The Inforium

We once promised an episode on life skills, and here it is. These ten skills will give you the foundation you need to tackle almost anything.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Listen Money Matters

How to Budget Your Money Without Cutting Coffee (Ep. 174)

OkDork (Noah Kagan’s website)

8 Habits of Highly Successful Students

Use The Corson Technique When Asking Professors For Help

The Ultimate Networking Guide for Introverts

Collegetopia - How to Approach Anyone with the 3 Second Rule

The Art of Manliness

How to Learn Any Skill in Under 20 Hours

Google Calendar (iOS) (Android)

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

Timestamps:

0:01:39 - Starting and keeping a conversation going

0:09:26 - Bringing friends into conversations and events

0:13:08 - Showing some interest on the new people you wanna talk with

0:15:06 - Getting better at problem solving

0:20:13 - Learning from your mistakes

0:24:55 - Differentiating and dealing with constructive and poor criticism

0:27:06 - Being able to respect and listen to what others have to say

0:29:03 - Paying attention to body language and avoiding distractions

0:35:36 - Learning how to cook and creating a good cooking environment

0:43:31 - Acquiring DIY (Do It Yourself) skills

0:51:26 - Learning new skills by practicing consistently and taking on challenges

0:57:15 - The 4 steps of "The First 20 Hours"

1:00:40 - Promoting yourself and your interests the right way

1:13:18 - Thinking progressively about your future

1:18:08 - Being a better romantic partner

1:28:04 - Conclusion

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Money may be the root of all evil, but it's certainly much easier to do good if you've got it. We talk a bit about budgeting and how we handle our finances.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Mint

The Ultimate Guide To Budgeting In College

Daily Budget for iOS

Daily Budget alternative for Android

Tom's net worth tracker

Tom's budget modeler

Ku Cha House of Tea

Listen Money Matters

Credit Karma

Nerdwallet

Nerdwallet - Best College Student Credit Cards of 2017

A Crash Course on How to Start Investing (Even If You’re in Debt) (Ep. 168)

How One Recent College Grad Intends to Retire at 40

Mr. Money Mustache

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

Timestamps:

0:00:28 – Some info about the tea

0:02:12 – Defining your financial goals and retiring like Mr. Money Mustache

0:12:44 – Automating payments and finances in general

0:16:50 – Visualizing your finances through the money pipeline analogy

0:18:03 – Filling up the essential money pipeline “buckets”

0:26:57 – Managing the remaining “buckets” based on your personal needs

0:35:15 – Dealing with non-monthly, yet predictable expenses

0:37:43 – Sacrificing fun and happiness in favor of important expenses

0:43:32 – Sponsor: FreshBooks (Working as a freelancer)

0:46:17 – Martin’s budgeting method

0:55:08 – Keeping track of expenses and more on trading happiness for money

1:06:32 – Tips and benefits of using credit cards

1:15:55 – Being a deadbeat vs having a lot of credit card debt

1:22:36 – Recap and conclusion

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You've got questions, and we've got answers: in this 5 questions episode, we talk about early networking, cold showers, morning routines, and more.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

The College Info Geek Community

Thomas and Martin on Twitter

Thomas and Martin on Goodreads

Essentialism: How to Do More by Doing Less (Ep. 171)

Wizarding World Book Club

The Science Behind How Fast Humans Can Read

3 Speed Reading Techniques Examined: Do They Actually Work?

5 Ways You Can ACTUALLY Increase Your Reading Speed

WaniKani

Kindle Fire 7

Kindle Fire 7 case

Evernote

Kindle Paperwhite

Lapsang souchong tea

Imposter syndrome

Codecademy

TechRepublic

Overclock

Moo

Strava

LastPass

How To Not Be Dumb On The Internet (Ep. 3)

How to Use the Feynman Technique to Learn Faster (With Examples)

LinkedIn

How to Build Self Discipline - My #1 Exercise

Stanford marshmallow experiment

Forest

Thomas on Instagram

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The new semester is upon us! We talk about a few ways to get ready and start things off on the right foot.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Reading Assignments: Crash Course Study Skills #2

Google Calendar

Rate My Professors

FAFSA

Stay Organized and Motivated All Semester with Weekly Productivity Reviews

Asana

Google Drive

Dropbox

FreshBooks

Model–view–controller

Tom's resume

Tom's personal website

Essentialism: How to Do More by Doing Less (Ep. 171)

