On GearFire, I write about productivity and time management. If the adage “time is money” is true, then students need to manage their money too. Enter ClearCheckbook, a free Web 2.0 application for personal finance.

ClearCheckbook runs under the slogan “money management made easy” and I can wholeheartedly agree having used it for the last six months. Registration is simple, requiring only your e-mail and desired username and password. Upon registration you are presented with a step-by-step walkthrough of how to setup ClearCheckbook.

Step 1: Creating your Accounts

Account Name: Give your account a descriptive name.
Account Type: Is it Cash, Checking, Savings, or a Credit Card?
Active: Are you using it right now? If not, unchecking the box will hide the account until you need again.

Step 2: Manage Your Categories

When creating categories, I recommend subcategories to allow for detailed tracking of your spending habits. This stems from my adoption of the methodology in Your Money or Your Life. It is a personal finance book that comes highly recommended from tier-one bloggers.

Step 3: Manage Your Initial Balances

Amount: Enter the current balance of the account.
Description: Enter something appropriate.
Transaction: Initial balance.
Account: Do an initial balance for each of your accounts.
Category: You don’t need to categorize the initial balance.

After you have finished setup, you can click on the “summary” to go to your home page (seen below).

Step 4: Record your transactions

You are now ready to record your daily transactions. For example, you buy a DVD for $20 in cash.

Splitting a Transaction
Let’s say you order multiple items from Amazon on your credit card. ClearCheckbook let’s you subdivide the main transaction (seen below).

Balancing your Accounts

Forget whether your cheque has cleared? Worried about credit card fraud? ClearCheckbook uses “jiving” to easily balance your books. Each transaction has a checkmark beside it. You can confirm all your transactions by “jiving” them. For example, you go to your online banking and see the Amazon order on your credit card statement. In ClearCheckbook, you click “un-jived” in view options. “Jive” the Amazon order by clicking on the checkmark beside it (seen below).

Paying Off Your Credit Card

Spending Reports
You can view your spending habits by clicking on “reports” at the top of the page. ClearCheckbook provides pie charts and bar charts.

Recurring Notices
ClearCheckbook can send you reminders of payments or automatically create recurring transactions. You can access this by clicking “tools” at the top of the page.

Budgeting/Monthly Spending Limits
Also found under the “tools” page, it is a set-it-and-forget-it way to start budgeting.

Other Tools
ScratchPad: A text page for recording notes (e.g. use it as a wishlist).
Quicken Support: Import and export Quicken files.
Checkbot: Record your transactions using instant messaging or SMS on your cell phone.

If you’ve made it through this post, I’m sure you’ll find that ClearCheckbook is a powerful, intuitive, and free way to manage your finances. I know I have.

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 21 to GTD Mastery is: I have a mobile office space set up, if needed.

As a student, it is definitely needed. Utilizing the time inbetween classes, events, and extracurriculars is crucial. This alone can make or break your academic success. This semester I was fortunate enough to schedule my classes with no gaps. I like hard transitions during my day (e.g. classes to studying to recreation). However, this is a personal preference as many students simply can’t sit in lectures for hours upon hours. In addition, your schedule may simply force large gaps upon you.

Like any other workspace, your mobile office has two requirements: a productive environment and supplies. Since we have already discussed the school supplies you need, this post will focus on choosing an effective study space.

The Golden Rule

When buying real estate, it comes down to location, location, location (says Donald Trump anyways). When choosing a study space, it comes down to isolation, isolation, isolation. This, above all other factors, is the key component for student productivity. The only faces you should see are those in your textbook (not your roommates, not that cute girl/guy, not your favourite celebrity’s poster). The only noise you should hear is what you want to hear (your thoughts, your writing, your keyboard, your music).

Examples

The first location that should come to mind is a library. However, not all libraries satisfy the need for isolation. In my high school, we had a tiny library, roughly the size of two classrooms. There was a set of cubicles in one corner for “quiet study,” but this was rendered useless by the flow of students twenty feet away, without any effective sound barriers. Fortunately, there was a public library accessible in a two-minute walk. There was also a book store in the nearby mall which had a Starbucks. The customer base was non-students and quiet during my study hours. I would sit at a table facing the wall. My final study spot was the upstairs floor of the pizza store. It was only busy during my lunch hour. During my study hours it was a ghost town.

