Grad Hacker

I'm Switching to WordPress: http://gradhacker.com

2008-09-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

...so beware of some rough patches. Hopefully I will get the feed switch done without any hiccups. If you don't see any updates on your feed soon (specifically, How to Act Productive Tip #14 by today or tomorrow), head over to http://gradhacker.com and see what's up. Also, if you do see that next post without any problems, leave a comment letting me know it worked without a problem for you. Thanks!

On Second Thought: I'll Post Whenever I Want

2008-09-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I showed some zeal and posted this that mentioned I'd be ensuring one to two posts a week. I would like to say that on second thought I'll post whenever I want. I'm sure all 10 of you reading this are very disappointed.

Simply GTD: Get SMS Reminders of Anything and Everything with GCal

2008-09-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

Simply GTD posts are designed to provide simpler alternatives to productivity ridiculousness.

New internet based time and list management systems seem to show up faster than TMZ articles on Britney Spears. Each one seeks to do the same thing: make it easier for you to get stuff done. How? By learning their system and using their website.

I admit, I'm definitely guilty checking out time management webapps just to see if they're cool. I've also written multiple posts on Todoist and how much I like it. But, in the end, I'm fully aware that they are mostly a big waste of time. (As a note, this is why I like Todoist, it basically just displays lists neatly and is accessible from multiple places since it's on the web. So get off my back. Also, I use notecards, so that makes up for it.) But there is one key feature that I always fall into the trap of coveting: Fancy ways to get reminded of stuff.

For example, Todoist offers a premium service which you have to pay for that has more features than the basic version, including being able to send email or SMS reminders at any time for a task. Sometimes this is useful. For example, I can write, "Drop check off at Landlady's" on my notecard in the morning when I'm at school and remember I need to pay rent, but when I get home in the evening, eat food and flop down on the couch, my notecard isn't going to remind me to get off my ass and drop off the check. Too many days of that mistake and I'm in trouble. So I need a fancy way to get reminded of this task, don't I?

Todoist is not the only one, popular web apps like RTM and IwantSandy (clearly secretaries are always women) brag about sending you reminders whereever you are as well. So what if you don't have an account with one of these trendy webapps, or don't want to pay for the non-free version but would find it convenient to get some SMS reminders now and then?

Enter Google Calendar

Ah Google, making money off of your little text ads and not our subscriptions. GCal allows SMS reminders, and it's free, and you need a calendar anyways, and if you're not using GCal you might as well because it's free and useful and can synch with iCal or whatever you use now (I don't know if it can synch everything, but certainly iCal). Create some calendar event, make it last for a minimum amount of time so it doesn't take up space, and send an email or SMS reminder. Go to the GCal settings to set up your mobile phone. Simple. Free. If you don't want your precious "hard-landscape" to be riddled with little reminders, make a new calendar for reminders and color it some bland, hard-to-see color. So this way you can let GCal remind you to get milk and be your personal female secretary at the same time. So you can get on with simply getting things done.

My Switch to a Mac: 3 Things I Find Most Useful As a Grad Student

2008-08-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a PC user all my life, but in June, I got my first Mac, a black MacBook. It immediately became my primary computer and my overall experience has been rather positive. Right now I can’t see myself switching back.
There are many great features in OS X, and also some downsides (why is Office so bad?!), but here are three features that I’ve found to be most useful so far as a grad student:

1. Preview For PDFs: Using Mac’s built in Preview app is like driving a Ferrari after riding a bike (Acrobat or Acrobat Reader). Adobe does a lot of good things, I’ll admit, but making programs that take an eternity to load is certainly not one of them. For a grad student that has to open papers in pdf format all the time, the slowness of Acrobat can be more annoying than getting email replies from professors, especially when you’re in literature search mode browsing through a bunch of papers in a given sitting. Preview, on the other hand, is lightning quick. You can highlight text and screen capture images just as easily as Acrobat as well.

2. Quick Look: Imagine being able to peer inside a huge variety of file types, super fast, with a click of a button. That’s Quick Look. When you are looking for a particular paper inside a directory with tons of them, for example, and the filenames aren’t clear enough, what do you do? Certainly you can start opening them one by one, but that quickly turns into a mess. By the time you find it you can have 10 to 20 files open. With Quick Look, you just browse into the directory, hit space bar, and you have an instant preview of the pdf, and of course you can use the arrow keys to scroll through all the other files in the directory to find what you’re looking for. Think of Windows image preview for more than just pictures, and with the ability to scroll through the whole document; I’m talking PowerPoints, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, even movies. You can even click play on a movie in Quick Look and watch it right there. This is one of those features that after using it for a day, you wonder how you made due without it.

3. Time Machine: Backing up files regularly is the thing everyone knows they should be doing but aren’t. Here to solve that problem is Time Machine, the slickest little backup program I’ve ever seen. Backing up with it is so ridiculously easy that if you have it and aren’t backing up your stuff, you deserve to lose your data. Harsh, but you seriously don’t have an excuse. How easy is it? Well, basically, you don’t have to do anything. Once you designate a drive as your Time Machine drive, it backs stuff up for you every hour automatically. If your drive is an external hard drive that is not always plugged in, it automatically starts backing up the moment you do plug it in. Leaving your back up drive plugged in during a particular class or group meeting is a great way to never be behind. And this isn’t the kind of backup you’ll only use if your entire your hard drive fails. It’s not all your files stored in one huge compressed dinosaur of a file. It backs up your entire computer, as is, so you can browse through all your backups and find just one file if you need to. Serious convenience.

What do you find most useful on your Mac? (other than Quicksilver. Yes, I have it. Yes it makes me feel like Merlin Mann.)

How to Act Productive Tip #13: Start Late

2008-08-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

Photo by: †∆†¡∆µ∆ 

A lot of productivity folks like to tout the advantages of starting early. “Get started on your projects early!” they say, citing reasons like reduced stress and better performance. More surprisingly, so many people aspiring to be more organized and more productive also say similar things, “If only I hadn’t started so late!” If only they knew, those poor bastards.

Truly productive people don’t start early, they start late. People that don’t have enough to do start early. Productive people have so many projects on their plate at one point that they simply can’t start early. Starting early is an insult to your own productivity. It’s an open declaration that you have no drive, no motivation, and little promise of achieving anything worthwhile. Clearly, you have nothing better to do than start on something that’s not due for a while. Starting early shows desperation for wanting something to do. It’s the equivalent of calling a girl the next morning after getting her number only the night before. Please.

Beyond avoiding being pathetic, starting late has other upsides. First, the best ideas come under severe time pressure. When it’s 4am and you have to make that big presentation in the morning that you just started on a couple hours ago that you’ll come up with the brilliant ideas that will impress the audience. Second, when a project ends and you tell people you barely started it a few hours ago, you look a lot more impressive than if you told them you’ve been working on it forever. You’ll get responses back that are chock-full of admiration, such as “Wow.” Lastly, starting late leads to other productive-person characteristics. When you start late you often have to skip meals, work through vacations and weekends, get very little sleep, and get from point A to point B at lightning speed. In this way, starting late is in effect a gateway drug of acting productive: it leads to the good stuff. Thus, it can be argued, it’s one of the most important characteristics of a productive person.

So the next time you’re handed a project and you have the urge to get started right away, resist it, sit on it, start late.

Who is Brave Enough to Work the Night Shift?

2008-08-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

Photo by: josef.stuefer

I’m sick of working during the day. I’m sick of email, I’m sick of dealing with “productive” people that haven’t eaten or slept in a year. I’m sick of running into friends when I should be working and I’m really sick of instruments being booked when I need to use them. I’ve been sick about these things for a while now. I seriously feel I spend way too much time at work trying to be productive instead of simply getting things done. I want to spend less time working, so I figure I should cut out the crap.

A Recent Story

Recently, I was forced to use an instrument from 9pm-2pm to do the measurements I needed and was amazed at the results. That afternoon I went home early, ate dinner, went to the gym, watched a couple episodes of the office, packed some food for the night and went to the lab. Then I took my measurements. When data was being collected, I opened up my email as I often do, no new email. I checked some websites, no new stories. I checked my Facebook profile, no new activity. When it was time to eat my food I heated it and ate it by myself. No one to talk to, which kind of sucked, but I was also back to my work in 20 minutes. When I was done, I went home, went to bed, and slept in until 10 or 11am. No sleep loss, and sleeping-in guilt-free was oh so wonderful.

The next day when I was processing the data I realized how much stuff I had gotten done the previous night: The measurements were taken very systematically, and I took meticulous notes on what was going on. I spent 5 hours in the lab doing this work, and I thought to myself, how long would this have taken if I did it during the day? Clearly the whole day. Lunch would have taken at least an hour. Other grad students coming in and out of that busy room would have added more down time. Responding to the constant stream of daytime emails would add more. Pretty soon, the 5 hours of lab time at night would have summed up to a whole day of measurements. That’s another 3 or more hours, more than 50% more time I would have spent “working” or “in the lab” instead of sleeping, eating, cooking, at the gym, watching a movie, staring at the ceiling, what have you.

This got me thinking, what if I worked at night most of the time? Why aren’t I doing it? What are the pros and cons? I’ve been thinking about this and blowing it off as crazy talk for months now; something a “productive” person would do, “I worked all night last night!”. But the idea keeps coming back. I wouldn’t work more, I would in fact work less. I wouldn’t sleep, I’d merely shift my hours. I could be more creative if I had longer blocks of uninterrupted time. I wouldn’t be interrupted by stupid email as often. But there are still cons that keep preventing me from doing it. It seems horribly anti-social. It would cut back on random collaborative opportunities. What happens on the weekends when it’s time to hang out with friends on a normal schedule? When would I go to places that are only open during the day? Isn’t this something a weird person would do?

A (Partially) Nocturnal Schedule

So I thought of a possible sleep schedule and tried to answer some of these concerns. I’ve settled on sleeping from 5am-1pm as a good option. Below are some of the obvious concerns listed above and my answers based on this possible schedule.

1. What about my social life? Get ready to be the life of the party. 9pm-2am will be like midday for you, so no more of that yawning followed by the “Only 11? Wow, I’m getting old!” joke that is so overused it makes me want to throw up in my mouth.
2. What about research or work collaboration? This should be just fine with the above schedule, you’ll consistently be meeting with people in the afternoon.
3. But the library is closed for much of my “day”. That’s correct, and at that time, everywhere else is quiet.
4. I need to go to the gym, the store, the Laundromat, mechanic, etc. And now you can go in your “morning”, which is smack in the middle of the day, so you can miss both the regular morning and evening crowds. Oh I’m getting jealous of this one just thinking about it.
5. But I work best in the morning. If that’s really the case (and not just that the morning is the only uninterrupted time you get) you may want to think about how the answers to these questions would change if you used a noon-8pm sleep time. Questions 2-4 seem to be fine, with most need-to-do-during-the-day tasks being shifted to the morning (your evening). The only problem I see is if you are also a party animal, then, in regards to question one, you would have to drink in your morning often.

Benefits

Now, let’s crank a few more numbers just to see the pay off. It’s unrealistic to think you would be a whole 50% more efficient just because you worked at a time when most distractions were non-existent. Let’s be more conservative. For most people, it’s also unrealistic to think that you are wasting less than 10% of your time on distractions or pseudo-work like answering email. So let’s, on average, put the efficiency gains at around 20%. How many hours does that give you for more important things like reading obscure blogs, sleeping, or learning Mandarin? For a 50 hour work week, that’s 10 hours saved. Ten hours! You might as well throw in Cantonese while you’re at it. If you even cut back our efficiency estimation to 15%, that’s still 7.5 hours a week you didn’t previously have. And, the kicker for me is that is 7.5 hours that is normally spent on crap, busy work, acting productive. In fact, if you’re think you’re one of those productive people that is working 60 hours a week, a 20% efficiency improvement translates to 12 hours - basically a day. This doesn’t take into account other immeasurable advantages that include increased focus, less stress and thus the opportunity for more creativity. You may even start loving your work again.

Who is Brave Enough?

Now, the obvious question is, why don’t I put my money where my mouth is and do it and report on how it went? Well, I’m kind of scared. Of what? I don’t know. Perhaps of my non-tenured advisor freaking out that I’m not around all the time. Or of being scared of the night (I’m not joking, I seriously have had this fear since I was a kid). But the more I think about it the more I am inclined to try it out for a week or more. In the meantime, I want to ask you if you have either done something similar before, and if so, how it went, or if you want to try it out and report on your findings on Grad Hacker. It would be wonderfully exciting for me and the rest of the readers.

Grad Hacker is Here to Stay

2008-07-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Alright folks, I've posted once in the past month and four times in the past two months. Yet somehow, miraculously, the readership persists (thanks!). Some projects on the research end are starting to wrap up, so I say it's time to rock and roll. I will guarantee one post a week and try to shoot for two. I've also been running into more "productive" people - yes they never seem to run out - so How to Act Productive will be re-emerging. Any suggestions on what you want to discuss here are more than welcome!

Long Term Output is More Important than Minute-to-Minute Efficiency

2008-07-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

Photo by: .Fabio

In the quest for productivity, blogs with the word “hack” in the title and other similar literature often end up discussing in detail ways to increase efficiency. What does that mean, efficiency? Efficiency is most often some metric for gauging output per unit time; how much work you are getting done in a given amount of time. So a more efficient person produces more output in a given amount of time than a less efficient person. Let’s agree on this definition of efficiency, in this context, for the sake of discussion.

Over What Time Scale Does Efficiency Really Matter?

This is the big money question. What is more important, the stuff I get done per minute or the stuff I get done per year? For grad students and all other “knowledge” workers, it is clearly the latter, or at the very least, not the former. Unfortunately, it’s easier to focus on maximizing minute-to-minute efficiency because minutes go by a lot faster than years. When you say to yourself, “Over the next x minutes, I’ll do this and this and this,” it doesn’t take very long for those to pass so you can evaluate how you did. Years on the other hand, are a different monster. Most of us don’t have a problem making the same self-commitments for years as we do minutes, “By next year I will have…” But they take so damn long to pass we simply forget, lose our drive, or change our minds. That’s a problem because when other people look back on your output (bosses), or you yourself look back, no one is really going to care how you spent each minute, they will care what you accomplished over longer periods of time.

So how do we make sure that we are following through on commitments to ourselves and others, finishing projects we start, and simply getting things done over the course of weeks, months, and years? We should make a plan.

Step 1: Forget Minute-to-Minute Efficiency Once and for All

We need to let this idea go so that we don’t stress over minutes, or sometimes even hours, lost here or there. Stress is paralyzing to getting things done and enjoying life, so we should seek to minimize it. Don’t plan your day by the minute, don’t worry if you lose a minutes here or there because you screwed up or didn’t plan as well as you should have. Simply recognize what can be improved and move on. Sometimes reading too much “hack”y literature can make you feel that if everything isn’t completely automated and streamlined you’re somehow being inefficient, you’re not, don’t worry. Lastly, if you are thinking that minute-to-minute efficiency should logically translate to efficiency over longer times, think again. Whatever minutes are saved in such short-time efficiency are quickly averaged out over the long term, or simply don’t matter. A few minutes saved here, and a few there, get canceled out by natural fluctuations in time taken for longer activities. You would have to not waste a single minute on every activity, every day, all the time, for saved minutes to add up to a significant increase in output in the long term. This simply doesn’t happen for reasonable human beings.

Step 2: Pick a Reasonable Time Scale on which to Focus

Now that efficiency on the scale of minutes is out of our minds, we can focus our attention on bigger and better things. We need to pick a time scale over which we will be accountable to ourselves. Minutes are too short and years are a tad large (although it can be useful to evaluate your goals every year). For this purpose, however, we need a length of time, where we can list things we want to accomplish at its beginning, try our damndest to get them done throughout, and evaluate our progress at the end. I think one week works well for this, but try what works for you. Every Monday I make sure my list of tasks for the week are set (e.g. Notecard for the Week), throughout the week I try to focus on these most important tasks (e.g. Notecard for the Day), and on Friday I see where I am and if I need to do anything over the weekend, and Sunday I make a final assessment and clean up my list.

Step 3: Make your Schedule Fit your Tasks, not Vice Versa

Now we’ve picked a reasonable length of time on which to focus on output. Continuing the above example, we are now focused on maximizing output over the course of the week, and could care less about minute-to-minute issues. We understand that trying to maximize the efficiency of every single minute is futile unless we are working every minute we aren’t sleeping or eating, which is ridiculous. I contend that at this point, we must create a schedule that is most conducive to getting all our tasks for the week done, which is not necessarily the schedule that every one else uses. In other words, simply plan your schedule around your tasks, not the other way around. This is incredibly pertinent for grad students doing experimental work, or anyone that has to book time on shared equipment or resources. Why come to work at 9 and leave at 6, keeping yourself busy with computer work (reading papers, etc.) when the absolutely most important tasks for you involve using equipment that is always booked during the day? Simply shift your schedule to make sure your tasks get done. Come in at 6pm and work till 3am if necessary, and enjoy sleeping in the next day. If you are at time when computer tasks are the most important but you are spending 1.5 hours doing 1 hour of work due to other people distracting you all day, you can move your schedule around similarly. Note that I’m advocating schedule shifting when necessary, and not schedule expanding. That wouldn’t be sustainable. You don’t need to become a complete night owl and not interact with anyone, that would stifle creative interaction, just ensure that you have a schedule that includes significant amounts of time for uninterrupted, focused work on the tasks you have deemed most important.

