Tools for being an academic / corporate weapon.
All the tactical stuff that's less about self care and more about 🔥 the grind 🔥😎💯
Tools for Life™️ dropped yesterday, and about 5 hours later I realized I had way more to say. I started writing a massive revision, but realized most of these tips are less about channeling sensitivity and more about just getting stuff done. 💯
So that is this. Welcome to your weapon era. Let’s dive in!
1. Calendar = Source of Truth
Ok so this one isn't revolutionary but I genuinely do not understand people who don't use calendars?? how do u keep it all in your head ?!Block in when you’ll wake up, eat, and go to bed. You might not follow this schedule exactly, but the reminders ensure that even if you say “10 more minutes” for 2.5 hours, eating and sleeping are still top of mind.
For appointments, tests, or things you absolutely cannot be late for, schedule them 30 minutes earlier than they actually are. And make them bright red. 🚨💯
A demonstration of how an important thing would look in my calendar. Reminders to eat before, pack and take transit, plus scheduling it earlier than it actually is and making it bright red all help me out. When you make plans with someone, have them send you a calendar invite immediately or put it in your calendar yourself, right then and there.
Sign up for Superpowered — it gives you little reminders on your laptop of how your time blocks are going / what the rest of your day looks like. This has been a lifesaver for me.
Yay! No more forgetting about meetings <3
2. TO-DO Lists → Time Blocks
Visualize your time before executing. Make the plan & then do the plan.Every term, spend a few hours blocking out the next 4 months. Time moves really quickly if you don’t pay attention — refer back to this to stay conscious of time passing.
School term: Sample schedule. Weeks were greyed out as they passed. For work terms, Month 1: Onboarding, Month 2: Contributing, Month 3: Initiative, Month 4: Finishing projects / connecting with coworkers. Every Sunday night, spend 1 hour blocking out the upcoming week. This should include high-level things (commitments, deadlines, travel, intramurals / working out, study blocks, grocery shopping, etc.).
Example time blocking in Google Calendar (weekly) Spend 5 minutes writing a “plan for tomorrow” before bed.
If you forget to do it before bed, do it before you get started. This is more than a list of things to do, but a way for you to mentally walk through what you’ll be doing and when. Put “taking a break” and “transit time” in the plan, and make the plan ambitious so that you stay hustling (e.g. overestimate how many problem sets you’ll get through), but expect to not get through it all. Once you’ve made the plan, execute.
Example plan for a study night — note the 10 min “rest💕” blocks :) Use Pomodoro timers to execute! 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off, with a sheet of paper for all the random thoughts that come up while working. You can chat about them with a friend during your break. I recommend Cuckoo. This coworking website also seems cool.
3. STUDYING: Consolidate Information
To speedrun massive amounts of learning in very short periods of time 😁Compile everything you need to learn into one location before you start actually trying to learn it. To download massive amounts of information into my brain (without getting distracted), this is my most effective process:
(not a real step, but this happens often so I’ve started using it as a tool).
Look at the practice questions, try to do them. You will not succeed. This will cause you to panic, which will motivate you to actually start studying. On to step 1!
Download all lectures / practice questions / whatever is most useful — sometimes textbooks have a “Chapter Summary” section that is super helpful.
Combine them into one massive PDF
‘Print’ this PDF as a smaller PDF with 16 Pages per Sheet. Now that the content only spans a few pages, it will seem manageable.
Send this PDF to an iPad / other tablet (a lifesaver if you struggle to get organized / lose stuff a lot / are studying several topics often )
Highlight as many words as you need to remain “an active” reader. Sometimes this is literally every word for me — anything to keep my brain from scanning the pages but not actually absorbing anything. Colour code by information hierarchy / topic or whatever makes sense — this is SUCH a powerful tool. Put huge stars around stuff you think is important.
Make a summary sheet using your annotations / notes.
NOW do practice questions. Refer to your study sheet, and don’t bother looking at anything else. You will not be able to do every practice question (I don’t think I’ve gotten more than 20% through a problem set in my entire academic career), so focus on the stuff that is both a) most likely to show up on an assessment and b) somewhere you’re lacking confidence / knowledge1.
Remember that the goal is to pass. If you will simply never understand a concept and you’re crunched for time, stop being stubborn and move on. It’s better to be SOLID on 70% of the content than questionably prepared for 100%.
4. TESTS: Play the game
You're marked on what you show, not what you know. Maximize your points per minute and make the most out of the hours you spent studying! Leading up to the test: 📆 🔜
Make a list of every “type” of question you predict will be on the test. Make sure you have a framework for how to handle those questions & their variations, and prioritize those types of practice questions.
If you have access to past exams, time yourself while you take them. Use this to understand how quickly you need to move through questions.
Even if your professor lets you bring a study sheet into the test, that doesn’t mean you’ll have time to learn while you’re writing. The act of making the sheet is what puts content into your brain, so don’t just use someone else’s.
Visualize the test before you start. 👀 ⏰
Have an idea of “how many points per minute” you need to allocate to each question (e.g. if you have a 60 mark test and 60 minutes to complete it, you should spend 8 minutes on an 8 mark question).
Have an idea of which types of questions are “easy wins” — aka you are confident that you can solve it / get a reasonable amount of points.
This might be a sports thing, but I like to play a hype-up song to have a “pace” going in my head before I walk into the exam room. This song is my go-to.