In university, my library has designated “quiet study” floors. In addition, you are allowed to book breakout rooms, complete with stone walls and a door. Perfect silence. Another option is lesser-used buildings on campus.

Other Criteria
While isolation is the key, it isn’t enough. Study spaces should have good lighting. This reduces eye strain and keeps the body from unconsciously moving to a sleep mentality. The study space should be large enough to comfortably layout your study materials. My final requirement is that I’m able to eat at my study space. Being able to refuel your energy is important. If you’re at a library, pick a spot where a librarian can’t see you.

Depending on the individual, it may be necessary to have more than one study space. Using the same study space daily can grow tiresome and actually decrease productivity as you start dreading the “walk to work.” Always be looking for new study spaces because, come crunch time, there may not be a seat for you at the library.

I swear, I’m going to scream at the next person who asks me to borrow a pencil in my accounting class! Okay, maybe not because I’m not that kind of person- and that’s an overreaction. But I distinctly remember the teacher telling us on the second day of class that we were not allowed to use pens in accounting, as we need to be able to erase our mistakes. In fact, she takes marks off our tests and quizzes if we use pens! Yet, every single day, someone who knows that I’m obsessively prepared for class asks me to borrow a pencil, or a pencil sharpener, or o.7mm pencil lead, or (most annoying request of all) my textbook. How do you not bring your textbook to class, really? But airing my grievances is not the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is to give you a checklist of all the physical school supplies you’ll need each and every single day to help you get through your classes and get through them well. Each night bfore bed, or in the morning before leaving, you can give this checklist and your pencil case a quick glance to make sure you’ve got everything you need.

At first, I thought a list like this would be common sense. But then I realized that if it was common sense, why would so many of my classmates be asking me to borrow these things? So here’s what you need. Every. Single. Day!

• Pencils. I think I made myself clear that people get pretty annoyed with you if you’re constantly borrowing theirs. Have multiple pencils. At least four, I’d say.
• Erasers. The little nubby ones on the end of your pencils are useless. Get yourself the pack of 2 big ones (the white ones, not the pink) from Staples for a dollar, and write your name on them in case you ever lose them. As an extra, you might want to get the small, round erasers for quick mistakes that don’t require a big block of rubber.
• Pens. For the classes you’re actually allowed to use them. You’ll need blue, black and red at minimum. Have multiples of the colours you use most.
• Highlighters. One pink and one yellow. (I’m also going to give you little Lifehack for those of you GTDers who use a paper calendar system. Buy a different highlighter colour for each of your commitment categories, and then when you write something down, highlight it with the designated colour. That way, you can glance at your calendar each day and know instantly how much of each activity you’re doing. What I do is that I have 4 different highlighters- pink, blue, yellow, orange. Pink is for extra curricular activities (ex. student council meetings), blue if for personal commitments (ex. my orthodontist appointments each month), yellow if for school due dates, tests and quizzes (ex. the creative letter due for English tomorrow about a book I’m reading) and orange is for work and volunteer commitments (ex. the workshop I have this weekend on “becoming a leader with character” for which I get volunteer hours towards my diploma). Actual nightly homework is written in pencil so I can erase it as I get it done. This is just another way to help you know the “hardscape” of your day even more.)
• White out. If you’ve got a pen, you’ll need this. Get liquid (quick dry!) and the kind in tape form. Liquid is for those moments when you’re about to hand in an essay worth 10% of your final mark, and you see a spelling mistake and an improperly used comma that will surely cost you valuable marks. Liquid whiteout eventually looks better than tape whiteout when you fix the mistake with a black pen.  Tape whiteout is for when you’ve got a history lecture and are too busy writing down important names and dates to wait for liquid whiteout to dry when you accidentally write that Columbus discovered the new world in 1694 using the Mina, Tina and Santa Gina. (Yep, this happened to me! Crossing things out gets really messy, really fast was what I learned during that lecture.)
• A ruler. They come in handy when you lease expect them. Going back to my accounting class, proper straight lines are crucial for doing an A+ balance sheet by hand. They’re also great for tearing sheets of paper with a neat edge.
• A pencil sharpener, or extra lead if you use a mechanical pencil. Make sure you’re got the right size lead for all your pencils.
• A calculator. Not just for math class- you can also calculate your mark for those times you get a test that 32 our of 40 and can’t figure that percentage out in your head. (It’s 80% by the way.)
• Extra: dental floss and mints for après-lunch breath freshening, a sample of perfume/cologne for those days your deodorant give up on you, colouring pencils for those impromptu diagrams of a paramecium you make make in biology and lip blam. Chapped lips hurt.