Finishing

Above all else, I’m advocating finishing what you start and that obsessive focus on minute-by-minute details only distracts from finishing real substantive tasks. Once you’ve picked your time-frame-of-accountability, you need to be dead set on finishing. Significant stretches of uninterrupted work, at locations, with equipment, and at times that are most conducive to finishing your tasks are the means to that end.

Related Posts

Priorities and Getting Things Done

Boring Exercise is Pointless

2008-06-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

Photo by: Abraaj

Summer is well on its way, so let’s admit it, you wish you looked a tad better in the summer clothes than you do now. Or rather, that hottie you’ve been eyeing looks damn good in summer clothes and you’re feeling a bit insecure.

Your reaction? Start hitting the gym full speed. Hold on, there’s a problem: The gym can suck. If you have a consistent workout plan that you follow regularly, read no further, you’ve developed a great habit. But it seems to me that most people have no problem exercising, they just have a problem exercising consistently. And, unfortunately, “getting in shape” which is often soft-language for, “changing the shape of my body” (which I’ll argue, is a totally acceptable thought and not as vain as is commonly perceived), requires extremely consistent exercise. Do I need to back that point up? How many people do you know that have achieved enviable fitness goals by going every once in a while, or whenever they feel like it?

I contend that if you’re not exercising regularly, you’re bored.

Further, it seems to me that there’s no sense in invoking some idealized theory of willpower and trying to force yourself to do it. That often just leads to not going, and feeling like a loser. Forget that, if you’re bored there’s only one solution: get your little kid on and make it fun.

There’s really no sense in trying to explain fun exercise, everyone knows what that is: being dead tired but wishing you weren’t so you could keep playing just a little longer. I’ll admit, this most easily translates to cardio. But cardio is what most people hate to do but know they should; most folks lifting weights like to lift weights. Forget the treadmill that faces the wall, or sitting on a stationary bike at some slow or moderate pace and trying to read US magazine at the same time: are you really going to be able to sustain that for months? Or years?

For alternatives to treadmills, stationary bikes, the elliptical, the stairmaster, and all the the other cardio machines you may find boring or just can’t do consistently, try: sports (basketball, soccer, frisbee, tennis), running outside, running with a friend outside, setting a goal for an x mile run and working your way to it, finding cool trails and new places to run and hike on the weekends, spinning classes (these will kick your ass, but they sure as hell won’t be boring), biking outside on a real bike. Obviously the list goes on (Did I miss any great ideas for fun cardio?).

Now, there are some people that go to the gym, pick a machine, use it, and do this consistently, but they exercise so consistently that they have no need to click on this post title in their RSS feed. If that’s you, I’m impressed you’ve read this far. But for the rest of us that find staring at a wall and running in the same place more boring than hearing John McCain speak, try making it fun. I promise it’ll improve consistency.

How To Act Productive Tip #12: Switch Time-Management Systems

2008-06-18T22:58:00.000-07:00

Photo by: Emotions Take Control of Me.

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, every once in a while we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Let’s be honest, most people don’t have time management systems; even the characteristic productive folks highlighted in this series. They’re too busy losing sleep and getting pissed off. But, in the web 8.0, blogospheric community of which you are definitely a part, time management systems are the norm. They’re like iPods in middle school, you better have one if you want to be cool. And the flashier the iPod, the cooler you are.

You vs. Productive People

Now there’s a difference between those of us simpletons that have a single time-management system and the real productivity gurus. The latter are constantly on the hunt for the ultimate system. They know that the moment they find it, day to day problems will disappear and their level of productivity will skyrocket to levels unknown to mere mortals. So, they don’t stagnate, they switch systems like Paris Hilton does boyfriends.

Is it Time to Switch?

“How do I know if I need to switch systems or not?” you ask. If you haven’t switched in the last 2 weeks, it’s time to get cracking. Switching your list management, time management, GTD, or what have you systems regularly keeps you up to date on the latest web 8.0 sites and features, it keeps you buying the latest gadgets, and it increases the chances of you finding the perfect system.

Tell People About It

But don’t just quietly find a new system to manage your life, do it loudly. We always advocate this on How to Act Productive and it’s for good reason. Show your friends your new list management system. Often sending a mass email with a link to the new web-based system is a good idea. Tell them how much more productive you’ve been since switching. If they ask the annoying question of whether using the system takes more time than is saved by transferring your life to it, just tell them that it will pay itself back soon, otherwise you’ll just switch to another.

Don’t be a tool, use a tool.

How to Act Productive Tip #11: Feel Guilty

2008-06-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Photo by: s-t-r-a-n-g-e

Offer Summer Classes to Yourself - and Attend Them

2008-05-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

Photo by: Greg Reser

"I really gotta read up on that sometime."

"I've been meaning to review that subject."

"I'd really like to have at least a basic understanding of how that works."

These are things I catch myself and my peers saying all the time. I'm a grad student in the natural sciences and there's always more that I "should" know. Fundamentals. Specifics on a new research area. Some random thing I want to learn more about. But, where is the time?

Summer, that's where. You know how classes force you to learn stuff that if left to your own, you would never get around to studying? Yeah, that's useful. As much as we feel we're so above classes now, so much cooler than classes, that we learn everything we need to know when we need to know it for research, you have to admit that if it wasn't for the fact that you had to attend class to pass, you'd always have a list of other more important things to do that would prevent you from learning the subjects on your own.

Why it's Worth it to Know "Random" Things

Obviously, the things you need to know that are directly relevant to your primary research subject are taken care of when you are "working on research" (whatever that means). So let's not worry about that. What I'm talking about is classes that push your comfort level or broaden your base. Why are they useful? I have one simple answer: You won't be studying the same single, narrow, subject for the rest of your life. Surely you must have noticed how the brightest and wisest in your field seem to know the basics behind everything remotely related (the lucky ones observe this effect in their adviser). I whole-heartedly believe this characteristic is simply a result of having very strong fundamentals. They have reviewed the basics in their field multiple times throughout their life and now have that foundation to work on. Then, when expanding their research frontier, they feel less lost, they are able to look for help in the right places, and as a result they continue to push their own boundaries. They have exposed themselves to the basics of many different subjects throughout their career instead of always focusing on the narrow topic they are studying at any given time.

What class should I offer myself?

First of all, get your Leo Babatua on and offer yourself just 1 class to start. It can be easy to fall into the trap of "Oh I'm gonna learn about this, that, and that other thing!" and have a calendar so filled with scheduled classes you just skip all of them to do more important things throughout the week. Don't do that. Pick one thing you want to learn about but "haven't gotten around to" and offer yourself that class. The best place to start is a subject that is peripherally related to your primary research objective. That way your mind can't play the "you have more pressing things to do, when are you ever going to use this information?" game with you. Or at least, your mind has less of an argument if it tries.

What's the Class Schedule?
Whatever it is, make sure it's not heavy. That's the only rule. The goal is to make sure you attend class. That's it. Just show up, the learning then comes automatically I find 3 hours a week is good. MWF for one hour. Put it in your calendar and don't skip it! A strong recommendation is the morning because the deeper into the day you get, the more likely something will come up. Just walk in on MWF, spend an hour at class and then get on with your day. Try doing this without checking your email first. It's damn refreshing. It gets you in the mood of doing real work instead of pretending to do work by "processing" emails.

What IS the Class?

So what happens during class? Do you stand at a chalkboard and lecture to yourself? I don't, but by all means do whatever is necessary. Realistically, these self-classes almost always mean you, a book, paper and pen, and some peace and quiet. If you're in the sciences, do the problems or think of problems (related to your research is great) and do them to avoid getting caught in the blind note-taking and derivation trap where no information is processed. If you're in the humanities, check out Study Hacks for various note-taking and study tips to, again, avoid blind note-taking.

Final Thoughts

The point is to expand your horizons or widen your base of fundamentals. To do that, you need to simply dedicate the time to sitting down regularly and reading and the summer is a great time to do this. Let's end with some simple arithmetic that shows the power of repetitive behavior. Say you want to expose yourself to the first 3 chapters of a book called "Introduction to VeryImportantIdea". The first 3 chapters are 80 pages, which include non-trivial math and physics and some example problems scattered throughout. Say in one hour you can get through 5 pages at a pace that really lets you learn the material. You'll finish this class in a month and a half on the MWF 1 hour schedule suggested above. That means over the 3 month summer, you can fit in two of these classes. That means checking of two items on your mental list of "stuff I should know." Think about how many items you checked off of that list in the last three months. Give it a shot!

How to Act Productive Tip #10: Bring Massive Amounts of Work On the Plane

2008-05-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

Photo by: Ma1974

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Summer is often a time of travel. Weddings, reunions, vacations, you name it. In non-summer months, travel for many grad students involves conferences and other work related trips. Common to most trips: flying. Flying is such a time-suck, right? Wrong.

You always know who the most successful people in planes are. They're the ones working. They've got their laptop out, the overhead light on, some papers, TPS reports, their briefcase within arms reach, a pen in their mouth, and a glass of red wine in a plastic cup on the corner of the tray table. When you see this and you look down at your "pleasure reading" or worse yet, The Office episodes playing on your iPod, recognize that you will never make your parents as proud as Mr. Productive in the seat next you will. Just a fact of life. The good news is, you can change your ways today with just three simple starter tips:

1. Bring papers. A good grad student doesn't go anywhere without scholarly journal articles handy. Resist the temptation to buy People Magazine at the airport and stick with articles that will get you ahead in life.

2. Use your computer. Productive people and rich people use laptops on planes, so get used to it if you want to be like either of them.
3. Never let nighttime deter you. The most successful people have the light on when everyone else is trying to get some sleep. This should be you. When they wake up, you'll be a good 2-3 hours ahead on life.

Start here. Don't take it too fast just yet. When you've mastered these tips, send me an email, we can then talk about more advanced tips like caffeine sources for red-eye or international flights.

Lastly, when you're flying in a group, make sure you ask everyone how much work they brought, and as I've always said, use their answer to spring-board into talking about how much you brought. "What'd you bring to work on? Man, I brought so much stuff, I'm gonna get really caught up on work."

Have Confidence

2008-05-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

Photo by: chris.merwe

I’ve noticed a pattern. A large amount of productivity literature, blogs, and “hacks”, in the end tell a single story: Have the confidence to jump right in to your work. Often, they notice that there are certain barriers (self-created, or not) that are blocking your confidence or clouding your judgment so you simply cannot see clearly enough to have confidence. They then proceed to provide some tips on getting rid of those obstacles and get you back to jumping right in. That is, they modify the above phrase to: Take care of that garbage, then jump right in.

Let’s look at some favorites in the GTD, Lifehacky, blogging, and student communities and see what obstacles to confidence and getting started they wish to clear:

Getting Things Done – David Allen: David Allen’s whole philosophy is based on “knowing what you’re not doing.” Another way he’s phrased it is having the confidence that what you are doing right now is exactly what you should be doing. Keeping list after list of next actions and projects is simply a way to make sure that when you’re performing a certain task, that’s exactly what you should be doing right now. Unfortunately, many of us get so enraptured with the process that we forget the doing altogether. Don't do this, it's deadly. You think you're being productive, while you're really just wasting your time. The obstacle is uncertainty due to a massive amount of "open loops", clear that quickly and get start working on something as soon as you can.

The Now Habit – Neil Fiore: This book is a gem and is all about having confidence. Niel Fiore, however, is not removing the hundred and one day to day obstacles that are cluttering your head like David Allen, but rather reaching for things deeper ingrained: the constant feelings of self-doubt, guilt, and fear that lead to procrastination. He advocates not pretending to be working all the time and scheduling in guilt-free play as ways to have more confidence to start and finish your projects (by habitually starting).

Inbox Zero – Merlin Mann – 43 folders: In the same style as David Allen, Merlin argues that clearing your inbox (most often email inbox) and properly processing all the input, leads the way to clarity and confidence in what the hell it is that we should be doing in this email-ridden world. Massive email in your inbox is a huge confidence shaker as all the messages keeping nagging at your brain, trying to convince they contain the true tasks to be done right now. Clear the inbox obstacle, but then don't sit there and come up with a million crafty ways to filter your email world so a monkey could process it, just get started.

MITs – Leo Babatua – Zen Habits: I of course love the idea of having a small number of things you need to do each day and write these tasks on my notecard for the day. Leo likes this idea too. This idea is simple, know what the absolute most important tasks of the day are and simply do them. Don’t do anything else until they are done. This is hardest when you don’t have confidence in the outcome. That’s why having them clearly written and immediately accessible is a useful tool in helping you not find other things to do to feed your fear of your most important tasks. Again, clear the obstacle of uncertainty and doubt ("I have so much to do, where the hell do I start?") by consciously deciding on the most important tasks, and starting on them as soon as possible.

Fixed Schedule Productivity – Cal Newport – Study Hacks – I’m quite envious of this schedule: 9-5 M-F and a few hours on Sunday. Really? That’s it? I seriously have trouble believing this post, and I don’t mean that as an insult at all. I doubt he’s lying, it’s just that impressive. I try every week to do this and almost always fail. Inevitably I’m not as productive as I wish to be from 9-5, and convince myself that I “should” or “have to” work in the evening and/or the weekend. This of course leads to a cycle of feeling overworked and thus working less efficiently. It’s miserable, I know. Sometimes, however, sometimes, I succeed. I’ve found that the days I do are the days I do not hesitate with what I should be doing. I simply grit my teeth and get started. The best part is, that invariably I don’t have to grit my teeth for long, for as we all know, formidable tasks are like bullies, once you stand up to them, they quickly back down. The part of Cal’s post that should tip you off to needing confidence is that he “starts early”. In other words, he doesn't waste any time before telling you to "jump right in." That means there’s no time for tossing around ideas of what you’re going to do for days to weeks before actually doing it. You gotta have the confidence that you won’t suck.

How Easy Would It Be to Start If You Knew You Wouldn't Fail?

I fail to understand why I still worry about the outcome of so many projects instead of just diving right in. I should give myself more credit. Invariably when I’ve dived in and started working, I’ve realized that the bully is actually a coward, that I have some good ideas, that I’m not the only one that doesn’t understand, or that it really won’t take as long as I thought. I imagine your experience is the same.

There's simply no alternative to having the confidence that you won't suck at the impending task. You either push aside doubt and start, or you don't start at all. Decide whether the second option is realistic, if it is, hooray, you've identified an unnecessary task. If it's not, recognize from the above 5 examples and any others you can think of that all time management and hacky literature says the same thing: get rid of obstacles to confidence, and immediately get started.

The faster you start, the more worrying you skip, and the less stress you get for a given project. If you broke down the causes of stress for a given project, how much would be related to actually doing the project? Unless the project involves an uncomfortable conversation or working with that one annoying bastard in class, usually very little. The stress comes from thinking about the project while you’re not doing anything. So if our goals are to minimize the overall stress a given project imparts on us, why not skip the thinking without doing, skip the worrying and self-doubt, get our confidence on, and get right to the doing?

How to Act Productive Tip #9: Get Pissed Off

2008-05-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

Original Photo By: bubblemonkey

How to Act Productive Tip #8: Skip Meals

2008-04-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

Photo by: Sashertootie

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

It's 7:00pm on a Thursday and you're finalizing a paper for a class with your partner. 7:35pm, you finish it and email it to your professor. You both get up, start packing your things when your partner takes a long sigh and quietly mentions, "Oh I'm so hungry, I haven't eaten anything all day." You're taken aback. It's 7:35pm. Your mind does the math: "If the last time Jim ate was yesterday's dinner, around 6, that means he hasn't eaten for over 24 hours." Suddenly, you feel like a glutton. You continue to think to yourself: "Man, I had that great oatmeal in the morning with raisins and and brown sugar, that killer burrito for lunch, then that half a pbj I made in the afternoon to snack on, and I'm about to go home and eat dinner." You self-conciously feel your midsection to see if it's larger than you expect. Then gluttonous guilt is replaced by feelings of inadequacy: "Am I lazy because I eat so regularly? Oh shit, I even exercise regularly. No wonder I didn't have the highest grade on that midterm." You finally manage to say, "Wow Jim, you haven't eaten anything all day?" Jim then begins listing all the things he had to do today that prevented him from eating and it hits you: Wow, Jim is a really busy, important, and productive person. He doesn't even have time for meals.

Take a lesson from Jim my friends: If you want to act productive, tell people you've been skipping meals. Sure you can actually skip meals, that's what productive people do, but if you like to eat, just eat in private, quickly so as to not get caught, pop some Altoids to get rid of that oh-so-obvious onion breath, and tell people you haven't eaten "in so long". It works every time.

Fine print: Grad Hacker is for entertainment purposes only. The makers of this website are not responsible for adverse health effects from skipped meals, overeating, or overworking.

How to Act Productive Tip #7 - Obsessively Follow GTD Methodology

2008-04-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

Photos by: kadavy

Notecard for the Week: Oh yes, it gets better.

2008-04-10T20:13:00.001-07:00

Photo by: MShades

I have become obsessed with my notecard for the day: a single 3x5 sheet that carries with it what i need to do today (a very small and realistic number), often a calendar of events (so I know when the free time is that I can do my tasks for the day), and small afternoon/evening mini-tasks and thoughts that come into my head that I need to capture. On a single 3x5 sheet.

After using it for a few months now, I've concluded there are two reasons it's so wonderful:

1. Focus - Don't we all simply want to know exactly what it is we need to do today? I have it written on a single 3x5 sheet.
2. Importance - The tasks written on that notecard are the most critical steps right now to accomplishing short term and long term goals. I know this is true because that is the criteria for a task making it onto the notecard.

