brings us to the end of today's show. I know it's a little bit of a different vibe, I think, than some of my, "Here are my top 10 tips for XYZ skill" but whatever. I love it all And I love real questions from the community, so keep them coming. Remember, if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. If you're listening in an app, follow the show, share it with someone you know. And find me on Instagram @schoolhabits. I appreciate you. Keep showing up, keep doing the hard work, keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning

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Katie Azevedo

Host