What I Learned: Module 1, Week 1, Praxis Wednesday
What is Module 1?
Module 1 could be compared to laying the foundations for your career. Since the goal of Praxis is to help you launch your career, gain tons of experience, change your habits, and much more, it’s only reasonable that the first step would be to learn how to effectively use the tools we have at our disposal in order to accomplish all that we want with Praxis.
Week 1 has been aimed towards reflecting on our marketable skills, improving our writing, and experimenting with more rigorous calendar scheduling to make better use of our time.
“A big part of week 1 for me has been learning how to more effectively give feedback to my peers based on the resources in the Praxis portal and learning how to elevate someone’s post rather than giving too much constructive criticism that it just sounds like you’re trying to degrade their writing.”
What I’ve Learned by scheduling everything on my calendar
A few of my fellow Praxians noted in the first Praxis Wednesday that they struggled with negotiable vs. non-negotiable tasks when planning on their calendars. I would note that planning for negotiable tasks is quite necessary and understanding what exactly is negotiable vs. non-negotiable is just as important.
I’ve also realized the importance of letting our days be filled with proactive tasks rather than reactive tasks. If you're constantly reacting to a new email or slack notification, then it makes it hard to focus on the important tasks like deliverables
Finally, I’ve found that it’s helpful to change your calendar upon completing scheduled items, in order to represent what you actually accomplished. This makes it incredibly easy to see how close you stuck to your schedule when reviewing the previous week and trying to make decisions on how to schedule your upcoming week.
Another key insight I had is that experimentation is valuable. If you take a look at the picture of my week 2 calendar above you’ll notice that every day is different. I’ve found that, if I want to get the most out of each day, then I have to be open to different structures to my day. This allows me to find when I’m the most focused, get the most work done, and what tasks require this focus and which tasks are lower intensity.