In this vain, I realized that I wanted the same clarity of focus and importance for my weekly picture. Why? Because the day is a bit zoomed in when trying to accomplish goals on the month to year scale (e.g. Finish this project and write a paper by summer). Also my advisor thinks in week terms: 'Have this done by next week'. So, as I accomplish my task for a given day, I want that same clarity of focus and importance on my weekly tasks so that tomorrow morning it's damn easy to pick my new task(s). Lastly, it fits perfectly with a weekly review and literally coaxes me to do one every week since I need to switch notecards anyways.

What about Todoist? It pains me to say this but I'm slowly starting to not need it as much. It's still works great for capturing thoughts quickly when I'm on the computer or converting emails to tasks, but with my list of tasks for the week (notecard for the week) and list of tasks for the day (notecard for the day) I almost have no need for a large database of every brain fart I ever had about thinks I maybe should do.

Clarity of focus and importance: Know what the most important steps to successfully finishing your projects are, and focus on them. Don't get distracted by anything else.

I'm finding this philosophy to be invaluable.

How to Act Productive Tip #6: Make Sure "Right Now is a Really Bad Time"

2008-04-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

Photo by: notsogoodphotography

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Right now is a really bad time for productive people. They're really busy and your petty requests are just not what they need right now. Remember this if you want to act productive: right now can never be the best time. Oh and sorry for the tardiness. I know this was supposed to get to you on the weekend, but right now is just a really bad time. I haven't slept in days and had to work all weekend, not to mention through my whole spring break. Hope yours was good though.

If you're so un-busy to where you can just take requests and phone calls from, share jokes with, or in general have a good time with any random colleague, family member, or significant other at any time of the day, you've got some serious soul-searching to do. In the meantime you should learn how to make sure your boringness is not revealed to the world. There is only one rule for this: Make sure right now is the worst possible time for anything. I'm not just talking about tasks; sure most people don't have the time to complete a requested task immediately. But I'm talking about something much deeper.

Right now needs to be a bad time in your life in general. Right now needs to be a temporary period of the most stress you've ever experienced, while you're in search of that one goal that is always just around the corner. You can't have time for a movie, dates, the family reunion, your best friend's wedding. Seriously, if it were any other time, it would be no problem, but right now is just a really bad time. The catch, though, is that "temporary" is in the eye of the beholder. You don't want to just be productive every once in while, you want to be productive all the time, so temporary needs to also be all the time.

Here are some sample exchanges with different phrasings to help you keep your lines fresh. Good luck!

Bob: "Hey you, how's it going?"
You: "Oh man, it's just really crazy right now."

Vanessa: "Hey big guy, me and my friends from the dance team are having a pool party on Saturday night, wanna come? It's gonna be wild."
You: "Oh Vanessa, I would love to...but...I'm just totally swamped right now. Seriously, if it were any other time I'd be up for it."

Or equivalently,

Ryan: "Hey, me and the guys from the soccer team are having a car wash on Saturday. You should come out, we'll have a barbecue going, and I think we'll be going out afterwards. We'll definitely give you a free wash!"
You: "Oh Ryan, that really sounds awesome, but I'm just putting everything on hold for a little bit until [insert some big deadline a few months away] is done."
Ryan: "I understand. Your passion and drive for your work is really admirable and makes you really attractive. So don't worry about it."

Reading Natural Science Papers: A Method I Swear By

2008-04-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

Photo by: a trying youth

Those of who enter grad school in the natural sciences inevitably encounter frustrations with "reading papers." They either seem totally incomprehensible or take forever to get through. When the stars are particularly misaligned, both happen. I've struggled with this for a long time and through talking with my adviser and others' have learned that there is a general system for getting through papers without wasting an entire day, which I outline here in 3 simple points. This strategy has gone through some rigorous training so I'm not going to make excuses for it and say "I hope it works for you." I think it's a good, solid method and should work for just about anyone doing research in the natural sciences. At the same time, I realize the process is one of learning and revising, so I'd love to hear your tips on this subject.

A Caveat for the Young

But first a caveat for those that are just starting to read papers, often those that just started grad school or started research with a group in the late undergrad years. Starting to read science papers sucks at the beginning and there's really no way around it but to keep at it. At the beginning you understand barely anything. There's too much jargon, there may be all kinds of equations you don't understand, you're not clear on what is obvious and what is new in the field, you're not clear on what is important and what is a detail, etc. This is normal. Follow these tips anyways, try your best, pay special attention to the "guess the figures" tip, and keep at it. It will start to make sense sooner than you'd expect.

2 Categories of Papers.

1. Know exactly why you're reading the paper. In my experience, papers in your subject fall into 2 categories: 1) Papers from which you want to extract certain information. 2) Papers that are extremely relevant that you need to read in detail. You read every word of the second type of paper and not every word of the first type. Not heeding the later part of that warning is where most of my time has been wasted. Most papers in your field fall into the first category. And by most, I mean almost all. That makes sense, because if there were a massive number of papers that were so close to what you are doing that you need to read every word of them, you would be getting scooped right and left (scooped = someone else publishing what you're working on before you do). A good strategy for deciding which category a given paper is in is to assume that it's in category 1 and move on. If, as you read, you realize it's very relevant, you will naturally start reading more and more of it and it will fall into category 2. There are only very few papers that fall into category 2. When they do, you know, because you are usually scared shitless that you just got scooped or very excited that you just found out some new, very relevant, information that could really help your project. Category 2 papers are most often ones that you read multiple times.

2. Do the following in order: read the abstract, stop and make a guess as to what the figures will be, look at the figures and captions, read the conclusion, read the introduction if necessary. Minus a few instances where I get bogged down on figures that are interesting for one reason or another, this usually takes no longer than 5 minutes. This is where you get the gist of the paper. The abstract of course should have been read before even downloading the whole paper. The guessing figures step is an extremely handy trick that keeps you engaged. You think "If I wrote a paper with this abstract, I would probably need the following figures to support my claims." Once you do this, each figure becomes a "Yup, of course" or "Hmm, I didn't think of that. Let me think why this is important," and you're 10 times more engaged than if you had kept reading mindlessly. The conclusion is often even more concise than the abstract in stating what about their paper is new and important, and finally, the introduction, should be read if you feel you want more of a sense of context for this work. If you know how the work fits into the larger picture, the introduction is not necessary.

If you feel you've found what you wanted from the paper or what you want is definitely not there, stop here.

3. Move on to discussions of the figures within the text. Know what the most relevant figures to you are, search for where they begin discussing those figures (pdf searching "Fig. 3" or something equivalent works well), and read those sections.

This is all you need for Category 1 papers. If you need to read more, it's probably a Category 2 and it should be obvious by this point. Note there was no mention of the experimental setup and details. These should be skimmed if read at all. The only reason you need to know of these details are when you are comparing your exact experiment with theirs or are working off of their experimental setup, in which case, the paper is clearly a Category 2 and you'll be reading the whole paper probably more than once.

I read Category 2 papers using the same steps above, only after step 3 I start at the introduction and read through the whole thing, skimming parts I just read in detail and understood easily and slowing down at the more interesting sections.

That's it.

What to avoid: Equations, Details, and Reference Chasing

Don't get bogged down in equations. If you really need to know them, you'll get back to their derivations later. The worst thing you could do is start reading the paper from the beginning, word for word, get to equation 1, realize you don't know the derivation, see that it comes from reference 7, look up reference 7, start doing the same thing with that paper and slip down a cycle of never having completed an entire paper because you stop and look at a reference every time you don't understand the tiniest detail. Details are important in science of course, but there is simply too much out there that you don't know to be chasing all the details and all the derivations down the very first time you run into them in scientific literature.

Reading More Papers

I've been using this method (category, abstract, guess figures, figures, conclusion) for months now and it's absolutely dandy. I find I'm exposing myself to more papers now because I know I can get the gist of the paper without wasting an hour. I also don't feel intimidated by not understanding every detail. I used to have this false idea that professors and other experienced scientists understand everything about the papers they read. That's nonsense, of course they don't, that's why papers continue to get published, they're new. I find myself now browsing through Nature and Science magazines' websites expanding my base without feeling stupid about not knowing the details and not wasting too much time. I'm keeping up on the journals in my field a lot more than I used to. And I'm saving massive amounts of time doing literature searches to find information on a specific idea or subject.

What strategies do you use?

How to Act Productive Tip #5: When in Doubt, Check Your Email

2008-03-30T21:32:00.001-07:00

Photoby: Soctech

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Let's be honest, productive people get a lot of email, so they have to check it. How could they not? They're productive, so everyone wants a piece. These people often have scores of project they're working on simultaneously (think triple digits), each one producing multiple emails a day that need immediate checking and responding, and they're handling each one better you will probably handle any single project in your whole life. But don't feel bad, feel productive! Check your damn email already.

Most of us check email whenever we feel like it, respond whenever we feel like it, and somehow seem to make it through life with this level of mediocrity. Productive people, on the other hand, feel a deep sense of urgency, and can express this through digital communication like it's going out of style. These are the people that make others say to their friends, "Look at this, he responded to this email in 5 minutes," or "Woah, I sent this at 1am and she responded by 1:30!"They check email at work, at home, on dates, in bed, on the road, driving, biking, jogging, at the movies, at the beach, when they are in front of you and get to the counter at the burrito place that already has a long line. Bottom line is, they check that shit. If you want to be productive you should too. How do you know how often is enough? If you got to the end of this post without checking your email at least once, you're not checking it enough. Go back and try again.

Some good ways to increase your daily email checking: when you're stuck on a difficult project, go check your email; when you really don't want to work on something with a deadline, go check your email; when you get to work in the morning, definitely start by checking your email; when you have that awkward 20 minute break between events, go check your email. You get the point.

How to Act Productive Tip #4: Work Through Spring Break

2008-03-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

Photo by: allygirl520

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Ah spring break. Sun, skin, MTV video cameras, uninhibited drinking of alcohol. This is what spring break is about - if you're lazy.

We all know the truth about spring break: it's a time to finally get some research done. Maybe you've heard that before, maybe you've ignored it, maybe you're grossly unproductive. But one thing, however, is for sure: even if you don't work through the entirety of spring break telling people how hard you worked all break long is a sure way to increase your perceived productivity. Of course, being productive is an important part of acting productive, and actually working through spring break while everyone else is having unbridled sexual escapades that they won't remember, is encouraged. But we understand that everyone slips up once in a while, that's why we think the most important part about spring break is to prepare for the "how was your break?" conversations, regardless of how hard you worked:

First, make a list of things you got done over the break, review the list (email us, we'll help you with your list at no charge). Try to include items that your friends have been trying to do themselves for a long time but haven't "got around to" doing.

Second, have at least one event in mind that you were invited to attend but skipped out on to ensure you aren't perceived as a loser. Multi day events in tropical locations are encouraged. Mentioning the event was attended by very attractive and rather out-of-your-league peers is very strongly encouraged.

Third, what should be a fundamental skill if you've read any of the tips in this series, always start the conversation off by asking about their break was, mentioning how you wish you could say the same, and expressing a resigned acceptance that it was so much more fun than yours.

Finally, if there is one person you have this conversation with, let it be your boss. Your boss is probably not cool enough, attractive enough, nor lazy enough, to have spent spring break at some tropical location, they were probably working too, but expected that you weren't. But you were, and you should say so. Or you weren't, but you should still say so. Set yourself apart from your peers and tell your boss.

Happy Spring Break.

How to Act Productive Tip #3 - Work All Weekend

2008-03-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

Photo by: emdot

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

What did you do this past weekend? Hang out with friends? Drink alcoholic beverages? "Oh but I did a little bit of work on Sunday morning" you say. Unacceptable. Who do you think you are, Cal Newport? Stop being lazy, start being productive, work the entire weekend.

Productive people don't have weekends. Weekends are when the office is quiet, there are no classes if you are a student or professor, the phones aren't ringing, the email volume takes a dip, so why would any sane, productive person waste this time gallivanting around town when they could be making progress on the million projects on their plate? Don't get me wrong, you can do that, it's your life, just don't expect to be productive at the same time.

Now, in the vain of the How to Act Productive series, I must add the final ingredient to acting productive by working all weekend long: tell people what you did over the weekend. You need people to know how productive you were over the weekend. You need to inspire them. Last week I mentioned how you must carefully slide your lack of sleep into conversations to preserve some social tact. Such rules seemlessly extend into this week. Don't start by talking about your productive weekend, ask about their lazy weekend first: "So what did you do this weekend." "Oh it was awesome, we took the boat out on Saturday, the weather was beautiful, hung out for a while, hit up this party in the evening. Then on Sunday..." "Oh, that must have been nice, I was here working the whole time." Oh yes.

So towards the end of this week, when you start to think about what you'll do this weekend, ask yourself this simple question: Am I a productive person?

Zotero Review

2008-03-14T10:28:00.001-07:00

On its website, Zotero is described "is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources." Even though it’s been out for a while, I somehow didn’t run into it until a few months ago. I’ve used it for a while and have switched over from using Endnote because I like it that much, below is my review.

Here is my two sentence review of Zotero: If Evernote and Endnote had sex and made a baby, Zotero would be that baby. It would then outdo its parents in so many ways.

If that is all you need to know, go ahead and try it out, it's free for crying out loud. Otherwise, here is my longer review organized in list form of my opinions of its features. The part about Evernote in my two sentence review is about how Zotero can do more than just manage research articles, but I can’t write about everything (that’s what it’s website is for) so this review will just be about using Zotero to manage research papers.

1. Autofind - This is perhaps the coolest thing about Zotero. Zotero recognizes when you're looking at a summary, abstract, citation, and/or list of articles and puts a little icon next to the url. When you click on the icon, it automatically stores the citation information for that article in the database. My experiences with this feature have been pretty damn good. I'm in the natural sciences, so results in other fields may vary, but in the databases that I use, and most surprisingly at the vast majority of individual journals' websites, Zotero knows when I'm looking at an article. It isn't perfect though, and it can be annoying when you're cruising along and just want to store a citation and move on and Zotero doesn't recognize it. I've had this problem when checking who cited a given paper in Web of Science. But overall, this is a positive feature and a hell of a lot faster than exporting to Endnote. Which leads me to...

2. It Lives in Firefox - An absolute plus. Firefox is where I find articles, often look at the pdf of articles I've found, find other articles related to a given article I'm reading, so it only makes sense that my database of papers also live in Firefox. When you click on the icon in the address bar, the whole world doesn’t stop for Endnote to startup and you don’t have to click 5 other screens to allow Firefox to download the file, pick the library, etc. It just pulls up a little “Saving item…” tab in the bottom corner of the Firefox window, does its business, and removes the tab. The whole process, when working properly (which is the vast majority of the time) takes maybe 10 seconds. You do have to be careful about which folder you left highlighted in Zotero, because it will automatically save citations into that folder. I find this more of a plus than a minus though, because often I’m searching for a bunch of articles about one research subject, so I can just keep clicking the icon in the address bar and Zotero will keep saving citations right where I want them.

3. Folders – Does Endnote have folders inside a given library? I don’t think so, but maybe. Is it useful and fast enough for me to have known about? Evidently not. The folders and subfolders list is extremely useful and a breath of fresh air. Research papers aren’t emails. Throwing them all in one folder and searching for them is often not the best way to find what you’re looking for. You also seem to be able to place a given entry into more than one folder, which rocks. Drag, drop, drag, drop. Ooooh, it’s easy.

4. Tags – If folders aren’t enough for finding the articles you want, you can also add tags to papers, which work exactly like Gmail labels. Personally, I find that since I can place an entry into multiple folders already, tags aren’t particularly useful. But I use this occasionally. For example, when I’m doing a search on a given subject, it’s often convenient to keep adding entries to the list, but mark the especially pertinent ones as “to read” via a tag and go back and make sure I read all of them later. I wish I had learned this trick earlier because it’s one hell of a time saver. I’ll write more about this and other opinions about doing literature searches later.

5. Search as you type – Awesome. The search function of Zotero is so convenient. It’s fast, and it’s built, unobtrusively, right into the little screen. Endnote’s search worked well for me too, but it brought up a second screen and results didn’t show up as I typed; minor details, I know, but I’m just listing what I like here.

6. Notes – Oooh this is convenient. I’ve started to keep all of my notes and summaries of papers in Zotero in the notes option. It’s right there with the paper always. Besides actually taking notes on the paper though, the fact that the notes are included in searches means that I can type a list of “keywords” or random ways that I remember a paper into the notes to increase my chances of finding it later. Why not use tags or folders for this? Because often the ways I, and many others, remember a paper is through odd characteristics like: “that one paper by those British guys”, “the one with the blah blah technique in it”, “the one with that blah blah figure in it”, etc. I don’t want those random thoughts about every paper to have their own folder or tag, that’s ridiculous.

7. Importing from Endnote – So, if you’ve been using another reference software, how easy is it to switch? Good question. I used Endnote, so that’s all I can talk about. I went through their method of importing my references from Endnote and it worked with one weird quirk: it turned all kinds of Endnote keywords of some sort into tags, which is really annoying. So now I have all these tags that I don’t want and I don’t know how to delete all tags at one time, so I’m just not using tags much, eh, oh well. Otherwise the papers seem to enter just fine.

8. Citing as you type – I haven’t written a paper using Zotero for citations and don’t plan on it because my colleagues, and most importantly, my adviser, don’t use Zotero, so collaborating on a paper requires that I still use Endnote for that. I don’t forsee that being a problem though because the papers we write have maybe 20 or so citations max, and I can export them as RIS and make a little Endnote library for that particular paper. Maybe I’ll use Zotero for citations in a paper when I have to write the dissertation. I’ll let you know.

