What should you do with all the knowledge you’ve gained in school?
Learning is not only about cramming the mind with all sorts of information on all sorts of topics; it’s about gaining an increased understanding of yourself, your skills, and the world. Learning is also about developing your ability to reflect on the information you take in so that you can apply things you learn at school to your job. You can take much of what you learn and apply it in a new context, which will make the knowledge more meaningful to you. Below, we will outline five methods on how to apply things you learn at school to your job.
Prioritize your time and tasks
Planning your day can make a world of difference to your productivity, not only when you have classes to attend, deadlines to meet, and parties to crash, but also when you’re charged with completing certain projects at work.
The first step is to set out a list of all the tasks that you need to complete on a given day. You can create this list by listing down all the things that you need to do and then prioritize them according to your preference.
Next, start with the task at the top of the list and work your way down.
This will help you stay efficient and focused on one task at a time instead of getting distracted by others that might not be as important as what you are currently working on.
Doing this will also help you finish more tasks in less time, because once one task is finished, it is easier for you to focus on other tasks from there onwards.
Take notes during meetings
Notes are among the most-used tools of effective students, and notes taken during meetings can be a very valuable asset for the company you’re working for as well. It’s often overlooked as unimportant, but it’s the perfect opportunity to listen and learn from those around us. This can lead to better quality meetings, as well as better employee retention rates.
The best way to take notes is with a notebook and pen or laptop and keyboard. You should take notes on what people say, not what you think about them or their position (a blunder many of us are guilty of as we go about our day-to-day lives).
Conferencing tools like Zoom also offer the opportunity for remote participants to take notes which can be very convenient for a distributed workforce.
Work effectively in groups
Group work is one of those terms that make the bellies of many students twist and turn and churn and burn because they have learned to associate negative experiences with it. Recall the free passenger will do as little as possible, relying on the work of others to pull the group through the assignment… or the megalomaniacal, even despotic student who makes themselves the self-pronounced leader of the group – to the hapless dismay and dissent of all the other group members.
Despite the negative connotations that many of us apply to group work, learning to work with others is one of the most critical aspects of a successful career.
Research shows that it is better for teams to consist of members who are diverse in all personality traits. This ensures that the team has different approaches towards solving problems which leads to more creative solutions than what one person could come up with on their own.
How to apply things you learn from working with school projects
As a student, you often came across new things that you had never seen before. This offered a good opportunity to explore new fields and learn about a lot of new concepts. You can use these skills to do things that you would not have been able to do if you were not in the classroom.
For example, creating a clear, step-by-step outline of the work that needs to be done and by when, is often a requirement for most academic degrees. This outline then needs to be presented to a tutor who is to accept or deny it, based on its tactical and practical merits.
Being exposed to such a rigorous process of review is a skill you can bring with you into the workplace when you are given new projects. In simple terms: make your project outline understandable and practical before you show it to your boss.
Now, think about the one above method that stood out to you the most, and decide on what you will do today to apply it to your work!