What other pencil-case essentials have you discovered come in handy?

Image courtesy of Ul Marga

I am currently in my second semester of my second last year of high school, and looking back on all that I’ve learned, I realised that there was something I really wish someone had told me on my very first day of the ninth grade. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have payed much closer attention and been a lot more successful. I wouldn’t have gotten that blasted 64% in math last year and hurt my chances of getting into the marketing program I want. Nor would I have had that very public mental breakdown a few years ago from chronic, long term stress.

I’m sure all of you university, college or graduate students already know “The Big Secret Key to High School Success” or TBSKtHSS if you’re into acronyms. Your parents probably told you about it many times, and you just shrugged and brushed it off your shoulders, only to start telling all the young people you meet the very same thing a few years later. In fact, you grandparents probably told your parental units the very same thing. They probably reacted the same way you did when they told you because it’s much too simple to be effective. After all, the more effort you put into something, the better it is, right? Simple can’t possibly be good, can it?

The reason that TBSKtHSS is so hard to believe when you hear it is that it relies heavily on hindsight, which is something you lack when starting a new phase in your life. You can’t look back on an event it it’s still happening to you, can you? I’ll reveal the secret in a minute, but there probably won’t be much you can do with it if you’re still in high school. You still lack that all important hindsight. But don’t worry. I do too remember? In fact, I had to call my best friends adult sister to ask her what the big secret is anyway. She’s in second year university and has had adequate time to look back on her four years in high school. You know what she said to me?

“Balance.”

That’s it. “Enjoy your time while you’ve got it. Balance your life if you really want to be happy and successful. You can’t be all work, but you can’t be all play. It’s rarely as bad as you think it is.”

It was such a simple reply I wanted to scream. I’ve been dwelling on this for a couple of days, trying to come up with eloquent prose that detailed the knowledge of generations past. And yet, when I asked those generations past what their big secret was, I got a one word reply.

Does this then mean that it really is as simple as that? That we’re probably over complication things with our constant desires of perfection? Of perfect résumés, of perfect records, of perfect minds? Apparently, the answer is yet another one word reply. Yes.

So take a deep breath. Study some and party some. Smell the roses, then smell the pages of your textbook. Hang out with your friends at the movies, and hang out with them at the library. Balance your life if you want to make the most of it.

And that my friends, is the great big secret to high school success.

***

I thought it’d be appropriate to introduce myself, seeing as this is my first time ever writing for Gearfire. My name is Ayomide (pronounced i-oh-me-day. It means “my joy has come.”) I’m a high school junior who one day decided to stop being self-centered, and start doing something meaningful with my self and help others. I do this by writing. Here, I plan on writing more articles like this one- articles that help you put things in perspective. As for student success, my area of expertise would of course be how to succeed in high school, seeing as it’s a bit different than college/university/graduate school. I’m a master at motivation, balancing extra curricular activities with life and school, self-improvement, and networking.

I also write a blog called Ayomeday.com where I cover how to live the kind of life that makes you smile. (And look good doing it!)

Image source gregorrohrig

Firstly, I would like to thank those who took time to comment on my first post here at GearFire and provide me with some topical ideas for future posts. There were various suggestions ranging from 15 minute exercise routines to stretching to preventing illness prior to exam week, all of which I will gladly write about.