9. Free – Endnote costs money, this doesn’t. How do you beat that?

10. Open Source – Zotero is actively being worked on, which means bugs and kinks, and compatibility issues are constantly being fixed. This is a huge plus. Think Google; it responds to users’ requests by constantly improving its products, that’s so useful.

Overall, I’m quite happy with Zotero, and I find myself saving more papers than before and doing literature searches a lot faster and a lot more efficiently than before, which is a plus. Recommended.

What do you think of Zotero? Share your thoughts!

How to Act Productive Tip #2 - Talk About How Much You Haven't Slept

2008-03-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

Photo by: Al-Fassam [Online! :D]

How to Act Productive Tip #1 - Walk Fast

2008-03-01T08:37:00.000-08:00

Photo by: Hamed Saber

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Walking fast is slowly becoming a lost art form (except maybe in certain parts of New England). As our level of affluence grows to a point where we can spend time at work reading about how to work more efficiently on the internet from other people that are writing about it instead of actually working, we find that simple things like walking from point A to point B have really lost their sense of urgency. Today you observe people leisurely taking strolls at work instead of really going somewhere with a sense of purpose. Document printed? Okay, I'll stroll over to the printer, maybe grab some coffee on the way, chat with Jon about the game, take a nap, who knows. So with their hands in their pockets thumbing through loose change, their heads down watching their feet drag, and a soft tune whistling from their lips, they walk around, listlessly, from printer to coffee machine, from Jon to Jan, from unproductive to really unproductive.

This is most people, but not all people. In every organization you have a few, the really productive ones, that walk fast. These people are getting things done. Period. How could they not be? Look at how fast they're walking. These people are at the printer before the document has finished printing. They're heads are up. They're going somewhere. Often a slight frown or scowl is on their face as they walk that reminds everyone they're in deep thought, troubled by the enormous quantity of problems they solve every day.

They have no patience for waiting. If the microwave is full at noon, they can often be seen looking around to see what slow feet-dragger is using it and intends on wasting their time by showing up a minute after their food is done. Often they will return at 12:30 when the lunch crowd has subsided. Or, if they are really hungry, or more likely have a meeting in 10 minutes, they will keep their hand on the door-open button for the last 3 to 5 seconds and immediately open the door, take out slow-person food, and start heating theirs.

God forbid there be slow-walkers in front of them when they're in a tight hallway or corridor. Fast-walkers don't have time for "excuse me". Maybe, just maybe, they have time for a grunt, heavy breath, or other humanly sound that let's the other people know there is a fast walker around...but not for long. Before the feet-draggers know what happened, they are gone. That is fast-walking. That is productivity.

So this coming week, try to keep your head up, put a slight scowl on your face, and walk fast. Don't hide your inner productivity. Display it. Your boss will love you for it.

Simply GTD: Do You Really Need Contexts?

2008-02-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

Photo by: Nathan Borror

Guess what my answer is to the title question. Guess, I dare you.

You got it:

@No.

Is it a sin in the GTD community to speak ill of contexts? Maybe. Will I ask for forgiveness? No. Below are my reasons.

First, a caveat: if you are a businesswoman or man that on any given day is at a desk, your computer without internet, your computer with internet, a plane, running errands, on the phone, or in Denver, Colorado looking for that one restaurant you liked the last time you were in Denver, Colorado; if you actually have 14 people you need to call right now; if you really have 107 projects on your plate that all have their associated next actions; if you have a bunch of pressing agenda items you need to bring up immediately upon seeing each of 7 different people, then, read no further, this post and basically anything else I will ever write on this blog is and will be of no use to you. Go get things done. And add "Buy Maalox" to @errands.

Now for grad students and the like that are still reading. Here are my reasons:

Reason #1: You're not even close to the person described in the caveat. If you're a student that's not simultaneously running 3 businesses, and raising 2 kids, and constantly on the road, forget it. Let's go context by context through some classics. I promise I will admit when there are potentially useful contexts:

@computer: When are you not at your computer nowadays? Or how many times have you been in a context where you're really pressed to get things done but don't have your computer, and really can't stand looking through all those tasks that involve a computer? I seriously can think of zero situations like this. If you can, and I'm not being facetious, let me know. But I think it's safe to say that when grad students (or anyone reading this blog) are working they have a computer next to them or are in a very clear context where it's obvious what they need to do (e.g. lab doing a measurement, library doing homework, etc.)
@computer-internet/nointernet: Are you really on a plane this much? Please. Anywhere other than a plane and you have internet. If you don't, and you need it, you may want to switch schools/jobs.
@phone: Don't even start. I haven't met one student that needs this list.
@agenda-Dr. Phil: Compared to the three above, this has slightly more use, but I still don't think it's necessary nor practical. I used to keep this list in my "central" location for all my lists for my when I saw my adviser next and I never used it. Chances are, there are fewer than 2 or 3 people in your life whose time is so valuable that you need to make a list like this for when you're with them. But more importantly, important things to bring up with people, like research collaborators in a meeting can be made impromptu in preparation for a meeting, stored as general questions in a lab notebook, or listed in a questions slide at the end of a summery-of-current-progress PowerPoint. I found research related questions for my adviser were most conveniently written into the PowerPoint slides I was showing him, or my lab notebook for that project, but not in some list management software or device. Next to my grocery list and personal next actions.
@home: This is a potentially useful context, but I think it's a disguised way of just separating your lists into work and personal. If you do that already you have no use for this context.
@email: This is useful under one and only one circumstance: if you've become so disciplined as to check your email only a few scheduled times a day, then by all means make a list of the email you need to make when it's scheduled email time. But if you have Gmail open all the time and you're still writing @email in front of tasks, an alarm should be going off inside.
@errands: This is by far the most useful context, but, let's be honest, this list has nothing to do with GTD or David Allen, it's a shopping list for crying out loud! It's been around for so long, everyone uses it, and if it makes you feel more productive to put an @ in front, so be it. I'll admit it, I still call this list @errands out of habit.

Do I advocate keeping all next actions on a single list? No. I think it makes total intuitive sense to list things by project. But if you have only a few tasks anyways, by all means, put them on a single list. I probably could but don't choose to because I think in terms of projects and sit down to work on one project at a time. And if I recall correctly, David Allen even mentions in the book that if you have 20-30 next actions total, you can feel free to keep them on one list.

So what do we have left? A list of important tasks for each project, perhaps separated into work and personal, and a shopping list.

End of list of reasons.

I want to close by saying that I'm not just trying to start a fight. I have sincerely found that these contexts are simply unrealistically complicated for grad students, and to tell you frankly, for most people whose main jobs and main sources of stress involve work done in an office or any other single setting.

GTD's most important principle is keeping your mind clear. If I forget to tell Nate that he still owes me 5 bucks the next time I see him, I don't stress and it doesn't stay on my mind. If I forget to buy butter when I'm at the grocery store, I don't stress and it doesn't stay on my mind. But the large project that involves simply sitting down, closing Gmail and Facebook, and getting it done, will stress me out and will stay on my mind if I spend the day ticking off all kinds of less important tasks on my list. That task should be on your list, and as I've said before, I advocate it being only one of very few other items on your list for a given day. Forget labeling tasks by context and focus on getting that big monster task done and you're on your way to real stress-free productivity.

Related posts:
Does your system work when you have the flu?
Priorities and Getting Things Done

Getting Up Early: Week 4 - One Month Reflections

2008-02-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me comment (make excuses) for this week's performance:

1. I went to a rockin' NBA game in the middle of the week which kept me up late that night so that threw off the next day by a lot.

2. I didn't have as many days to average out that day because I lost Monday to the President's Day holiday.

So this week should be an anamoly, an outlier, if you will.

That said, let me note that before I even started this experiment, I used to average getting to my desk at around 9:30am. If that. I don't have an exact number because what crazy bastard keeps track of when he gets to work every day? But that's a well educated guess. So all in all, I've made some modest progress.

Also keep in mind that over the past month there have been many days when I've gotten to work right around 8:00am. But, like I said last week, an equal number of days getting into work past 9am serve to quickly push the average up. Finally, I should mention that on average I workout before getting to work 2 weekdays per week. It's hard for me to get to work by 8am on those days because I have to wake up ridiculously early, but I'm getting there.

So those are my excuses.

Here are my reflections for this month of my getting up early experiment.

1. It isn't easy. Getting your weekly average down significantly that is.

2. I definitely sleep a solid 8 hour average per night, which means to wake up earlier I have to go to bed earlier.

3. In light of reflection #2, my eventual, kind-of-secret goal of waking up at 7am is not realistic.

4. Getting an early start on work when few people are there is awesome.

Overall, this experience has validated my reason for doing this experiment: Work in the morning is more effective and feels like less suffering than work in the afternoon/evening. The second reason is the key reason I started the experiment. I realized that working for hours before lunch felt like no big deal; working in the morning doesn't feel hard for me. Whereas, working into the evening gives me a psychological feeling of suffering.

I will average getting to work by 8am. Oh I'm determined. Oh you just watch.

Getting Up Early: My Experiment
Getting Up Early: Week 1
Getting Up Early: Week 2 - A Pathetic Performance
Getting Up Early: Week 3 - I am a Tortoise

5 Ways to Avoid the Powerpoint Timesuck

2008-02-17T21:29:00.000-08:00

Photo by: ToastyKen

Note: In light of the popularity and timing of Merlin Mann's recently posted MacWorld video, I should note that these tips were written with a technical presentation in mind, where data, figures, text and in general significant information on each slide is often necessary. In that vain, I'm also not sure how presentations are done in the humanities or even in many social sciences, so this may or may not apply to folks in those fields.

PowerPoint can be one of the greatest timesucks in a grad student's life. And by grad student, I really mean anyone who uses PowerPoint. The most dangerous part, however, is that often we have no idea the crimes it is committing in taking our precious time and energy from us. Its guise of productivity is its greatest weapon. We add our slides, pick layouts, tweak them, add titles, tweak them, add figures, tweak, text, tweak, tweak, revise, tweak, tweak, tweak. Hours go by like this. Hours. Isn't PowerPoint just supposed to be a tool to help us convey our ideas?

My questions to you my friends is this: Who is the tool, you, or PowerPoint? Join me in reclaiming our time lost to PowerPoint.

Layout all slides first. Work from the outside in. In my experience, the single greatest timesuck is revision. Of course, only in a perfect world can you get things right the first time, but we want to avoid common situations like making the first slide, adding the figures, the text, the title, realizing space is scarce and moving things around just right, resizing all the figures to actually make them fit, spending a good 30 minutes on this one slide before deciding, "You know what, the third figure really belongs on its own slide, where I have more space and can add the fourth figure that would complement it just perfectly." I've found that thinking big picture and working into the details is the best method. I almost always outline first on a scratch piece of paper, deciding what the main points I want to get across are, basing those main points on key figures, and parsing those figures into slides. Only then do I start making slides. This has worked wonders.
Use the simplest layout possible. Now it's time to make the slides. As I mentioned, each side should be based on 1 or 2 figures. Chuck the constraining ready-made layouts as they just cause frustration and you browsing through other layouts. Start with a blank slide or the title-only layout, pick a place for your figure(s) and text, put those two things in their place and move on.
Avoid clicking "new slide" whenever possible. After you've made a couple of slides, you should not have to create many, if any, layouts. Unless you're in graphic design, presenting to graphic designers, the goal is to keep folks' attention on your work, not distracted by how flashy your presentation is. So simply copy and paste the previously created slide that has the best layout for the slide you are about to create, delete the content, and replace it with new stuff. Now we're flying along.
Finalize all images and figures before putting them into PowerPoint. Oh no! You made almost the whole presentation and realized that a bunch figures had this-one-thing mislabeled. Or the units are wrong. Or the line color really doesn't show up well. That's a killer because now you have to go back into your image editing or graphing software, tweak tweak tweak, recreate the figure, and replace it in PowerPoint. There's not much I can say on this point other than be careful. And most importantly, once you figure out the details for a few figures, stick with what works! Again, let your content and work do the razzling and dazzling.
Make non-essential presentations as simple as possible. Lastly, we come to a subtle killer within the already subtle time-killer known as PowerPoint. Many times, we have to make little mini-presentations to summarize the status of a project to colleagues. If it's not being shown to strangers, it's not that essential. That's my philosophy. You should go for sheer speed and content in these presentations. This is a time to discuss. If you are showing it to your professor or group, focus on figures only. Text should just be a reminder for things you want to bring up to them. They know the basics, and you can explain many detials to them very fast. Think about how colleagues discussed work before PowerPoint. They probably just printed figures and talked. Don't worry about pretty-ing up these presentations, just get them done so you can get feedback and getting back to things that are more worth your time.

Lastly, I should mention that these are time-saving tips for PowerPoint, general advice on quality of your presentations should still apply: Use large font sizes, keep text to a minimum, etc.

What time-saving PowerPoint tricks do you use?

Getting Up Early: Week 3 - I am a Tortoise

2008-02-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

The tortoise won the race my friends, the tortoise won the race. I can take comfort in the fact that on any given week I am not drastically changing my schedule, which according to gurus and experts everywhere means my habit change is more likely to last...right?

I did cross the 8:30am mark, which is exciting.

What makes it hard to bring the weekly average down quickly is merely a day or two of slipping up. Here's what I mean: Say on Monday and Tuesday you get in at around 8:00am. Great, you're on schedule. Then, Tuesday night you have to stay at school wrapping up some experiment a bit later than you intended which pushes back your sleep time a tad (say 1 hour) and consequently you arrive to school on Wednesday at 8:30am. That's not so bad, you only need to show up on Thursday at 7:30am to keep your 8:00am average. You try to do that, can't quite pull it off, but put in a respectable 7:50am attempt. Your average getting into work time for Monday to Thursday is sitting at 8:05 am, right on the money. But, on Thursday your friends invite you over to dinner, tomorrow's a Friday, you have some wine, you're chatting, and before you know it you're only getting to bed at 1:00am. You get up at 8:30am the next day and aren't at school until 9:30am. Due to this one night, your average, which was sitting right around 8:00am all week long is now 8:22, right below the 8:30am mark.

That's why it ain't easy.

Nonetheless, improvement was made in a week where I went to bed at a later time, which means my morning routine is more efficient, that's good. Here are the full numbers:

To Bed: 10:40 pm
Out of Bed: 6:35 am
Hours of Sleep: 7.92 hrs.
At work: 8:26 am
Tired: 4.2 /10 (10 = very tired, 1 = very not)

Why You Should Never Stop Excercising

2008-02-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

Photo: istockphoto

Here's a great scientific article on how stopping an excercise routine pushes you back from your fitness goals a lot farther than you may have thought: Irregular Exercise Pattern May Add Pounds Here's the big-money quote:

He found that runners who decreased their distance from five to zero miles per week gained four times as much weight as those who decreased their distance from 25 to 20 miles per week. He also found that people who started running after an exercise layoff didn’t lose weight until their mileage exceeded 20 miles per week in men, and 10 miles per week in women.

Who wants to run 20 miles a week to get back on track? Not me.

Getting Up Early: Week 2 - A Pathetic Performance

2008-02-08T23:29:00.000-08:00

Is it possible that I managed to go to sleep almost a half hour earlier (10:19 pm average) and only get to work 4 minutes earlier on average? Who goes to sleep at 10 o'clock, sleeps 8 hours to the minute, and doesn't get to work until 8:30am? That's absurd.

I do workout in the morning (twice again this week) but regardless, I should make up for any late showings to my desk on the three non-workout days. Eight hours past 10 pm is 6 am, which begs the question, why is it taking me 2 hours to get to my desk when I live 25 minutes by foot and bus from my lab?

My goal is still to get to work, on average, at 8am every day. Not that hard, I know. In fact, my secret goal is to get to work by 7am eventually, but baby steps first. The chart shows my averages for going to sleep and getting to my desk for this week and Week 1. A list of all averages is below. Next week I'll push that red line down far, I garauntee it!

To Bed: 10:19 pm
Out of Bed: 6:23 am
Hours of Sleep: 7.99 hrs.
At work: 8:33 am
Tired: 3.8/10 (10 = very tired, 1 = very not)

Getting Up Early: My Experiment
Getting Up Early: Week 1

Get Quick News: NPR's 5-minute News Summary Podcasts

2008-02-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

I've heard students and professionals alike lament about how much time they waste on the internet reading news. Grad students are incredibly susceptible to this since we're so often just sitting in front of a computer with no risk of a boss walking behind us, doing work that is just begging us to stop and browse websites, like the news. In addition you increasingly hear bloggers and other modern productivity folks talk about how they've stopped reading the news completely as it's a "waste of time."

Wow. News is a waste of time? I beg to differ. If that's your cup of tea, so be it. But I think realizing we live in an increasingly global, interdependent world and keeping up on current events is by no means a waste of time. In fact, some would go as far as to say it's irresponsible to be oblivious to current events. I'm not going to pass judgement, but I will suggest a nice middle ground.

If you're either find yourself,

not keeping up on news because you're too busy but you'd like to,
spending a lot of time clicking through news and other websites as an escape from doing work,

then try out a short news podcast. My personal favorites are NPR's quick news summary websites that are all approximately 5 minute long and are put out at various times throughout the day. I like to listen to it in the morning on the way to school. It's short, to the point, and keeps you current. I've also found that they help quell the desire to quickly browse the news when I'm stuck doing something I find hard or unenjoyable but I really should get done so that it gets off my mind and stops causing stress. Why browse? I already got yesterday's summary this morning and will get today's summary tomorrow morning. Up on current events, less escape browsing: two birds, one stone.

Any other podcast suggestions? Suggest them!

