Question number one comes from Anne. Anne is asking about time management for undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds. She's a university professor, mentors students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. So Anne says, and this is interesting, when we talk about time management, often the challenging part for these students is getting their parents or younger siblings to respect their deep work time.

I find this challenge really different than what I face as a parent, where it's much easier for me to carve out time for my work because I'm the head of the household. What would you recommend for non-traditional students in building effective time management strategies that take into account multi-generational households and unique demands faced by underrepresented minorities?

It's a good question. And an interesting thing I would say about my college books, and in particular, How to Become a Straight A Student, is as far as I can tell, the number one market for that book is non-traditional college students. So you would imagine, oh, that book is read by a bunch of young Cal Newports.

It's a traditional 19-year-old residential college. They're there for four years. That's actually not the number one market for that book because the traditional 19-year-old coming to a residential college out of their upper middle class neighborhood, they don't even really want advice. To them, college is like a social experience as much as an intellectual one, and they just want to have fun.

But it's non-traditional students from many different definitions of that term that are much more focused on, hey, I'm here to learn and to get grades, to open up opportunities, are way more receptive to, I want every piece of advice I can get. So How to Become a Straight A Student, for example, it's used in a lot of first-generation college mentoring programs where a lot of schools like Georgetown will have a very particular program if you're a first-generational student.

And How to Become a Straight A Student is used a lot. It's used in some military veteran programs. We're preparing military vets who are returning to college a little bit later in life on the GI Bill. Let's get our act together. Let's get after it. So I'll just say that as a preamble.

The books like How to Become a Straight A Student are, I think, more popular among people who are much more willing to say, I want to do this well, and I'm looking for advice. All right, so how do we deal with that particular problem of carving out time? The things I think are important is you need to treat your schoolwork in this situation using the same idioms with which you would treat a job.

This is my job. It's a part-time job I have. It's a part-time job which is getting a degree from this school. So first of all, when talking to your family, talking to your relatives, talking to your friends, this is one of my part-time jobs. Then you have to actually treat it like a job, meaning this is when and where I do the work.

This is the idiom surrounding work we're much more used to. Oh, you have a job, and you have shifts, and these shifts are on these days at these times. All right, when you have a shift for your work, you're not available to do something else. We understand those conventions.

You have to essentially in this situation treat your schoolwork the same way. And this is where autopilot scheduling is going to play a really big role. Let me look at all the work I have to do on a regular basis for my classes. Let me figure out when and where I always do that work.

And then I can make that really clear. This is my shift schedule for school. And then people just recognize, ah, it's Tuesday from 4 to 6. That's when he's working on school. So we just know he's not available then. As opposed to treating it more, again, like a student at a residential college where you just say, man, what's due tomorrow?

Ah, man, I got a lot of things due tomorrow. I better go do a lot of work. And suddenly there's other people saying, wait, we needed you to help look after your little brother. And we need you to give a ride for your grandma. You can't just be gone all day.

You didn't tell us about this. We have stuff we need to do. So you have to actually really focus, I think, on the autopilot scheduling approach to schoolwork when you're in these situations where it's not just my full-time job is I'm at school living in a dorm and I have nothing else going on.

So that is what I'd recommend. To the extent possible, do this work not in your house, too. I think that makes it more clear. If you can do it on the campus where you're taking the classes, if you can do it surrounding the classes, works really well. I'm going to school to the lecture.

And then for the next hour after the lecture, I do the schoolwork related to the next lecture. So it's all just combined with I'm gone, doing school, it's my shift, and then I'm back. So that clarity, I think, is going to go a long way.