Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

One of my favorite tools while studying, when I’m not in the mood for music, is a website called iSerenity. You may have noticed it in my link list.

It’s a simple little website that plays white noise, or as they put it “ambient sound environments.” It comes with a pleasant little slideshow as well, but generally I just put my headphones on and begin my work in ignorant bliss of the chaos around me.

You may have noticed things being a little sparse around here Tuesday.  I try for at least one meaty post a day, and Tuesday just didn’t happen.

Well, there’s a reason.  I managed to temporarily kill (perhaps stun is a better word) my computer.  I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say, I tried to install a certain beta piece of software and it went poorly.

Luckily, since I knew I was doing something risky I backed a few things up ahead of time, but generally speaking, I didn’t need to do that much.  Part of this was because of the steps I use to create a consistent workspace also work to backup my data.  But not everyone needs a consistent workspace as they may only have one computer, and besides - there is some data that simply doesn’t lend itself well to being synced all that easily.

There’s a few obvious things we should consider first.  First, it is of some importance that you the files you need backed up seperate from those that don’t.  What I mean by this is you don’t need to back up your copy of Firefox, but you may want your last term paper.  I generally follow Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani’s advice, with a few modifications to suit me.  I suggest you follow suite.  Mac users think of “My Documents” as your home directory for these purposes.

The most obvious thing to do, and perhaps best, is simply to write these directories (once organized) to a DVD at regular intervals.  However, I know I find this takes way to much time and I have too many random DVD and CD’s lying around as is.

Secondly, you could also make use of an external drive of some variety - thumbdrives are great for this, though I prefer one giant external drive to accommodate everything (music, media, etc) as most thumbdrives do not have that much storage space.   In this situation, I’m simply making sure I always have at least two copies of everything.  If my computer hard drive dies, I’m covered, and if the external goes down, I’m also in the clear.  The trick here is you generally want to keep things syncing, and not copying things over and over again.  Also, one tends to forget regular backups and an automated system works best here.

Thirdly, there is offsite backup.  Personally, I think this is a must for certain sorts of files.  Keeping your music collection in such a way is a bit unwieldy, but your documents and important files and pictures can certainly be maintained that way.  The easiest way to do this is to setup a WebDAV drive and whatever software you’re using to sync your external drive with, you use with this as well.  A WebDAV drive is essentially storage space somewhere else that on your computer works just like another drive.  If you’re a .Mac user, it’s pretty much just like your iDisk (and if you’re a mac user, you really don’t need a WebDav drive if you have iDisk.)  If you don’t have  WebDAV drive or access to it, I’d suggest DreamHost.

Now, Dreamhost gets a lot of (well deserved) flack but generally for the limited purpose of a large, almost always up, WebDAV drive, I find it works well enough.  For the storage space and price, it’s pretty damn good (and if you use SCHOLASTICIUS as you’re promo code you’ll save about 20 bucks off the monthly price and get a free domain name).  Honestly, the only problem I ever had was getting my account setup as they took quite a long time to get it up and running compared to other services I’ve used.  And I know it sounds arcane, but setting up a WebDAV drive on both Mac and Windows machines is incredibly easy.

 Setting up a WebDAV drive (Windows)

 Setting up a WebDAV drive (Mac)

These issues are rather in depth here, and I believe, somewhat outside my purvue.  Rather, I’d prefer to point you towards some excellent articles about it.

Automatic Backups (Windows) - Lifehacker

Automatic Backups (Mac) - Lifehacker

Long story short, backup.  Personally, I prefer a mix of online and external backup.  You can never be too safe, but you can always be sorry.

So today’s special treat is a guest post from Calvin Newport, from Study Hacks and author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win At College. Hopefully this is the first of many guest bloggers, and Cal is certainly welcome back anytime.
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If David Allen — productivity guru and creator of Getting Things Done — spent a week following students on a college campus, he would likely have a heart attack. To be fair, some college students are just plain idiots (evidence: collegehumor.com), and we can’t be held responsible for their antics. But even if we constrained Mr. Allen to only follow those undergrads whom most of us would consider “organized” — they plan their day, keep a calendar, maintain a faithful to-do list — he still would suffer distress.