Todoist with a Notecard for the Day

2008-02-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

Photo by: pshutterbug

As I mentioned in a long review, I've been using Todoist since August. I'll have you know that Todoist and I are still doing quite well. So well in fact that I recently started forking over $3/month for the premium membership. I'll share my thoughts on that another day.

Today, however, I want to share my experiences of halfway getting my hipster on. What? Well, basically, on top of keeping my entire list of projects, their associated next actions, and some notes on them on Todoist, I've started carrying around a 3x5 notecard for the day in my pocket with a list of the 1-3 most important tasks for the day, along with other little notes for myself (calendar items, small tasks that come up throughout the day, etc.).

Why carry a notecard for the day?

Despite being a GTD fan, I've been a firm believer in priorities for a long time. I think the priority differences between tasks should be the number one factor in deciding where to spend your time. That said, I found that having Todoist up, with all of my tasks, including a lot of low priority smaller tasks was unnecessary and frankly distracting. As I've said before, high priority tasks are often long and difficult, and when you're grinding through the trenches of these tasks, you're extremely vulnerable to distractions that take you out of the trench, which, if you finished digging, would help you tremendously in the longterm. These tasks are the research papers, the final papers, the essential background reading, the revising of a long proposal, etc. They are tasks that, if you got them and only them done today, you would go to sleep content. Conversely, they are tasks that if you leave them hanging while getting 15 other tasks done, you will still go to sleep agitated.

How many tasks should go on the notecard?

I think one, ideally, and no more than three. But it's up to you. Leo on zenhabits says he uses three. Alan Lakein in his old and famous book advocates a similar number for your A tasks. You can put more on there if you want, just don't feel disappointed when you aren't crossing them all off most of the time. Obviously if you finish one you can look back on your master list for another. In the end it really depends on the kind of work you do and how long your most important tasks usually take. I'm a graduate student in the sciences, so my most important tasks are long: many hours of experiments looking for certain data; many hours of reviewing papers and comparing to my results on a specific subject; many hours of data processing, thinking and (hopefully) concluding. So for me, dedicating an entire day to one of these tasks is useful, I usually end the day having made significant progress. Also, these thinking intensive, or equipment intensive tasks are often done much more efficiently in fewer sittings as train of thought and setup of equipment are vital, which makes stopping and re-starting really time intensive. Some days when I have shorter tasks that are the most important I use more than one.

What about all the annoying small tasks?

I do them somewhere in the afternoon energy slump. They are usually written on the bottom of my notecard, or on my "today/overdue" screen of Todoist. I try to do all of these for a given day at once. This idea of batch processing small tasks is one of the oldest tricks of the trade and if I linked to everyone that has advocated it, this post would get too long.

Why not use a full hipster PDA or moleskine?

Because I frankly don't want to carry around all that crap in my pocket. I don't carry my bag around to talks, or meetings, or class, so carrying a clipped stack of notecards or moleskine with every last thing I need to do just seems like too much. Not to mention the whole point of the notecard of the day is to focus solely on the task(s) for the day and not all the other stuff. Secondly, Todoist rocks: It's digital; it doesn't get heavy; you can add entire emails to it with the click of a button (okay, maybe a few); I could go on, but there are many things about it that I don't think I can replace with other tools.

Only the notecard?!

Lastly, I should mention that of course the notecard of the day can be used as a complement to any long list of tasks in any format, not just Todoist. Also, it can be used by itself. If you aren't a fan of long lists of all projects and associated next actions, or if you're just starting out in this productivity/organization thing, just keeping one notecard in your pocket every day and transferring remaining tasks to the next day's card is a great start.

Getting Up Early: Week 1

2008-02-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

Photo by: scui3asteveo

So here are the results of my early rising experiments for Week 1. I want to emphasize that it's my first week, so I'm still learning! My goal is to get into work by 8:00am, including days when I go to the gym in the morning (supposed to be 2 out of the 5 workdays). To review my categories are:

1) To bed and to rise times and total hours slept.
2) Time at work.
3) 0-10 scale of how tired I was with 0 being as energetic as ever and 10 being asleep most of the day.
4) General thoughts and satisfaction with the day.

At the bottom I've listed average values for categories 1 - 3.

Here is a link to my introduction post for this experiment.

Monday

1) Asleep: 11:00 pm
Out of Bed: 6:30 am
Hours of Sleep: 7.5 hrs
2) At work: 8:25 am
3) Tired: 2/10
4) Progress not bad, 8:25 am is a lot better than 9:25 am.

Tuesday

1) Asleep: 10:30 pm
Out of Bed: 6:00 am
Hours of Sleep: 7:30 hrs
2) At work: 8:40 am (gym)
3) Tired: 8/10
4) So tired. Last hour of sleep was off an on. Got to the gym late, so then into work late.

Wednesday

1) Asleep: 10:30 pm
Out of Bed: 6:50 am
Hours of Sleep: 8:20 hrs
2) At work: 8:15 am
3) Tired: 1/10
4) Excellent, made up for yesterday.

Thursday

1) Asleep: 11:00 pm
Out of Bed: 7:00 am
Hours of Sleep: 8:00 hrs
2) At work: 8:45 am
3) Tired: 2/10
4) What a waste, I should be able to get into work an hour after waking up, but I didn't get in until almost 9am.

Friday

1) Asleep: 11:00 pm
Out of Bed: 7:15 am
Hours of sleep: 8:15 hrs.
2) At work: 9:00am
3) 4/10
4) Didn't sleep well. Stayed in bed too long. Didn't get into the gym. I'm unraveling at the end of the week!

Averages

1) Asleep: 10:48 pm

2) Out of Bed: 6:43 am

3) Hours of Sleep: 7.9

4) At Work 8:37 am

5) Tired: 3.4/10

Goals

I said I wanted to go to bed between 10 and 10:30 pm every day to get into work by 8:00 am. Clearly comparing the averages of asleep time to at work time shows if I go to bed on average at 10:15 pm, I should be able to get to work at about 8:00 am. I seem to average a solid 8 hours of sleep, as expected, and overall my tiredness is below 5, which means I have energy and focus, so that's good.

The fact that even after declaring I'm doing this experiment and keeping a log, I couldn't get in before 8:30 am on average is pretty pathetic, especially when considering I missed one gym day (which I have to make up for this weekend). 8:30 am is by no means early.

This needs to change drastically next week. The main goal for next week is to get into work by 8:00am on average. I understand that this is going to require getting into work before 8:00am on some days, but that can't be impossible.

Anyone have any early rising tips and tricks? Share your thoughts!

Getting Up Early: My experiment

2008-01-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

Photo by: prakhar

I'm going to start a series of weekly posts that track my experiences with trying to wake up earlier on weekdays. A combination of realizing that I am more alert and energetic in the morning and this post on zenhabits made me want to try. I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now (halfway successfully) but I decided this week that I should start tracking how each day went. I figure tracking my experience may help me be more diligent with going to bed early enough to make it work and could be informative to anyone thinking of trying to wake up earlier too.

Here is some background on my sleeping habits so you know where I’m starting from:

I haven’t considered myself a morning person until maybe a few months back, when I realized really that I wasn’t a night person and figured maybe I’m getting older.
I need about 7.5 to 8.5 hours of sleep a night to not feel sleepy throughout the day, although I always get up at least once during the night. These days I usually get up after about 6 or 7 hours to go to the bathroom. This makes the last hour or so questionable in terms of sleep quality.
I’m 24.
I’m male.
I workout regularly and eat well.

Before this experiment (or habit change I hope) I would normally go to bed between 11 and 12 and get out of bed (distinct from waking up) at 8 or later. I would then get into work no earlier than 9am. Usually not before 9:30am. Every once in a while I would wake up between 7am and 8am. I found that when I got into to work well after 9, I would often sit down, check my email, and not actually start on that day’s important tasks until 10am. Now I’m trying to wake up by 6am on non-workout days (M, W, F) and 5:30am on workout days (T, Th). I’m hoping on both workout and non-workout days to get into work by 8am and start on my important tasks immediately. The weekends are free, but I try not to sleep in past 9am.

Here is what I’m hoping to gain from waking up early:

I can workout in the morning when the gym is not a zoo.

I’m hoping to be more efficient by shifting my work hours towards the morning, when I’m more fresh and there are fewer friends and colleagues there to talk to. I’ve found that working straight from whenever I get to work until lunchtime (sometime between 11am-12pm) is no problem regardless of how early I get in, whereas, after lunch I get distracted more easily, I’m tired, and doing work just seems more painful. This means I usually end up sitting at my desk feeling like I’m at work, but just doing unimportant tasks or browsing the internet. This is a supreme drag because you get home thinking you’ve worked hard, psychologically feeling like you’ve worked hard, but at the end of the day have little to show for it. That’s like taking the stress work gives and not getting the rewards. This realization is the straw that broke my back into starting this experiment. I also find that when I get in early (8ish) and no one is there, it somehow makes me want to quickly start working and get my A1s or MITs done (whatever you want to call it), who knows why, but I’ll take it.

I will answer the following questions towards the end of each day: 1) What time I went to sleep and got up. 2) What time I got into work and/or gym. 3) How tired I was throughout the day. 4) Did I feel it was worthwhile?

I'll try to write the answers up at the end of each day but I'll post the whole week’s responses on Friday. Wish me luck!

Simply GTD: Cell Phone Capture

2008-01-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

SMS to email my friends, SMS to email. Months back, I posted about trying Jott. It's nice. It transcribes ridiculously well and it's pretty convenient to be able to push a speed dial button and say "do this tomorrow because it's so important" and have that show up in your inbox. But then I got in some situations, like a quiet, packed bus in the morning, where it would have been rather embarrassing to open my phone and say "Myself....at errands, tomatoes, pasta, milk" and hang up. So I just texted my email address. Then, I started texting myself more and more. I liked how I didn't even need to open the email in gmail, I could see what I typed in the "snippet" and it didn't say "Jott.com" all over it. And then I realized, why bother using services I don't need? The goal is not to get things done by adopting a million different services, buckets, tools, and gadgets. The goals is to simply get things done. My cell phone is always on me, so I can always capture things. My cell phone (shown above), isn't a fancy qwerty keyboard phone either, and I still find it easy to capture with it's T9 capabilities. And I'm not one of those high school kids that can text faster than they can type and I still find it easy. Oh the cell phone capture.

5 Healthy Foods that are Fast

2008-01-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Aahh, January. A time when resolutions have been made our health that we have been making for many years now....

Students have a terrible time with food because they don't have a 4 bedroom suburban house with a decked out kitchen and a stay at home spouse to cook for them, nor do they have much time for cooking. That and the whole cafeteria thing. And if you ask non-students why their eating habits have slipped, most will give you the same one word response: time.

If you're eating almost every meal in a cafeteria, I'll post some suggestions on picking good choices there later. But for now here are some healthy fast and easy meal suggestions for those that are in a time crunch but want to stay healthy.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal, an essential staple of complex carbs. The instant packets are better than McDonalds, but the reason they taste so good is because they often come loaded with sugar. Try regular oatmeal in non-fat milk. Heating it the microwave takes minutes and a little cinnamon and the amount of sugar you need (exercising self control) will do wonders. Alternatives to sugar are berries and raisins. For those that don't mind protein shakes, shredding raw oatmeal straight into a blender literally turns it into a powder, add that with to your regular shake for wonderful complex carbs.

Eggs

Eggs are a great source of protein and essential fatty acids. If you want to watch the cholesterol, just remove the yolks. Frying or scrambling eggs is pretty darn fast as well.

Milk

Non-fat, low-fat, organic, heck even whole milk (with caution). No matter your preference milk is a great source of casein protein which digests slowly. This makes it great right before bed to let your body have a slow steady source of protein for a through the night. Non-fat is great to get the protein and prevent putting on weight. You should have milk in your fridge at all times.

Sweet Potatos / Yams

Sweet potatoes are a nutritious, vitamin rich source of complex carbs, and they're sweet for crying out loud! An absolutely fantastic source of carbs and vitamins that tastes so good. They can be boiled, baked, even microwaved. Make a batch and keep them in the fridge.

Whole wheat bread

Make sure the first ingredient says "whole wheat" and not "enriched" and you're good to go for a great source of complex carbs that will complement any protein rich sandwich stuffer for a great midday meal.

These are just a start, but for many people, replacing simple carb, high fat, or sugary snacks or "breakfasts" with any of these (or better yet a combination), can do absolute wonders. Try it out!

Does your system work when you have the flu?

2007-12-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

GTD Simplicity is so vital to the whole process working.

I was listening to a podcast on davidco and David said two things that struck me about GTD systems:

(1) "these systems needs to work when you have the flu and don't feel like it."

Ain't that the truth. I've finally stuck with a single list manager for months now: Todoist. And I see no signs of it slowing down. The number one source of agreement between me and Todoist is simplicity. I hear and read of so many people looking for a piece of software that will do all the thinking for them. Forget it. If you find it, you've also found that you apparently have no more to add to the world than a computer. In my opinion, the number one attempt at overdoing GTD is in trying to find a way to handle "task dependencies." Which leads me to quote number...

(2) "you don't wanna put call fred if fred's dead i'll call sue...you know that's overplanning... for the most part you just need to know what the kickstart is...that would be really overkill and overplanning to sit down to try to lay out a bunch of stuff that you know is going to be pretty natural and flow as you start moving on action items..."

Yes. Forget dependencies. GTD is absolutely not meant for you to stop thinking about what you have to do. It's geared towards knowledge workers for crying out loud. Perhaps the most important task for any knowledge worker is to be able to use discrimination in deciding what the next step is for moving forward on their projects. This discrimination should be what makes you irreplaceable by technology. Risking being harsh and self-righteous I think attempting task dependencies is one of the most classic novice GTD mistakes out there.

Fine, so if you really want to remember that somewhere down the line you need to do task x but it's not the immediate next action, list it somewhere in a place associated with the project and make sure your weekly review takes care of catching it when it becomes next or close to next. A good place would be a project brainstorm or project steps list distinct from your overall next actions list. If that place has to be your actions list itself, so be it. Just don't worry about dependencies, things change too fast and too much for that to be useful. In Todoist, for example, if I'm mind dumping a bunch of steps for a project I list those as items in that project's list, but my absolute next actions (or MITs if you wanna get your zen on) are ones on which I put a due date for today or overdue so that they show up on my home page. I then work off the homepage until those tasks are done or rendered unnecessary, then I go pick new absolute next actions. This step of thinking after finishing a task (unless it's trivial) is essential to keeping your project management organic enough to allow for creativity, good problem solving, and changing circumstances.

Make a Weekly Review List : Gmail it to yourself

2007-11-05T20:56:00.000-08:00

When I first started implementing GTD and recently as an experiment, I tried to do the weekly review impromptu, off the cuff if you will. This is generally not a good idea. You should make a weekly review list because it's so goshdarn easy to make. I find the best place to put it is in an email to yourself. Often email is at the heart of folks' weekly reviews and inbox clearings, so it's a great place to put the list. Just search for "Weekly review" and get rolling.

Here is mine. Yeah, I have some odd non-traditionals on there, but if I gotta remind myself to do them somehow. What does yours look like?

Dealing with an imperfect GTD system

2007-10-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

A perfect GTD system only exists on paper. Of course everyone's system is imperfect. We should be able to deal with that. I like to measure imperfection as how much stuff is still on your mind. That's what drew me in and keeps me going strong with GTD: keeping my mind clear. In the end, this is simply what eliminating stress is isn't? Getting rid of the constant nagging, worrying thoughts that make life miserable. They suck, and I want them gone.

So a question I've been asking myself is what happens when a project or two, or a task or two starts to consistently bother you? (Mind you this can happen even with a perfect system. GTD does nothing for emotional reactions towards certain tasks or projects. In fact, what system would make a project like "Defend thesis" get off your mind as the defense deadline approaches?)

Being anxious about your defense is normal and even healthy stress, but sometimes tasks or projects that I don't need to be thinking of all the time bother me. Usually this is because of some hole in my implementation of the system: I didn't do enough front end planning, the next actions are too big to handle, or something of that sort.

I've found the best way to deal with this is simply to do one small task related to that project as soon as possible. It's a huge stress relief. The more you procrastinate on something the more intimidating it seems, so breaking that chain and just doing something, anything, does wonders for making the project and the other next actions seem a lot more digestible.

5 Ways to make use of between-class time

2007-09-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

I've heard students (grad and undergrad) say the following more often than I expect: I just have this awkward 30 minute break between classes, which is not really enough time to get anything done.

I beg your pardon?

Here are five ideas for making use of between-class time:

Read. Always bring backup reading. People are late, classes start late, classes end early, you're waiting for office hours, etc. Chances are, if you're a student of any kind there is something that you need to read that hasn't been read. If it's a big book you don't want to lug around, photocopy a few pages, the trees will forgive you. This can be useful for breaks from 5 minutes up to 45 minutes.
Brainstorm. On a piece of paper or your computer, brainstorm solutions or strategies for one problem that is on your plate write now. Often, the tasks that sit on our lists the longest are there not because of any incompetency on our part or our system's but simply because they are hard, and thus are psychologically avoided. Take advantage of this short time to just list as many ideas regarding strategies to overcoming a problem as possible. If your brainstorm produces next actions, all the better, but they don't have to. I find that the definitive end to the brainstorming session makes dealing with ugly projects a lot easier.
Start on one homework assignment. For science-y types that have problem sets. Start on one 1 problem. Start is the key. If you get stuck, start on another. Don't worry about finishing. For humanities or social scientists with papers due, start on an outline. I've found that even if I haven't finished doing the background research, guessing what the outline could look like really helps form ideas.
Nap. College students have no problem sleeping through classes. But try sleeping in between classes. This is a 2 in 1 productivity secret because it 1) Refreshes you for the rest of the day and 2) Lets you stay awake during class so you don't have to spend extra time re-learning concepts that were explained in class in the first place. Class is not a convenient place to sleep anyways, the library is much quieter. In addition, sleeping during class surely doesn't give you bonus points with the prof that you might need to cash in later.
Do your Weekly Review. Obviously if you're not GTDing, you should start, and if you're GTDing but not weekly reviewing you should start (see here and here). The key to the weekly review is doing it at the same time consistently, every week, which makes a class schedule the perfect structure for fitting in a 30 minute to 1 hour weekly review; just write it into the hard landscape of your calendar every week like another class. Money.