This post is centred upon the 12 minute exercise routine as requested by Martin in a comment:

If a student is pushed for time, what type of exercises would you suggest for a simple, yet beneficial, 10-15minute session each day?

To me this is a $64,000 question. Primarily, a student takes up the opportunity to go to college/university to enhance their academic qualifications and specialise in a topic they enjoy. Or at least this is the way it should be. All other motives for attending further and higher education should be lined up, in no particular order, behind academic motives. How does this relate to the comment by Martin? Well, assuming that as a student you have your priorities in the right places you will be a busy person. As a rule of thumb, for every hour you spend in lectures or the laboratory or other learning environment you should match it with one hour of study in your own time. So, if you receive 20 hours of lectures then 20 hours should be reciprocated by you in your own time, the equivalent of working a full time job. Speaking of jobs, a lot of students have to balance their studies with some sort of work to pay for food, rent, clothes, amongst other things. Now the 40 week of studying becomes 40 hours study plus # hours employed work. Let’s not forget socialising, girlfriends/boyfriends, travelling to/from Uni/work, and sport.

Returning to the comment, Martin touches on the 3 key aspects to an exercise routine for students:

1. time
2. simplicity
3. beneficial

My answer - body weight circuits also known as calisthenics. They take no time to set up, the movements can be as simple or complicated as you desire, they benefit the body as a whole.

The routine template

• Whole body
• Upper body
• Core & trunk
• Lower body
• Whole body

The order of the exercises in this routine are designed specifically to prevent injury, promote the circulation of blood and oxygen to the working muscles, and to allow individual muscle groups time to recover before subsequent exercise.

The exercises

• Whole body: burpees, alternate squat thrusts, squat thrusts, star jumps, walk arounds, and running on the spot

• Upper body: press ups, triceps dips, pull ups, inclined/declined push ups and handstand push ups

• Core & trunk: crunches, back extension, supermans, cross over crunch, and sit ups

• Lower body: squats, single leg squats, box step ups, forward lunges, and backwards lunges

Using this exercise list you can substitute in any exercise from a particular category into the routine. Variety is the spice of life and this is also true of exercise. If in life you repeat the same routine day after day, week after week..you will soon become disheartened and search for new and exciting experiences. Similarly, when you exercise it is imperative to mix things up, following the same routine will inevitably lead to cessation in search of something more stimulating. Chop and change the exercises every now and then, you will notice that you stay on task, and that you body does not have time to adapt thus stimulating improved fitness.

An example

1. squat thrusts
2. press ups
3. sit ups
4. squats
5. running on the spot

How to use the routine

This all depends on the desired intensity you strive for. As a generic routine suitable for all, I suggest a 1:1 work:rest ratio. So, 30 seconds of squat thrusts followed by 30 seconds of rest. Then move on to press ups using the same principle, and so on. After exercise 5 rest for 1 minute and then commence a second circuit.

This routine is by no means set in stone. My advice is to give the outlined routine a try, assess its suitability to your requirements, adjust it, and retry. You can manipulate the difficulty of the exercises, the work:rest ratio, duration of recovery, and the number of circuits.

I would be interested to receive your feedback on this, positive or negative, so long as it is constructive and beneficial to others. Maybe you already perform a similar routine, if so, let me know how it compares. Your input is worthwhile to both me and the readers of GearFire.

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 20 to GTD Mastery is: I have all the office supplies I need (p. 92)

Page 92 in Getting Things Done refers to a list of tools for your work space.

Paper-holding trays (at least three)
A stack of plain letter-size paper
A pen/pencil
Post-its (3X3s)
Paper clips
Binder clips
A stapler and staples
Scotch tape
Rubber bands
An automatic labeler
File folders
A calendar
Wastebasket/recycling bins

You can see my paper-holding trays (with blank paper), writing tools, and post-its on my workspace.

I have decided on a paperless filing system thanks to the help of Marina Martin at Sufficient Thrust. A post will follow when my Fujitsu ScanSnap arrives. This eliminates the labeler and file folders.

My calendar is my cell phone. Currently, I need to buy some more staples.