The culprit: the word “study.”

“Study” is an ambiguous word. In the lingo of Mr.Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), it’s a Project Verb. It describes an overall goal (to prepare for a test), but does not capture the actual Next Physical Actions that need to be done to accomplish this goal. One of the keys to GTD (as captured here) is to always schedule specific, concrete, next actions — not ambiguous projects.

When faced with a project, such as “Plan Spring Break,” the urge to procrastinate is overwhelming. This isn’t an action we can do, it’s a goal that’s going to require many actions. If, instead, we put down a physical action, such as “look-up cost of plane tickets to Cabo in April,” well, that’s much more reasonable. I know exactly how to do it. How long it will take. And when it will be over.

Students, however, tend to ignore this distinction when planning school work. The project verb “study” is used all the time. We say:

• “I have to get some serious studying done tonight.“
• “I’m headed to the library to study.“
• “My plan is to use all day Sunday to study for my history exam.“

This leads to two major problems:

1. More procrastination. Studying is so vague, and amorphous, and large, and time-consuming, that you will do whatever is in our power to delay starting.
2. Less Useful Work. Because the word is ambiguous, so to becomes your work. When you think of studying only as a generic task, requiring lots of hours, you are more likely to fall into the trap of pseudo-work — where long hours and fatigue trick you into feeling like you are being productive; even though your actual work might be woefully inefficient. As we have discussed before (here and here), simply putting in the hours doesn’t automatically give you results. It matters what you do, not just how long.

The solution for students is the same recommended by Mr. Allen. Be specific. Banish the word “study” from your vocabulary. It’s meaningless. Talk in terms of the specific physical actions you plan to do to prepare for a test. For example:

1. Attempt to answer the questions from the first three problem sets.
2. Review notes from first four weeks, type up related study guide
   questions.
3. Make three separate runs through date flashcards for art history exam.

When you deal with specific actions you gain two immediate benefits. First, your urge to procrastinate dies down. No longer are you talking about a large, painful, vague task. Instead, you’re planning small, specific actions, with clear endpoints; easily slipped into the many pockets of free time that line your morning and afternoon. Second, you stop wasting time. When you tackle a specific action, you get in quick, get it done, and get out. When you sit down to spend the whole night “studying,” you are more likely to be inefficient, wander over your notes, let your attention wander, and, in general, tire yourself out needlessly.

The key to performing well academically without becoming a loser is learning to eliminate stupid inefficiencies wherever possible. Banishing the word “study” from your lexicon is one of the easiest steps you can take toward this goal. A small change that yield significant improvement.

Related articles from
Study Hacks:

• Straight-A Gospels: Pseudo-Work Doesn’t Equal Work
• Straight-A Gospels: Studying is a Technical Skill
• Why Most Students Don’t Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking
• Monday Master Class: Three Trivial Study Habits that Provide Significant Results
• The Vital Five: A Crash Course for Turning Around Poor Academic Performance

Cal’s post about his irrational anger towards the new Firefox Campus Edition at StudyHacks got me thinking. We mentioned Campus Edition ourselves briefly (I don’t believe it deserves further attention than that, really.) But I really don’t feel Cal’s anger is really irrational, from a productivity perspective this small little package is just pathetic. I differ on his take on Zotero (I find it to be an excellent extension) but StumbleUpon and FoxyTunes? Really? I mean, they are both good - but neither particularly good for a productive student.

FoxyTunes is handy, but… it’s hardly all that necessary. Who doesn’t have an iPod? And StumbleUpon is second to Facebook and YouTube as giant distractions, making it easier to use it probably isn’t the best help for students.

But, still… the browser has, in many ways, become a sort of desktop for many of us. There’s no reason it should just be a browser when you can utilize it for so much more. It can be a productivity boon.

So, let’s investigate just how.

Let’s break down what students use a browser for qua students.

1. Research
2. Communication
3. Data Storage and Retrieval

And we have a fourth category, let’s simply call it “Things you should have.”

Also, it should be known, we’re going to be keeping a KISS attitude here. Nothing complicated or requiring much in the way of setup.

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