New Template

2007-09-24T21:39:00.001-07:00

I didn't like the old design and thought it was a bit hard to read so I changed it. Hope this is better!

I'm starting to Jott and I kind of like it.

2007-09-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

...and by kind of, I mean a lot. I'm a declared fan of GTD simplicity, so I normally don't try and overpolish the GTD system, but I ran into this Lifehacker post about capture, which mentioned Jott as a possible capture tool. A while back I bought a tiny pen that I keep in my wallet (yes, it fits in my wallet!) to capture thoughts on the go, so at first I was hesitant, but Jott was just too cool. There is literally nothing easier than dialing a speed dial number saying "myself" and then "Waste time and be a hypocrite by posting on blogger instead of getting things done."

I found the transcription rate pretty good if you speak clearly. Also if you need to say a complicated or unusual word, you can spell it out, which is surprisingly not that much of a hassle. The Lifehacker post also mentioned "a lot of email solicitations" after signing in. Now, either my Gmail spam filter is just that good, or they've stopped, or the writer got something mixed up because I've received zero so far.

Todoist Slickrun Integration

2007-09-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

So I saw the Launchy Todoist plugin, that lets you quickly add an item to your Todoist lists with just a few keystrokes, and it made me jealous because I don't use Launchy, I use SlickRun. I wanted the same Todoist capture method for SlickRun. Capturing distracting thoughts while you're doing a task quickly and efficiently is essential to the GTD process. I couldn't find anything on the web so I tried doing it myself. I'm generally pretty incompetent when it comes to this level of geekyness but somehow I stumbled upon a solution.

First I just scrolled through the Todoist API page and found the add items url and created a magicword with Filename: Firefox and and Parameters: that url. With, of course, a $W$ for the content of the item, and a particular project id I wanted the task to go in. This worked, but it opened up a Firefox window every time and that defeats the whole purpose of instant, undistracting, capture.

I then did some searching through the Bayden message board and found a discussion where someone asked how to make Twitter posts through SlickRun and Eric posted a solution. It involved creating a vbscript and having SlickRun open that script and pass whatever you want to say to the script which then does the website updating. So I should say now that I have no Windows scripting experience and in general am not much of a programmer, but I figured adding an item to Todoist should be basically the same. So I took his script and modified things until it worked.

I can now type "td this is so cool" into SlickRun and the item "this is so cool" will appear in a given project in my Todoist account. That is cool.

Some Comments

I'm sure someone could modify this to allow you to type in the project as well, but I don't have the patience or know-how to do this. Some project names are too long and too hard to get exactly right for that to be quick and convenient(e.g. "Finalize ticket and hotel for Denver"). But if you want to, feel free to post that modification.

I have a project in Todoist called "New" and make all instantly captured items go there (I was doing this with Launchy, which I downloaded just for this capture, for a few hours until this SlickRun diddly worked). I then just put those items wherever they need to go the next time I've actually opened Todoist. Works well.
For some reason I couldn't add the context label to my item descriptions in Launchy; it would give me a syntax error message. I think this is because that @ sign is used to denote time for that plugin. In this slickrun method you can label items with @context at the end of the description and it works as a context.

Finally, here is the script:

Set objHTTP = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
objHTTP.open "POST", "http://todoist.com/API/addItem?content=" & WScript.Arguments.item(0) & "&project_id=projectidhere&priority=4&token=yourtokenhere", False
objHTTP.send
Set objHTTP = Nothing

What's a token? Your token is basically the golden key into your account and can be found in Preferences -> Account.

How do I know the project id number? To get a list of the project id's for your projects, enter this url into your browser: http://todoist.com/API/getProjects?token=yourtokenhere.

For those of you like me, who have no idea how this scripting business works, don't be intimidated, just copy the above text and paste it into notepad and save the notepad file as scriptname.vbs, and put it in whatever directory you want.

Then create your magicword in SlickRun with:
Filename or Url: the above script's filename.
Parameters: $W$

I believe that's it. Let me know if I missed anything, this doesn't work, or there is a better method out there that I didn't run into. Happy GTDing!

Todoist Review

2007-08-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Edit(2/5/08): Check out my latest post on using a notecard for the day along with Todoist!

So I renogiated my commitment to this thereaputic blog and called it quits after a short while to get other things done. This happend around April, but then you'll notice I posted once more in May to write a quick review of Dan Kennedy's No B.S. Time Management because I liked it. Once more, but this time after a many month break, I'm posting in order to review Todoist, the online GTD app. I wanted to be able to add my two cents in the off chance that someone was searching for reviews of Todoist or online GTD apps and searched far enough to actually find this.

Background

I've been using Todoist for a few weeks now, maybe a month -- time flies when you're having fun you know. Before that I used Gmail to manage my next action lists and before that, Outlook. I switched from Outlook to Gmail because I loved Gmail and wanted to switch to that for email completely and didn't want Outlook running just for lists. In Gmail I used labels for context and project lists and emailed myself to put items into that list. I thought it was super wonderful since I could label one email with multiple contexts and projects. That worked fine for a while, but visually and operationally it wasn't as clean as I wanted. Visually, when I clicked on a label and saw all the emails (items/actions) in it, it wasn't clear what was done, what was next, and what could wait even though I tried with the read/unread and starred/unstarred options:

The operational weaknesses in using Gmail to manage my lists were the ultimate reasons I was tempted enough to try something else. Specifically, it was a pain in the ass to create a new project. When you have a label that represents a project or context, whenever you want to create an item in that label (context/project) you have to: email yourself; label the email in the inbox; then clear the email from the inbox. Yes, it's not hard like getting to the moon is hard, but it's not as quick and easy as creating a next action should be. So in order to avoid that, every time I created a label, I also created a filter which included keywords I would type in the body that would make that email automatically skip the in inbox and be labeled. That solved one problem but created another. Creating next actions was fast, but creating projects was slow: I had to create a label and create a filter for that label, both of which required multiple screens, mousing, typing, etc. It literally took over a minute each time. It sounds like I'm complaining, but that much resistance was enough for me to avoid creating projects for smaller open loops, whic was preventing my from properly using GTD. As David Allen says, any item with more than 2 next actions is a project. With this system of mine, it became every item with more than 15 next actions or something equally absurd. The net result is that I had many small projects in my mind that were unorganized and had little next actions strewn through context lists and were frankly eating away at my mind and distracting me. This had to be fixed.

Focus on doing, not on the system

I tried to be productive and a good boy and say that Gmail was sufficient and I wasn't going to switch again. I wanted to focus on doing my tasks, not tweaking systems. This is a very good philosophy, but I realized that with Gmail, I was forced to focus on the system. So I started to casually browse. I realized that online list management was fine for me because I had a job (grad student) that had me always near a wired computer. So I searched, and stumbled upon Todoist.

Todoist

Visual Clarity

Todoist is not a GTD app in the sense that it's not centered around GTD. I like this because I find that other GTD-centric apps are way to elaborate and overstructured. David's system becomes this huge rigid pipeline that every brain fart you may have is forced to pass through. What context does this belong to? Should I do it or delegate it? Defer it? Is this a next action, or merely an action? So you have to click through tabs and stars and pages and bubbles just to create one small action. Ugghh! Please. What an over complication. Todoist is clean. It's a got a list of projects on the side and your list of items in the middle. To see items from a particular project, click on that project and they appear. All of them. Click the box next to an item and it turns grey and gets striked-out. There are no ads, no ugly colors, no obtrusive logos, just your list of items. For me, this allows for productivity.

Creating and reordering items

Creating items requires hitting the "a" key. That's right, from the keyboard. Todoist is pretty good at providing keyboard shortcuts. I say pretty good because it could be better but it also better than a lot of other programs. The caveat in using "a" to create an item is that you have to be in the project list you want to create the item under. But I find that often when I want to create items is when I'm checking off items in a current project list anyway. So for example if I'm managing a certain project and its actions, I could go through the following procedure in lightening speed: check-off, check-off, modify, hit enter, hit "a", type item, hit enter. And two items have been checked off, one modified, and one added. Literally under 30 seconds. Modifying can be done by just clicking anywhere in the item's text.

Reordering is super easy too. To reorder the items list hit "r" and drag them to whatever order you want. To reorder the projects list, hit "shift+r" and drag them. I find this important. Just because I created a certain item today it doesn't mean that should go at the top, or the bottom, or the middle, or in alphabetical order. I want to order them whichever way I please. Easily. I found the lack of this feature annoying in both Outlook and Gmail.

Subprojects

You can create hierarchies or subprojects faster than you can blink. Simply typing Ctrl+left arrow lets you indent a certain item over one tab so you can have one subproject name and a whole bunch of little actions associated with it that are tabbed over. This works for your list of items and for your list of projects as you notice in my screenshot above. Extremely handy little feature.

Notes

Typing an asterisk at the start of any line makes that line not have a checkbox, it's simply a little line of text. This is perfect for jotting down little notes, adding urls, etc. to a task or at the top for that project.

Contexts

I'll be honest, contexts are not that important to me. Being a grad student, I find that most of next actions belong to a small group of contexts, and those contexts are often physically close to each other and accessible every day. Projects, on the other hand are vital since I'm always balancing a lot and on a given day have to make significant progress on any given project due to outside pressures (my advisor). In that regard, "cranking" through a given context list and getting something done in that context for a variety of projects is not a luxury I have. But, if I want to, I can in Todoist. Contexts are created as little unobtrusive but functional Gmail-style labels. And the best part is, when I'm creating an item, I don't have to take some elaborate number of steps to create the contexts either, I just append my item text with @home. That's it, the @ sign in the text creates contexts. Beautiful. If I do feel like seeing all of my @computer contexts, for example, at one time, I just type in @computer in the search box and there they are.

Gmail Integration

There is a great firefox plugin that, once installed, puts a little "Add to Todoist" link at the bottom of every Gmail conversation, which makes turning mail into action items a one click endeavor.

Premium Perks

As with basically all online GTD apps, there is a premium subscription ($3/month) that you can purchase and it comes with perks like reminders, sms reminders, etc. I haven't found it necessary so I haven't bothered. Putting a date on a task and having it show up on that date as all the tickling I need since I use Todoist every day.

Cons/Wishes

I wish they had more keyboard shortcuts. Some things still require mousing and that seems unnecessary. Also, I wish the search bar let you search for terms, not just by date. I suppose I don't really need this since I don't have a million next actions, but sometimes it could be useful. I wish editing a project were bit easier. Why can't I double click and edit.

Overall Todoist is a very solid, highly recommended, online GTD app.

Dan Kennedy - No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs - Review

2007-05-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

First things first, by the end of this post you should know why I haven't posted in so long.
Second things second, yes, I know no one cares when I post and no one reads this blog anyways.

The following is my (very brief) review of the book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy: I like it.

Key aspects that stood out about this book:

Finally a time management book that doesn't try to sell you a sensational too good to be true story.
He emphasizes two key things: 1. No interruptions 2. Discipline.
When he doesn't know something he admits it. For example, when talking about working from home he admits that some say this puts work on your mind more and he admits that maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, he doesn't know.
He walks the walk.

Elaboration:

Interruptions - Dan Kennedy is absolutely militant about his time. He is also old skool. No cell phone, no email. Yup. Landline? He answers that "live" only an hour or two a week. He works at his home office, by himself, no interruptions. So how in the world does he get in touch with anyone ever? Fax. Yup. He loves the fax and has everything faxed to him. He is a self-employed marketing expert/writer/business consultant/speaker etc. His "clients" get in touch with him almost exclusively through fax. So the question begs to be asked WHY ONLY FAX?! Let me step aside and let him answer that:
"With each easier, faster means of communicating, the quantity of dumb, junk communication has multiplied. Because sending an email is so easy and doesn't even require the labor of walking over to the fax machine, people send emails any time they have a brain fart...Again, you may or may not want or need to mirror me. But if you're like many people, and you jump up every time the fax machine beeps, you can't possible be productive....If you're checking your email constantly, compulsively, or worse, if you're responding to messages as they arrive -- you're headed for an early grave...For somebody in an office, I think a good system is to take the hour after lunch to look at the morning's faxes, emails, and phone calls, deal ONLY with those that are genuinely urgent, and set the others aside."
No B.S.
What I like most is the fact that it applies maybe 10 fold to those of us (myself included, or I like to think not anymore) that have elaborate GTD systems to deal with incoming anything and we are so enamored with our fancy system that we do jump anytime anything beeps because we want to use the system. Get away from that, get very far away from that. Some people say, oh, that only happens at the beginning pretty soon you don't even realize you're using it. Nope. Not in my experience, and not from what I've read on the countless productivity blogs in Web 2.0 land. Feeling productive is fun. Being productive is hard. That's the simple truth and Dan Kennedy urges us to discipline ourselves to let the latter statement be true in our lives. I applaud this.
Discipline - Chapter 5 is devoted to discipline and titled "The Magic Power that Makes You Unstoppable". Here he tells the story of a super-disciplined jockey and his own story of discipline. When's the last time you read a time management piece that told you straight up BE DISCIPLINED. It's not the comforting too-good-to-be-true candy we want to hear. But it's reality. If we could read GTD once and actually have our productivity come "stress-free" there wouldn't be a world of people online blogging their heads off about this stuff, finding new tools, every few months saying they "finally got the right one" (again, myself included). Dan Kennedy has one assistant, in an office in another state, that takes his faxes, mail, phone, and any other input he receives, sorts through it, and gives him only the most urgent pieces of communication. He reads through this stack only when he wants, not when it arrives. We may not all have secretaries or assistants, but we should let our productivity systems be our secretaries and filter useless crap away from us, not the other way around (deal with useless inputs because we've created a system to deal with them). We should have the discipline to start the day off not checking email, and starting off on our most important and most critical tasks and projects, not the ones on our GTD next actions list that are the quickest, most fun, and easiest to check off.

I love it. The advice is real. GTD simplicity once again. So that's why I haven't posted in a while. The post was on my next-actions list, it just wasn't high priority.

GTD "Today folder or list"

2007-04-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting un-GTD GTD recommendation on an IT management website (via the great ultimate gtd index). The article is titled "Getting Things Done in 60 seconds" and the author teaches a few (60 seconds worth) of GTD fundamentals and if you like them you have to promise to buy the book and delve into it; seems like a nice way to intro into GTD for those that may be more timid.

Most of the tips are pretty nice and pretty classic, but the last one caught my attention especially because it's rather un-GTD and it's related to a topic that I've been alluding to in recent posts. He mentions setting up a "Today" folder with next actions that you want to get done today:

7. Create a "today" folder or list.
This part deviates totally from GTD, but works great for me. I have a short list of things I have to complete every day (daily tasks like "review week in calendar" and "clean desk"). I add to that list the most urgent and/or important items as I'm going through my inbox and task-category folders, I grab items I really want to complete today, and add them to my list. Then I go through that list slavishly -- doing exactly what it tells me to do, in the order it tells me. You can also do this with task-files in a folder or in an Outlook Task folder labeled "Today."

Sounds sinful doesn't it. This is similar to how I put some Alan Lakein into my next actions list by adding some A1, A2 color coding capabilities. This idea works for me and I like it because it embraces the fact that there are priorities.

Are all open loops really created equal?

2007-04-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm going to put my question-GTD hat on again.

One premise of GTD is that as far as your mind goes, all open loops are created equal. That is, no matter the time, place, or importance, your mind will focus on an open loop as though it is important, and this is the time and place. Evidently, your mind can't distinguish between loops that it should think about and those that it shouldn't.

Now, is that really true? My experience and vigilant mental observation over the past month has led me to believe that it's not. Big, nasty tasks take up way more mental and emotional energy than little ones. Evidence:

I simply do not stay up at night wondering whether I will remember to get the butter at the grocery store.
I do not keep thinking about when I'm gonna get the oil changed in my car when I should be paying attention to the conversation I'm having with my friend.
I do not lose focus on large, important tasks because I'm thinking about posting the birthday card on time to my cousin.

I do however, have trouble sleeping if the enormous monster of a task is looming over my head because I didn't get to it because I was too busy tweaking my system, finishing little errand tasks, and doing whatever else I do to procrastinate. This is not to say that you shouldn't keep your capture system pervasive. Little tasks do come up, and yes, they come up at inappropriate times. So a quick, easy, well-reviewed capture system is necessary so that when you've finally gotten to the big nasty task and "get-butter" gets in the way, you can quickly capture it and get back to work within a 10-30 seconds. And that's precisely the point of the capture system, to not give them more than the 30 seconds they're worth. But should you spend time tweaking your processing system for these little tasks? Browsing the internet for hours on the best way to combine lightweight moleskins with tiny pens to capture any last morsel of thought that may come through your head? No. Simply no. Don't waste your time. You know what the important tasks are and your list is overcrowded as it is. Get to doing!