The Path to College, Pt. 3: Becoming College-Ready (Ep. 111)

The Ultimate College Packing Checklist

What's In My Backpack? - Fall 2017 Edition

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When the internet makes us painfully aware of every opportunity we have, it's easy to be overwhelmed. We talk about how to do less, but better.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Essentialism, by Greg McKeown

What We Learned from Reading “Deep Work” (Ep. 140)

How to Boost Your Happiness and Hirability with Extracurriculars (Ep. 170)

James Clear - Avoid the Second Mistake

Martin's tablet (Kindle Fire 7)

CGP Grey

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

Thomas on Goodreads

Martin on Goodreads

Thomas on Instagram

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Friends, fun, networking, resumes: what can't be improved by the right club or side-project? We talk about extracurriculars and how to choose them.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Scintillation

From CEOs to Opera Singers – How to Harness the "Superstar Effect"

Luciano Pavarotti performing Nessun Dorma

Juan Diego Flórez performing Granada

Toastmasters

FreshBooks

Powlyglot (Martin's old language blog)

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We talk a lot about nonfiction, but is that all we read? We go over why fiction's worth taking seriously, along with a few of our favorite books.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Tom's Books:

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson

Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Martin's Books:

The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Lost Adventures, by Gene Yang, Michael DiMartino, and Bryan Konietzko (also see The Promise, which takes place after the series)

Other links:

Tom on Goodreads

Martin on Goodreads

Crash Course

Tom's Impossible List

How Ben Franklin Structured His Day

The Procrastination Equation: An In-Depth Breakdown (Ep. 167)

How to Make Consistent Progress on Your Goals (Even If You're Lazy)

Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Buffer - The Surprising Power of Reading Fiction

Cuckoo's Egg, by Clifford Stoll

Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, by Gabriel García-Márquez (Spanish version)

How to Remember More of What You Learn with Spaced Repetition

9 Life-Changing Books (Ep. 96)

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne Valente

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll

A Crash Course on How to Start Investing (Even If You’re in Debt) (Ep. 168)

Listen Money Matters

Cryptonomicon

Tom's Top 10 Favorite Fiction Books!

The Name of the Wind, and The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss

Rogues, by George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, and more (the anthology with a story about one of the characters from The Kingkiller Chronicle)

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

Rationality: From AI to Zombies, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

Marvel Unlimited

Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson

The Metropolitan Man, by Alexander Wales

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The secret to investing is: start now. But obviously it’s not that easy. We go over different kinds of investments and how to get started sooner.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

Listen Money Matters

Betterment

Why Dollar-Cost Averaging Is a Lousy Retirement Investing Strategy

Does Dollar Cost Averaging Make Sense For Investors?

How a 1% Fee Could Cost Millennials $590,000 in Retirement Savings

This is how many fund managers actually beat index funds

Compound Interest Calculator

FreshBooks

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Banish your procrastination habits, one variable at a time. Here are our thoughts on "The Procrastination Equation" and how to apply it to your own life.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

The Procrastination Equation, by Piers Steel

Quiz - How much of a procrastinator are you?

Quiz - Which motivation variables affect you most? (If Expectancy <= 24, it's a likely problem area. If Value or Delay >= 24, they're what you should probably be looking at.)

10-Step Anti-Procrastination Checklist

Focus app

Cold Turkey app

Magnet app

Learned helplessness dog study

Learned Helplessness (Ep. 99)

What We Learned from Reading “Deep Work” (Ep. 140)

Just 6 Weeks app (iOS | Android)

Habitica

Beeminder

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we talk about six lessons we took from "The Personal MBA", by Josh Kaufman.

Full show notes

Things mentioned in this episode:

The College Info Geek Podcast on YouTube

The Personal MBA, by Josh Kaufman

Chalkboard/whiteboard laptop stickers

Derek Sivers' book reviews

Derek Sivers' review of The Personal MBA

CDBaby

Zappos

Suit Supply

Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber

Cold Turkey Writer

What We Learned from Reading “Deep Work” (Ep. 140)

Charisma on Command

FreshBooks

Crackbook Chrome extension

Tom's Instagram

Tube Buddy

Want more cool stuff? You can find all sorts of great tools at my Resources page.

You can also get a free copy of my book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less), by staying up to date with the College Info Geek newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! It's easy, you'll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure :) You can also leave a review!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.