The rest of the list can be seen in the picture below. I place the supplies in my desk drawers to avoid the clutter of bulky desktop storage. The garbage and recycling bins are within swivel distance of my desk.

And yes, my recycling bin is an Eggo Waffles box. I used to eat them religiously when I was younger.

Image credit AlbySpace

Mens sana in corpore sano is Latin and loosely translates as “A sound mind in a sound body”. The phrase can be used to promote a healthy balance between a persons mental and physical energy expenditure so that one does not outbalance the other and manifest itself in the form stress, illness, insomnia, or any other form of mental or physical inhibitor.

My name is Daniel, i recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth, UK, where i read a Masters Degree in Sport and Exercise Science, and I’m a new author here at the GearFire blog. I’ve been charged with the task of providing health and fitness related tips for academic success to the readers of GearFire, a role that I’m chomping at the bit to get stuck into.

I firmly believe in the Latin adage “A sound mind in a sound body”, and here is why exercise will benefit your study:

• Improved concentration. Exercise will help you to relax, a process of catharsis allows you to channel mental anguish is a safe and effective manner. When sat at your desk struggling to string together any sort of logical sentence simply stop, take 30 minutes and declutter. Return to the desk and i promise you that you’ll be in a better state of concentration.
• Fight illness. A direct benefit of increased exercise is an improved ability to stave off illness. Moderate and continued exercise will improve the immune system by increasing the number of white blood cells circulating in the blood, enabling a faster and more efficient interception of foreign bodies and bacteria when they enter the body.
• Greater confidence. Exercise will help you to look better and feel better about yourself. As a result of increased confidence you are less likely to avoid classes, social meetings, and more likely to put yourself forward for in-class demonstrations, sports teams and numerous other scenarios that you might have avoided.
• Better sleep. Exercise that lasts 40 minutes 3 times per week will promote deeper sleep patterns. You will spend greater periods of time in deep sleep, and allow you to wake up feeling refreshed a ready for the day ahead, rather than waking up and feeling ready to go back to sleep.
• Optimised circulation. Last but by no means least, and probably the most relevant…regular exercise promotes growth of the heart allowing an increased efficiency at pumping blood around the body. This is of particular benefit to the brain, an organ that thrives on the oxygen that is contained within the blood. Exercise the heart and improve cranial activity, it is as simple as that.

So, now that I’ve explained what exercise can do for your studies let me explain what i can do for your exercise. As i mentioned earlier i am a Masters student of Sport and Exercise Science, i have knowledge of the simplest forms of exercise, for example, body weight routines, all the way up to elite forms of exercise, for example speed, agility and quickness (SAQ), Olympic training techniques, and plyometrics. If you are reading this post and would like me to write about a particular topic, no matter where it falls within this spectrum, then please feel free to leave a comment on this post and I’ll do my utmost to cover the topic.

I look forward to your suggestions and providing you with the information needed to make the most of your academic years.

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 19 to GTD Mastery is: I have a dedicated physical office space set up.

GTD Mastery 100 returns after a couple of weeks off. GearFire has added a few more writers to the team and I hope you are enjoying the fresh content.

Above, you can see my office setup on display. It’s not terribly exciting, but it gets the job done. You can click on the image which will take you to an interactive image on Flickr.

On the far left is my inbox discussed previously in the series. In front of it is my change holder. It automatically sorts my coins and has a holder for coin wrappers.

My supplies holder is at the centre (in black). It holds writing materials and a hole-puncher. To the right is a scratchpad and a document holder (in green). To the left is a dragon carving (my Chinese zodiac), a birthday card (given to me by my grandparents), and a Mickey Mouse woodblock (from a time when I didn’t know what GTD was).

My laptop and mouse are a Dell Latitude D630 and a Logitech VX Revolution respectively. I run dual screen with my laptop and external monitor. The Easy-Read book holder (review here) is stored on the top of my monitor and also serves as a document holder.

At the top is my bulletin board. I post inspirational articles on it. The GTD Mastery 100 checklist is on the bottom-right three papers.

Check out more workspaces courtesy of the Unclutterer Flickr group.