As I previously discussed in Priorities and Getting Things Done, big, large priority tasks are what you should focus on because those are the tasks that get you ahead in your field and get you closer to your higher altitude goals. Here, I want to reassure you that you aren't going against all that is holy in GTD and letting your mind get clogged up with open loops because you're letting some of the little tasks slip in place of the big ones. In my experience, the little tasks barely take up as much space in your head as the big ones do, so why give them more than the 30 seconds they're worth?

Grad School and Fitness - Finding the Time to Stay Healthy

2007-04-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ah grad school. A time for us to transform from immature undergrads to knowledgeable adults. Unfortunately many of us are undergoing another transformation as well. Yes, I'm talking about our bodies. The hours, days, weeks, and years of sitting in chairs and staring at screens, papers, dials and knobs can take a toll when not combined with a proactive plan to keep your body healthy, and should the mood strike you perhaps even transform its shape back or maybe for the first time forward to that which you've always desired. It is possible and it does not require immense amounts of time. Grad school and fitness are compatible.

My first year of grad school was my fitness hayday. That's the year that all I read and learned was finally put up to disciplined practice. I am a skinny boy, so my fitness goals were to gain weight (of course in the form of lean muscle) and I managed to gain over 20 pounds in that first year and consider it a huge success.

Then came my second year, which is where I am now. I got a new adviser (newbie) which came with a massive swing in workload, I studied for and took a preliminary examination, and I was also just plain overconfident as a result of my first year of success, and this has made this year, so far, a fitness failure. My appetite continued from the first year of massive eating and exercise, but the exercise part did not, and so in addition to the wonderful muscle mass I gained came a nice layer of bodyfat. Undesirable.

And so I begin my second phase of grad school fitness success keeping the following principles in mind:

I am bold about my goals and am not merely looking to "maintain" anything, but rather to build and shape my body to a condition that I desire. If I miss those stars, I'll at least end up at the top of the mountain.
I insist on staying absolutely optimistic in regards to my fitness goals (hence the reference to "grad school fitness success" above). I don't have the time and energy for self-deprecation and negativity.
I insist on ensuring that this is a priority and not wasting my time by working out and eating inconsistently. In my experience and the experience of every other single person I've heard from or read about that has achieved their fitness goals, consistency is the single deciding factor between success and failure.
I insist on staying educated about health and fitness. I have learned that more than 50% of the game is nutrition and continue to read about nutrition and healthy eating habits.

I'm more than aware that the radical "swing" in workload from my first year requires an appropriate response from my end in order to ensure that I abide by point 3 above. I'm also aware that point 3 is easily the single biggest excuse for the average person who would like to workout more and would like to be healthier but who is not doing either. The worst psychological thing you can do to yourself in regards to fitness is have the mental weight of "being on a fitness plan" but "not finding the time" to do it and breaking consistency and realizing after months or even years that you've spent countless hours in the gym or elsewhere and have little to show for it. You have to be consistent. There's no other choice. I love the analogy of working out to riding a bike uphill. If you keep pedaling, although at times it can be tiring and take a while, you will reach your goal. But if you stop pedaling you don't just stay where you are, you start rolling back down, undoing your earlier effort. Talk about a time-waster!

My Workout Schedule

So, I have the following workout schedule for this semester. I split my workouts into 4 regions: legs, chest, back, arms. Had I been trying to lose weight, my workout would be different, specifically, cardio would be added either as extra days or added on to certain other days. Try the Bodybuilding.com Forums for more discussion. My schedule is: Sunday (1 hour): Legs, Wednesday 6:30-7:30am: Chest, Friday 6:30-7:30am: Back, Saturday (1 hour): Arms. I have never tried the early morning workout schedule in fear that I would never go , but I simply think I have no other choice right now. The weeks simply get too busy. There are too many fires to put out and too many "things that come up." Quite frankly it's disgusting that I can't find the time in the afternoons or evenings to go to the gym, but that is how it has been. Instead of trying to fight with the work monster, I'm going to go behind its back and get my workout in before it rears its ugly head on Wednesdays and Fridays. Also, this has the added benefit of going when the gym is less crowded which means it's more efficient! You'll notice above that this totals only 4 hours of gym time a week. Combined with "gym prep" (i.e. showering, changing, getting there, etc.) it totals somewhere between 6 to 8 hours (working out in the morning helps with this as well since I'm not taking an extra shower or doing too much extra changing/prep as I would be with afternoon or evening workouts). I simply will not stand for not having the time in my week to workout. Even Niel Fiore mentioned that the producing grad students in the study he conducted at UC Berkeley were ones that consistently exercised. I am confident my new schedule will work and will post periodically on how it is going.

Also, soon, I will post on the nutrition aspect of fitness (the most important!). Certainly the workout time is wasted if you eat sporadically or especially do the classic grad student bit of buying 2 to 3 meals a day outside, or worse yet, eating only 2 to 3 meals a day, or even less! Preparing your own meals is essential and feeding your body more than 3 times a day is also essential (regardless of if you want to gain or lose weight). We will discuss how you can fit that in to your busy schedule as well.

Priorities and Getting Things Done

2007-04-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

The overemphasis in the GTD world of priorities being last place in the four-fold criteria for doing is, in my opinion, not going to help you get important things done. Merlin over on 43folders wrote a bit about why priorities are last place, and as sacrilegious as this may sound in the GTD world, I gotta say I don't agree with the idea that priorities are really that unimportant. Furthermore I think it's dangerous to your productivity to keep putting priorities at the bottom of your list of criteria.

First some background for those that may be unaware of the "Four-criteria model for choosing actions in the moment", they are, in order, as follows (p. 192 of GTD):

1. Context
2. Time Available
3. Energy available
4. Priority

The crux of my argument is simply this: Your next actions, like it or not, are on a continuum of importance, making those at the top of the continuum much more important than others at the bottom. If you are constantly in the wrong context, constantly "don't have time", and constantly "don't have energy" (usually a guise for "just don't feel like it") to do next actions related the Lakein "A1" type projects, you may need to organizationally rethink your life at a higher level.

What do I mean by "higher level?" I mean higher than the runway. Yes, I'm using a DA'ism to emphasize the need for priorities. In fact, I would say that whole runway to 50,000 feet concept is precisely about priorities. Now, David of course advocates starting at the runway, which makes sense because you need to first feel like you have some control in day to day activities to clear your head for the higher altitudes. But for most of us, especially geeks, our runways are already well organized. In fact, we often have an elaborate collection, processing, and tracking system, as much as we can automated, gadgets for every step possible, and keyboard shortcuts to accompany all of it.

And that is where the danger lies. In the web GTD community (the only GTD community with which I am familiar) there is so much emphasis on "the cup", the system, the shortcuts, the runway, that when it comes time to doing, it's easy to think that quickly taking care of online bills, re-organizing your shopping list, typing up that blog post you've been meaning to write, or google-mapping the nearest oil change place and checking off any of these actions means your really getting things done. Sure, if you do any medium or low priority task you got something done. You certainly checked off an item from your list and that made you feel good. But the uncomfortable question of "is making sure I don't miss any item on my grocery list every time I got to the store really on my 20,000 ft and above list?" To each his own: If your larger life goals are to be the quickest email-processor, bill-payer, and errand-completer that your friends and family have ever known, then by all means make sure those tasks are completed with the utmost efficiency. But if those are not your main priorities, maybe you can let them slide in place of that large, nasty, 2 or more hour long, thinking-intensive, emotionally heavy, self-worth questioning task that does, whether you like it or not, have more priority than 90% of tasks on your next actions list.

But what about the four-criteria? I think you should have the discipline to make the four criteria work for you rather than being controlled by them. When there are important, high priority, next actions that are key steps in achieving your 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 ft and above goals, you simply cannot let the four criteria get in the way. You need to use the four criteria as a checklist of things that need to be in place in order to complete your high priority items. What do I mean?

I mean get in the right context. If you are constantly talking to colleagues and coworkers and checking off those agenda items, constantly driving around and checking off errands, constantly on the phone and checking off those items, but never at your desk to tackle the big action, you simply have to rework your allocation of time. I firmly believe there is no secret to this besides discipline: stop talking to other people, stop driving around making sure you pick up the nails from the hardware store and the butter at the grocery store in one trip, turn off the phone, and get to your desk.
I mean find the time. No matter how many books you read and how many time-management catch phrases you can spout off, you still have 24 hours in every day like the rest of us. We are all busy and all wish we had more. We don't. The people that are really getting things done are the ones that are allocating these hours to those tasks that they feel are most important and will get them to their goals faster. For grad students, these tasks should be obvious.
I mean find the energy. It's easy to get to work and check off 15 medium to low priority next actions throughout the morning and afternoon only to find yourself alone with the large monster task that you really should have been doing all along at 4pm when you have no energy and maybe not enough time left. Then what happens? Well you clearly don't have the energy: "I need to be 7.0 or higher for this and I've really crept down to about 6.9 right now, so I'll have to pass." So you end up doing more low priority tasks. Know when you have the energy to tackle the high priority items and do everything possible to make sure that time is free. If you never feel like you have enough energy for the high priority items, there are larger issues you need to tackle, perhaps obligations you need to let go.

So what about the contexts? Why don't I just make purely Lakein-esque lists organized solely by priority? Don't be silly. Contexts have their place. When you are driving, it's useful to know where you have oustanding errands. When you are in phone call mode, it's useful to know all the calls you need to make. But for grad students in particular and anyone else whose most typical workday involves going to the same place (a desk) that has a bunch of contexts nearby (@phone @computer @lab @agenda-a-bunch-of-people) priorities have to come into the picture in order to make solid advancements on your most important goals.

Below is a screenshot of my outlook task list, organized by context, but with a "Laiken" field where I can mark a1 and have those tasks highlighted red (thanks to GTDWannabe for the privacy blurring idea).

My Papers Toolbar

2007-03-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

Earlier I typed up a quick rant disguised as a blog post about why you should stop delaying getting EndNote until you have to type your thesis. I did mention, however, that at times it can be convenient to put some, all, or a select few papers in a folder and browse that folder for papers you want.

I do this by implementing the My Papers toolbar. What the hell is that? It's simply a cute way of getting extremely quick access to papers that you want to find "this one thing real fast" in. It's for times when you know what you're looking for, you know who wrote the paper, and you don't want to open up EndNote, find the citation, and click on the "link to pdf". Well, if your papers' location on your harddrive is buried in some folder 8 levels in from My Documents, you might as well open up EndNote evertime right? It's basically the same amount of time and work. But, if your papers are one click away on the taskbar itself, then it's a whole new ballgame. Fortunately Windows XP can do just that for you (I haven't sold my second child for Vista yet, and have no burning desire to do so soon).

You can create a "toolbar" from any folder by dragging that folder to the edge of your desktop. Really. Just find a folder (doesn't have to be on the desktop to begin with) and drag it to the left or right, release, and there's your toolbar. I used that for a while (not for papers but for a Toolbar folder that has shortcuts to places I like to get to often and fast), but it kept getting in the way; it either takes up real estate or gets very annoying if you use the autohide because my mouse seems to reach all ends of the screen often. But I noticed later that if you drag that toolbar from the side to the taskbar, it plops down as a folder with a little double arrow that you can click to see the contents. This is where my Toolbar folder sits now. After a few weeks of a having a My Papers folder in my Toolbar folder, I found myself going to it more than anything else and thought I should give it its own seat on my taskbar, and we've been in love ever since.

When you have more than a screen full of papers, there are nice little scroll arrows it provides, and although I suspected with a lot of papers it would start to slow down, it hasn't. So the possibilities are endless: if you have all or nearly all of your papers in one folder like I do, you can use that; if you are working on a particular paper, you can put all the papers on that subject there; if you just have a few quick reference papers you always want to look up, you can create a folder of those and plop it down there. Personally I like the all-papers route myself, but whatever, its' a free country (unless you're reading this from a not-free country). Regardless, here's to the My Papers toolbar!

Gmail Illegal Attachment Fix

2007-03-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

Recently I've had some problems receiving .exe and .zip (with an .exe file zipped in it) files as attachments with Gmail. It pissed me off for a while because I figure what's the point of the 2 gig goodness when you can't receive space-hogging programs from your friends? Fortunately for me tech-recipes.com has posted a fix. Now, I admit I haven't tried it yet, but it makes sense and sounds simple enough. Any one with comments on this or other Gmail problems/fixes fel free to let me know.

Use EndNote!

2007-03-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

A senior grad student asked me the other day about "acquiring" a copy of EndNote. I was shocked. This guy was within a year of graduating and he was just now asking about EndNote! Unbelievable. When it comes to managing citations, bibliographies, and papers on your hard drive EndNote gets the job done. For some reason (read: money) grad students still hesitate or wait for the big paper or thesis when they can't put it off any longer to consider getting EndNote. Get EndNote now! The student version is totally affordable and your school may even have a discount. Here are four key reasons to get EndNote (or a similar citation/literature organizing software):

If you ever have to write a paper with more than 10 citations, it will be a royal pain in the ass to keep changing them without it.
If you plan on writing a thesis, it will most certainly have more than 10 citations so you're going to need it then anyways, so get it now.
If you have more than 30 papers on your hard drive and need to find a specific paper, EndNote is an absolute beauty. You can search through papers by any criteria (or so it feels) and the search is faster than Gmail searching through your mail. Plus in the recent versions you can "link to pdf" and/or "link to url" so when you find the paper in EndNote, you've found the paper period.
You don't have to manually type in all the paper information. Essentially all large literature databases have a "send to Endnote" option, so you just click on that button when you get to the article and it puts into Endnote for you. It even politely asks you which library you want it in.

I have only now started putting all of my papers into EndNote and implementing point 3 instead of just scrolling by author in my huge folder of papers and not finding what I'm looking for because the paper was in another folder. Although, I must mention, keeping certain papers (or shortcuts to them) in a certain folder for quick browsing can be convenient, but I'll write about that later. So get EndNote, it makes life a lot easier.

GTD Simplicity Reminder Tweak!

2007-03-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

I couldn't do it. I couldn't stay away from Outlook for that long. I liked the Evernote idea, I really did, but I had to let it move back to second place in terms of listing the very next physical actions I have to take on each project. A few things weren't right in the Evernote scheme I mentioned:

The next actions list seems to need to be just that and nothing else, a clean list of actions, without notes and ideas and scratches there to clutter it up. I had trouble getting into the groove because I kept getting distracted by the overall picture, if that makes any sense, and felt I was spending too much time planning and too little time doing.
Using SlickRun to be able to quickly jot down a next action even when Outlook is closed whenever one pops into my head or I'm done with an action is priceless. That again limits time you have to spend fiddling with the system.
Having the next actions list two clicks or an alt+tab and ctrl+4 away was priceless. With Evernote I found myself scrolling and finding and reading other things I scrolled far too often.

BUT, I didn't scrap the Evernote idea completely. There was a key plus to to that idea:

Getting a sequential list of actions (past, present, and future), not arranged by context, for a specific project gives a great overview for that project. Little notes next to actions can be convenient too.

So the Evernote lists are still there, but they are just there when I get stuck on what the next action should be. When that happens I can open up the x-project "action overview" note and there is a (hopefully) crystal clear picture of where the project has gone action by action and (again, hoepfully) arising from that scan comes the idea of where the project should go.

Lastly, such a list is great for when your boss asks "What'd you do on project x this week?" or "Where are we on that?".
"Funny you should ask. Why don't you grab a Snickers, this may take a while..."

A GTD Simplicity Reminder

2007-03-09T18:49:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks back I started to get caught in the trap of focusing on the system instead of focusing on getting things done. In reality, except for David Allen and a select few other people whose job it is to talk about the system and present tweaks for the system, most people are not recognized or rewarded based on how clever or pretty their GTD systems are, but rather on how much they get done. I remembered Merlin's great little podcast titled It's Just a Cup over on 43 folders. He also has perhaps an even more amusing one titled The Perfect Apostrophe with a similar theme. Their memories made me snap out of it...

I decided to simplify the system and focusing on doing and it has been absolutely splendid. I've stopped forcing myself to use my $99 Palm Z22 (but for those that are away from their computers often when they need to look at task list, I still think it's a great affordable item). I've stopped tweaking and customizing my GTD view in Outlook Tasks. I've stopped browsing through Evernote note templates. I've even cut down my productivity blog browsing (sick, I know). I'm also focusing on the more important tasks more, which is a bit contradictory to what David emphasizes in the Do chapter of Getting Things Done, but I'll write about that later. I'm now keeping current work/school related projects and tasks in a single note in Evernote and working off of that solely (again, just for work related tasks, but those are the ones that are messy and need to be viewed as projects and tracked extra carefully; that is, I'll forgive myself if I come back from the grocery store without the dijon). A nice benefit is that I can see all notes I make about the task instantly in a nice big picture. It's been working beautifully and only serves to deepen my simplicity conviction! The Evernote screen shot is below. Projects are blue so i can scan easily, tasks are listed chronologically down the page. The very next task is in bold. Completed tasks get unbolded. That's it. It's awesome. Focus on the doing, forget about the system, chances are what you have works. I bet, then, that your mind will be clearer!

How to Pick a Group -- Part 3

2007-03-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot:

Ask the advisor, grad students in the group, and grad students not in the group what the group's financial situation is.

I don't know how I missed this after my story about being promised money that didn't exist in Part 1, but anyhoo, this can't be stressed enough. It should be complimented with:

Apply for any and all fellowships you qualify for, even if you don't think you stand a chance.

Grad school can drain a lot out of you even when your finances are taken care of. You can imagine what it does when you're working your arse off and aren't being paid what you were promised or are being forced to teach semester after semester. You want to talk about productivity -- start by not teaching too many classes.