Find where the clock is, and visualize what it will look like a) when you’re halfway through and b) when you have 10 minutes left. Pace yourself to have emptied everything you know onto the paper by the time the clock reaches the “10 minutes left” position.
The test begins! Take 5 minutes to take it all in. 🚨 🔥
Skim every question from front to back, highlighting all the important details of each question so that they stand out. This includes numbers, keywords, words like “not”, isn’t” and “except for”, and anything else that might be missed later.
Write down the number of marks and your time allocation for each question.
Number the questions (e.g. 1,2,3,4,5) in the order you’ll address them.
From left to right: the order you’ll do the questions in, how confident you are, the questions given in order, how many points they’re worth, and how much time you assign to each question.
Count “up from 0”, not “down from 100”. 🔢 📈
Start with the “easy wins”. Confidence and momentum are huge for test-taking. Solve a question, gain 10 points. Multiple choice is done, 20 points. Keep your pace up, time will go quickly. If you get stuck, move on after ~1 min.
Attempting all questions > Finishing half of them
University is a game of part marks :’). Especially in physics courses, you can get near passing by writing down all the given information, drawing a diagram, writing some equations, and then taking some educated guesses.
If you have an entire test of questions you have no idea how to do, set up all of the questions and get those marks before you get into solving them.
If you know an answer is wrong (e.g. your car’s velocity is -5000595 m/s) but don’t have time to find your mistake, write “this is wrong” to show you have critical thinking skills 😎. I have gotten marks for this before :)
Check your work really quickly. If you’re like me, you will rarely have time for this.
Move on to the hard stuff (aka do your best & forget the rest). 💕
Once you pass the “I’m pretty sure I’ve passed” bar, you will be less stressed attempting the more challenging questions and might have a burst of creative genius with the pressure removed. Or not. Sometimes questions are straight-up unsolvable (e.g. the professor made a typo and didn’t proofread), so don’t let this slow your momentum or make you sad. You will learn to laugh about it :)
Move on! Don’t worry about how the test went until you get your marks returned.
It is out of your control now. Go for a run, get some food, or take a nap. You did it.After the test: Getting your marks back 🤔 💭 🔄
You might be pleasantly surprised! See, you had nothing to worry about. 😁 You’ll find that the relief of getting a 60 on a test you thought you failed surpasses the joy of getting 100% on a test you know you aced — you passed.
If you are unpleasantly surprised, review where you went wrong, talk to the prof, and revise your studying / test-taking strategy. Profs want to know that you care and are often really kind and helpful if you reach out. Ask kids in your class what strategies they’re using, and learn with/from them. :)
5. Independence != Intelligence
Learning everything "on your own" is not a badge of honour. If your pride is getting in the way of your learning, you are wasting your time.There is an awful “lone genius” myth in everything math / science / coding related.
We like to imagine that “smart people” are magically learning how to code in complete isolation, conducting solo experiments in dramatically-lit basement laboratories, and plucking ideas from the stew of genius that’s been swirling in their brains since birth.
In reality, someone taught them how to do stuff and they asked a lot of questions. Learning doesn’t happen alone, so prioritize finding the people you’re going to learn from and ask them questions / talk things through until you actually know what’s going on.
At School:
Prioritize making friends over learning content (to a point). School is hard enough, don’t make it harder by trying to do it alone. Set a culture of giving and receiving help between classmates and everyone will be a lot more successful.
At Work:
In your first meeting with your manager, figure out what “Success” looks like
“I really want to do a great job in this role. In your eyes, what does an ‘Outstanding’ work term look like for a co-op student?” is the golden conversation an upper-year friend taught me to initiate.
Have your manager write down their goals for how you will learn and contribute over the course of the term. Collaborate on this list so that your expectations are aligned and neither of you are disappointed later in the term. Once you know “the bar”, you know what to aspire to and what “going above and beyond” might look like.
In your first week, set up 20-minute “get to know each other” calls with every member of your immediate team. Ask them to “tell you their life story” if you don’t know how to break the ice (be prepared to share yours too 😁) and then ask them how the work they do fits into the bigger picture. This will make it 10x easier for you to feel comfortable asking people for help as you start actually doing work.
Ask your manager for a dedicated mentor/buddy to answer questions for you in your first month. This might be your manager, but ideally, it’s a junior employee who just learned the ropes and will be able to anticipate your questions (and make time to answer them in detail). Ask for a “high-level overview” of the team and explanations of the work you’ll be doing. 1 hour of their time will save weeks of yours.
Ask GOOD questions.
“What should I do today?” → “I noticed that ______ could use improvement. I was thinking of using today to try to solve this problem, but please let me know if there is something higher priority that you’d like me to work on!”
“How does this work?” → “I’m trying to accomplish ___. I have already tried _____ and _____. Do you have time to help me get unblocked?”
⭐️🔥🚨 Don’t aspire to be “independent”. 🚨🔥⭐️
Once I got decent at coding, I decided “I don’t need help! I can do it all by myself!”My manager had to give me a talking-to. Software development is highly collaborative, and getting shared context from your teammates / collaborating on implementation does not make you worse at your job, it makes you better.
Remember that you are here to learn. Know what your goals are, and be active in making sure you get the opportunities that will help you reach them! Don’t be afraid to set up chats with people on other teams to learn about the work they do (ask your manager if this is alright before you do this), and if you have free time, take the initiative to find work that is useful to the company and would help you learn & grow.
That’s all! Yes I am recycling the mic drop. My apologies.
And don’t say “lol, that’s everything”. That’s something I would do.
Lots of good information!