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Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to figure out what skills you'll need.
If you want to try something big and new in the next year, it might help to brainstorm the skills that will make this big thing feel a little more doable.
I recently sent my 11-year-old off to sleepaway camp for a few weeks.
This was his third year going, and he has had a great time in the past.
His little brother could go next summer when he's seven and a half years old, and he is definitely interested in the idea.
While I feel like seven and a half might be a bit young for camp, this would also be the one year that his older brother would be at the same camp.
So there would be some significant upsides to that.
As my youngest has been pondering this, he decided to make a checklist of things he would need to be able to do to go to sleepaway camp.
Definitely my kid here.
What skills would he need to be away from home for a little bit?
Now, obviously, there would be adults helping him, the counselors would be there, but there would probably be less help than he gets at home.
We talked about things like showering independently, brushing your teeth well on your own,
Being able to get completely dressed and undressed on your own even with tricky things like wet swimsuits, serving your own food from a cafeteria, etc.
Now that I'm pondering this, I can think of other things like applying your own sunscreen and bug spray.
He has been dutifully working on his checklist over the last few weeks.
Doing things like showing me that he can brush his teeth.
I am not sure if he will go to overnight camp next summer or not, but if he does, he will have a lot of practice on these skills of independence.
It occurred to me that this might be helpful for any sort of big new undertaking.
When you haven't done something before, you can think of the skills that might be helpful and figure out if there are ways that you can practice them.
For instance, maybe you've been invited to be interviewed for local television about your topic of expertise.
You might study what skills are helpful for television interviews.
How do people sit?
What do they wear?
What questions will you likely be asked?
How long are the answers that other people give in interviews?
You could practice giving short answers to the most likely questions about your work and practice sitting in a way that isn't distracting on camera.
Or maybe you plan to moderate a panel at a conference, and this isn't something you have done much before.
You could make a list of helpful skills, like making sure all your panelists stay on topic,
Shifting between them so no one person dominates,
Vetting audience questions or interpreting the strange ones that come in,
Dealing with any conflict.
You could watch how other people do these skills in recordings of past panels and talk with your panelists about what you will ask.
You could perhaps practice dealing with conflict with colleagues doing a mock panel with you and causing trouble just for fun.
Knowing what skills you might need will make you a far more thoughtful moderator.
Now, obviously for many things in life, it is possible to wing it.
We will deal with situations as they come to us and learn from that.
In many cases, a lot can be figured out.
I'm guessing that even if my child had never practiced serving himself food from a cafeteria, he could watch someone else and do what they do.
He also goes to school and could probably extrapolate from that cafeteria situation to other cafeteria situations.
But listing skills and practicing them can help with confidence, and often that is more than half the game.
New situations can always cause anxiety, so being prepared can make the experience more calm, which in general will make it go better.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at LauraVanderkam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
I'm obsessed.
I'm obsessed.
Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