Making sure the group is financially sound is also a key aspect of doing good (and fast) research. Believe it or not, science is, in fact, impeded or straight blocked by a lack of funds. This may sound like an obvious statement, and in some respects it is, but in some groups it means very very basic equipment can't be purchased for months since they are living grant to grant. This happened in my last group and it isn't pretty. Take care of the cash. Get stuff done.

How to Pick a Group - Part 2

2007-02-27T10:15:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 of How to Pick a Group I described my first graduate adviser. In this part, I'll describe my second and current graduate adviser and research group.

Newbie is an apt name for him because he is not only my new adviser, he's a brand new professor. Some graduate students cringe when I even mention this and say that's my first mistake: joining a brand new, not tenured adviser. Regardless, let me continue. Newbie is hardcore. He was a stellar 70 hours a week graduate student and he's still a 70 hours a week professor. He's hands on. He comes into the lab or our offices whenever he's bored of what he's doing or stuck on writing grants, or whatever, and walks around and asks us what we're doing and talks about whatever is on his mind. When I first talked to him about joining his group, I tried to ask all the right questions (btw, the question to ask grad students in Part 1 are not necessarily questions you would ask professors). Specifically, I asked him what his management style was (I was looking for hands on but, of course, not overbearing), I asked him if he would mandate certain work hours (I had heard he worked crazy hours when he was a student), I told him my issues with the first adviser (diplomatically of course). He said he would be hands on, but would treat all students with respect - "not like slaves", he would not expect us to work certain hours - "people work on their own schedule" but that he would evaluate our performance on a task or output basis, and he told me that he would be very different from my previous adviser. "Excellent!" I thought.

So how has it been? Well this one is not cut-and-dry, it's been somewhere between excellent and terrible. Or rather, I should say, it oscillates between the two. The excellent part is that he is, indeed, hands on. He is more enthusiastic about my research project than even I am at times. That's awesome. He is incredibly accessible and helpful. There are only a couple other students in our group, so we really get to take advantage of this attention which won't last forever. The terrible part is that he can be overbearing and overly demanding. Specifically, the "people work on their own schedule" mantra slowly morphed, over the course of a few months, to "If you don't get all your tasks done by the end of the week, you have to work as many hours a week as I do. Last week I worked 70 hours. Keep that in mind." What are these tasks? They are research tasks he assigns us at the start of each week. That idea is awesome. It's like your adviser is helping you do a GTD weekly review. Now in practice, the tasks are rarely, if ever, a set that you can get done in a week. In your own GTD system, that's fine, that's why you have a next actions list, you just do them as soon as you can. With the above rule, however, it means you are expected to work 70 hours that week. 70 hours when you're being that kid and telling your friends how much you've worked is one thing. 70 hours when your adviser demands it is another thing. And 70 hours when your adviser specifically told you he wouldn't demand hours is out of control.

So what did we do? We went and talked to him (being able to help shape group culture falls in the awesome category by the way). We cited our complaints specifically and within 5 to 10 minutes into the conversation, he eliminated the rule. Now we get the GTD task list, without the crap attached to it. He simply tells us to stop slacking if we start slacking on our tasks. So how much do we actually work now? Probably between 50 to 60 hours a week. But it feels one hell of a lot better because when you have interesting results and you feel energetic, putting in 65-70 hours that week doesn't feel like much, because the next week when it's time to go on a ski trip for the weekend, you can cut it back to 50.

He can still at times be overbearing and do things that make you shake your head like schedule meetings with you that start at 9pm. And still when he comes into the lab on the weekends, he asks if your other labmates are here yet. That's annoying. But he compromised on the main rules, the guidance and help with the research is awesome, and I'm willing to put up with the crap to get the good stuff. Here is my tips summary for newbie (some of these are for when you've already joined, but are important nonetheless.):

Ask your prospective adviser direct questions about management style so that you have some leverage if you need to complain later.
Don't be afraid to tell your adviser you're burning out.
Keep in mind that if other people say that this guy/gal is hardcore, even if they don't seem so in a 5 minute conversation, they probably are.
Tell the adviser what you want from the group.
Ask the grad students about the adviser's management style and compare to the adviser's description. Pay close attention to the differences and try your best to deduce whether the adviser seems in touch with the group or not. Try to find one that is.
Once in the group, communicate communicate communicate early on. This will set the precedent and let both sides know how the other is feeling and what the other wants.

Sound like advice for a marriage? Yeah, that's not a coincidence.

How to Pick a Group - Part 1

2007-02-25T22:53:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year: visiting weekend, website surfing, the sweet smell of springtime flowers, and a huge decision waiting to be made. This is a post for those entering grad school that have the ever-important decision on their plates of picking a graduate adviser.

Let me start by relaying my experience with graduate advisers (I've had 2) and in the process explaining why I'm even bothering to write about this. My two advisers shall be referred to from here on as oldie and newbie.

Oldie was my my adviser for my first year of grad school. He was an older man. He was an older professor. He was established. He had a big group. He was extremely charismatic. His research was on a subject I was absolutely enthralled about. But the most important characteristic of oldie was that he was a negligent. That's right, he was a negligent adviser. He promised to fund me for the entirety of my first year and said directly to me that the long term funding prospects were great. He promised this funding right up to the second semester's start and lo and behold it never arrived. I had to teach. Oldie also didn't guide his grad students at all. He had no motivation. He was old and established. He fell asleep during group seminars. He didn't respond to emails until about the 12th time you emailed him. He was negligent. The research I was so enthralled about started looking worse and worse. He was charismatic, and it turned out he knew how to hype his work like it was goin outta style. New ideas were getting hard to come by and I slowly figured out that the group was being carried by an older graduate student who was just about to graduate. Oldie ended up leaving my school at the end of my second semester leaving about 10 group members high and dry. And so began my experience with newbie.

But we shall save newbie for another day and summarize lessons I feel I learned from my experience with oldie:

Don't pick a school based on wanting to work for one group only.
Choose group culture and advising style over research specifics.
If you can't choose between hands on and hands off, go with hands on.
Ask grad students not in the group of interest if they would join that group. Listen to them.
Ask grad students very direct questions like: "Are you happy here?" "What are the three worst qualities about your adviser/group?" "If you had the choice, what other group would you join?"

In Part 2, I'll discuss newbie and summarize lessons from my (ongoing) experience with him. Then in subsequent parts I'll expand on things I think should be stressed. In the meantime I want to emphasize the importance of visiting weekend and stress the last two bullets above. You only have a couple of days to be there, talk to them, and feel what it's like. Take advantage of it!

Also, all of these points are my opinions based on some hard knock experience. Your experiences may be different. Or they may not. Let me know what you think.

Tips and Tricks Text File

2007-02-22T20:19:00.000-08:00

We've all had the experience of going back to an old, complicated project only to remember that you forgot all the little tips, tricks, and shortcuts you learned when working on it the first time. It sucks because you have to relearn it with that icky feeling of knowing that you've done it before but for the life of you can't remember how you got around these roadblocks. Concrete examples range from getting that graphing program to make your plots just right, formatting a paper for that one journal, a super useful keyboard shortcut, etc.

Those are the tips and tricks you wish you remembered. Sometimes for me, I also wish I could have a refresher course on the background of the project and the details that were sorted out at towards the end of it. This is especially useful when a paper comes back with requested revisions and you've been totally preoccupied with other projects that you haven't thought about the specifics in a while.

I've found that a beautifully simple solution is to put one text file in the main folder of that project titled tips and tricks. In it, while working on the project, you can jot down anything and everything you know you will want to know later, but won't remember: "Don't just press ctrl+c to copy the graph to right size, go to Edit -> Copy Graph -> Fix size -> Minimize white space to have it come out perfectly in Word."

I'm a big fan of GTD simplicity and this one embodies that spirit. It's one text file, with an obvious name, put in the same place (main folder) for every project and it stores all your goodies. It's not tucked away in the caves of old Outlook tasks, buried in a huge pile of Outlook notes, or buried in the endless ream of Evernote (although I'll concede that Evernote is something that can work if you're super good at picking the right keywords or are efficient at sorting through categories), or worse yet, buried in the endless caves of your mind. It's not fancy and for me, that's precisely why it works so well. I mean, it's in the project's main folder! Even if you're not looking for it, you can't help but read it when you open that folder, which can often lead you to so beautifully realize that there was, indeed, something in there you're glad you now remember.

Don't be THAT Kid

2007-02-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

All of us are busy. Everyone knows the famous grad student tag-line of being "overworked and underpaid". We all would like to spend more time exercising, playing with friends, with loved ones, cooking for ourselves, eating better, and of course, we would all like more sleep. What does this mean? Well, the next time you get the urge to tell others about "how busy" you are, and how you "haven't slept in years" and how you "never do anything but work" resist it at all costs. It's annoying. You're only hurting your chances of actually having friends if/when things clear up for you. Of course, this applies -- as most things I say -- to not just grad students but everyone. Your co-workers are busy, your clients are busy, your phone guy is busy, the bank teller is busy, your subordinates are busy, we're all busy. So there is no need, I repeat, no need to tell us how busy you are.

The Extended 2-Minute Rule

2007-02-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

It’s 6:02pm and I’m getting ready to pack up my stuff and make it to the ever-punctual public transit bus that arrives at 6:08pm outside of my building. I wiggle the mouse to see past my screen saver and, unfortunately, I see my outlook inbox. In it is an email from my advisor asking me to do a task that I estimate will take me between 15 to 20 minutes. Well, it’s my advisor, so the email text includes the phrase “…and send to me ASAP.” An email sent at 6pm from my advisor that asks for something to be done ASAP doesn’t mean, “send this to me by tomorrow.” It means it better be in his inbox in a few hours. I’m hungry, and at this point, I have a choice: I can flag this email and put it into my system, or I can do it now, miss the 6:00 bus, and take the 6:30.

What did I do? I chose the latter. I realized that this task had mental and emotional weight associated with it: it was from my advisor, he asked me to do it ASAP, I knew the more I waited the more he’d get agitated, and most importantly, I knew that putting this task into my system would not get it out of my head because of those reasons. So I effectively extended the 2-minute rule to the 30-minute rule. I had 30 minutes before the next bus, and a task that I knew I would worry about even if I put it in my system would be done if it took less than 30 minutes.

The point of the 2-minute rule is to not track tasks that don’t take that long to do anyways. David Allen says he picked 2 minutes because at that point it begins to take more work to track it through the system than to do it immediately. But if a task that will take longer than 2 minutes to complete won’t get out of your head even if you file it, do it as soon as you can, and you’ve effectively reduced the mental energy you spend on it by…a lot. That’s the point of GTD anyways; to get that shiznit off your mind. This rule is not only useful for grad students with demanding advisors, but workers with demanding bosses, and people with demanding lives. Any time you are not actively interrupting focused work on another task, extending the 2-minute rule on mentally or emotionally heavy tasks is worth it. How do you know if a task qualifies for an extension? If you get any shred of the “I’d rather chew glass than deal with this” feeling, it qualifies. Do it now, don’t waste your life thinking about it.

Digital Camera Wonders

2007-02-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

Academic productivity has a nice post about using your digital camera as a photocopier. This can work in certain situations where actually taking parts of a book/magazine to a photocopier is inconvenient, or when you don't want to fork over the buck or two for a bunch of pages, or (and I sympathize with this one) when you don't want to go through the hassle of dealing with your school's ridiculously inconvenient copy card system: "Oh no no, you can't add money to your card on this machine, you can only buy a new card, which costs an additional dollar for the card itself. The machine you're looking for is in the main library." "You've got to be kidding me."

However, many grad students have easy access to the copy machine in their department or lab area, in that case, making copies of things is super easy. But, this article reminded me of another great use of a digital camera taught to me by none other than my adviser, which is to take pictures of lab setups. Your own lab setup, perhaps, but also other people's lab setups, like when you visit a colleague's lab that has a similar setup for doing blah blah blah and you want to replicate some components, it's a pain in the hoo-ha to keep forgetting and asking and visiting and forgetting again. The quick fix is to just take a picture or two or three. I've also found this useful when moving from apartment to apartment and having to take apart and reassemble tricky desks or other furniture (of course if you're a compulsive manual keeper this is unnecessary, but for the rest of us...) -- one or two pictures makes it a heck of a lot easier.

My Views on Productivity

2007-02-07T23:20:00.000-08:00

Let me start of by declaring this outright: my goal in personal productivity is not to minimize the amount of time I spend “goofing-off” it’s to maximize the amount of time I spend in the focused, imaginative, stress-free “flow state”. I spent some time walking the first path and it just made me tired, bitter, and sick. But, now, changing the way I view productivity has made life absolutely splendid.

The Now Habit

In the introduction to Niel Fiore’s book The Now Habit, he mentions the various professional achievements he was able to attain while working no more than 20 “quality” hours a week. A full time practice coaching clients and organizations and writing articles for various journals in twenty hours a week? For the vast majority of knowledge workers, it sounds impossible, but special attention should be placed on his italicized use of the word quality. He then dedicates entire chapter on entering the flow state when you’re working on your projects, essentially defining “quality hours”.

And of course, any grad student that has read that book can’t forget Fiore’s study on procrastinating PhD students versus producing PhD students. The first group took anywhere from 3-19 years to complete their dissertation (I want to meet the 19-year one and shake their hand, maybe give them a hug). The producers on the other hand took less than 3 years. The characteristic differences between the two groups were:

Producers “were dedicated and committed to their leisure time.”

Producers “had to swim, run, or dance almost every day.”

Producers “had to be with friends for dinner several nights a week.”

Producers “didn’t see their work as depriving them of anything… working intensely and playing intensely went hand in hand.”

Producers “were living now – not waiting to begin living when their work was completed.”

Dr. Fiore emphasizes the importance of these extracurricular activities because they take your mind off of your work. Then, when you’re working, you’re more relaxed, you’re not burned out, and you're more easily able to enter the flow state.

Being a Rockstar

My view of increasing productivity is not about finding a way to do “useful” work all the time, it’s not about cutting all “useless” or “unproductive” tasks from your schedule, it’s about maximizing concentration and focus when you are working. Why? Well for one, it makes work stress-free. But more importantly the outputs of knowledge-work, academic work, and creative work are not linearly related to the time put in. As knowledge-workers, it’s not the loads and loads of work you output that count, it’s the few genius ideas that arrive unexpectedly but make a grand entrance when they get there that make you feel like an absolute rockstar. In my experience, and from my reading of others’ experiences, the best ideas, the genius ideas, the artistic ideas, don’t happen from just cranking widgets for long hours, they happen when your mind is clear. This is how I read Getting Things Done and The Now Habit, and this is the productivity that I strive for.

Technorati

2007-02-07T09:46:00.000-08:00

Gotta make sure I'm searcheable. This is a link to my Technorati profile to activate my account.

Technorati Profile

Welcome to Grad Hacker

2007-02-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

This is it, I'm kicking off the project I've been sitting on for a while: A lifehacking blog for grad students, undergraduate students, high school, pre-school, 30-somethings, 40-somethings, CEOs, and everyone else. But primarily for the first category. Why am I adding yet another blog to the loads of other lifehacking/productivity sites out there? Why not?! The glory of the internet is that anyone and everyone can give their 2 cents on whatever topic they choose, and since we're not limited to channels, stations, front pages, and covers, people can read whatever they want (yeah, the internet has marketing too, but you get the idea). Also, I noticed with all the lifehacking and GTDing out in the blogosphere, I haven't found much specifically tailored to students (due credit given below).

The Name

Grad Hacker is my tribute to lifehackers and the lifehacking world in general. Let me give my shoutouts in the order in which they entered my life: 1. Getting Things Done - David Allen. As a quick type of "GTD" in Google or Google Blog Search will show you, this book has changed many people's work and personal lives, or at least how they handle it. I'm no exception. 2. 43folders - Merlin Mann. This was the site that got me hooked to the internet GTD world. I'm sure I'll be linking to it and praising many of Merlin's articles in the future. Mac based. 3. davidseah - David Seah. This guy creates some of the coolest looking productivity hacks I've seen. David also posts really honest, refreshing blurbs about his personal battles with procrastination and getting things done. Great site. 4. GTDWannabe. This is perhaps the least known of all the sites that I visit regularly. A fellow grad student (what what)! I should mention she's computer savvy, but that may be an understatement. Many of the computer productivity tricks I know came from her blog. Windows based. 5. Lifehacker.com. This is the most recent find of mine and oh what a find (yeah, I don't know how I missed it either). The name of my blog, if nothing else, is a tribute to this site. A mammoth of a productivity site, I check this religiously. In my opinion, lifehacker's specialty is again in tech, but it's got stories ranging all the way to car repair. Windows and Mac friendly.

The Mission

So as I've 'wasted' time on the internet looking through the lifehacking literature, I've over and over again said to myself "oh, this is a perfect tip for a grad student". So, I started to keep a list of blog post ideas to see whether I had enough to start a blog on hacking your way through grad school. Inevitably the list got long, so this is why I'm doing it. Also, to be upfront, grad school is hard. I don't just mean intellectually or academically hard, presumably if you're in grad school you should enjoy that aspect, but it's hard on your life. Grad school sometimes has a way of draining every last ounce of fun and enjoyment from you: Many things have the possibility of sucking. Your advisor can suck, your group members can suck, your department can suck, your social life can suck, your health can suck. So grad hacks can extend to all these domains, beyond technology, where a lot of lifehacking sites focus. I'll try and blog about all these things. Lastly, I should mention that grad school and life can also be a kickin' good time. Hacks can not only make the bad times less bad, but the good times more fun. I'll blog about this too.