© Sanja Gjenero

How many times have we spent longer planning something than it would take to just do it? I know I have. Revision is my favorite task to apply this method to, because you feel like your getting something done whilst still putting it off. I’m sure you can all remember times you’ve done this, where there are glorified plans put on the wall, but nothing that actually achieves results has been done.

For some projects, it’s best to just get started. Set a limit on the time you’ll take to plan something so it doesn’t eat away at the time you have on hand to do it.
For real Zen Planning, look at what you have to do, pick something, and start doing it!

Note: I am on holiday when this post is published, therefore I will be unable to respond to comments until Thursday 31st of July.

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This is Carl Hickson’s regular “Tuesday Tips” column, writing on all aspects of student productivity to help you become a more effective and stress free student.

Remember the Milk, a great to web-based to-do list application, has released an excellent plug-in for the Firefox.  It works with gmail, creating a panel on the right side of your screen with your to-do list in it.  It’s now right there and you can add, remove, change and see all of your tasks in one place.

The feature that really won me over, however, was the ability to set up either a tag or use the star in gmail to create a new task. You can create a tag (for example to-do) and whenever you apply it to a message an item will be added to your Remember the Milk task list automatically.  If you get to-do items in email, this feature saves time and keystrokes!

This plug-in has quickly become something I can’t live without!

It’s almost a guarantee, no matter what your major, that your classes will eventually begin to overlap and build on each other. That is why it is so important to take full advantage of the work you’ve already put into past classes.

REUSING PAST PROJECTS

An important aspect of this system is the direct reuse of past projects. For example I remember taking an English class in which I needed to write a persuasive essay, in writing this essay I spent hours and hours researching a specific topic (in my case Nuclear Energy) and ended up doing very well on the paper. As a naive first year college student I discarded the paper once I received it back from the teacher. The next semester I needed to make a persuasive speech on a topic of my choice, and it hit me: I had already researched a topic (Nuclear Energy) the past semester and that there was no need to do it all over again. Fortunately, even though I had thrown away the paper, I had not deleted the file from my computer and was able to find it. Reusing the information I had previously found saved me hours of research and increased my confidence in the project because the original grade ensured the quality of my research.

REUSING PAST CLASSES AS A WHOLE

A chilling realization is taking a sequential class, such as calculus II, and discovering that you’ve forgotten most of calculus I. Fortunately, there is a very simple and effective way to avoid this problem and it consists of three steps:

1. Make sure you keep all of the tests/classwork/homework throughout a semester.
2. As you have each test in class, keep the relevant classwork/homework with that test and file it away.
3. At the end of the semester take each test and it’s appropriate classwork/homework and put it in a manila folder labeled for that class.

If you follow these three easy steps it saves an incredible amount of time backtracking in future classes, and makes reviewing entire classes worth of work organized and simple.

REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF WORK YOU SAVE

In the above step 2. I make it a point to keep the relevant work only. This is where the reducing part of this system comes into play. If you end up with a huge unordered pile of paper and just file it all away, you’ll likely waste a substantial amount of time sorting through to find what you want in the future. Reducing the clutter to only what is absolutely necessary for understanding is crucial in streamlining the entire process so that you can spend the most time concentrating on the class you’re actually taking.

The first full week of school has come and almost gone, and if your schedule is anything like mine, you already have a long list of reading assignments to complete. One thing that can be discouraging about actually doing all of the coursework on schedule is that when you sit down to study for exams, you have nothing but a blank book staring back at you. This is where strategic color-coded highlighting comes in.

By highlighting key points in the material, you will have visual clues guiding your revision come exam time. And even if you like to take notes or make summaries of reading assignments, I find going through an entire chapter or article first, highlighting along the way, helps point out what is worth putting in your notebook, and what is not. A page marked entirely in yellow, of course, is no more helpful than the blank one when it comes to revision. What you need are immediate visual clues and that’s why I have devised this color-coded system.

Yellow → Highlight in yellow important points, facts, examples etc.

Pink → Use pink (or orange) to denote material that is even more important than what’s in yellow. For example, sentences that summarize sections, that explain the significance of the section, or provide definitions. (You may be really thankful for the two-level highlighting if you only have time for a bare bones revision.)

Blue → Reserve blue for words that will subsequently be defined (and then put their definitions in pink), titles or special terms.

Green → Mark in green dates, names or places that you will need to remember. Green can also be used for formulas.

Purple → If the material contains any rules, use the boldness of purple to set them apart.

That’s it. The two-levels of pink and yellow are not meant to cover everything on the page. Remember that this system is not meant to allow you to highlight more, but just with greater specificity. Adapt the color code to suit your needs or the highlighters you have in stock. This may add a few minutes to your reading schedule, but once you get the hang of your system, you may find it a worthwhile investment!

A lot of people have the problem of getting an assignment and starting to write it straight away. The problem with this is that you do not yet have a clear idea of exactly where your writing is going. You do not yet have a plan.

Researching will provide an insight that is difficult to achieve otherwise. Some people do not enjoy or understand exactly how to research. The following pointers will help:

• Search the Internet – this is a quick and easy way to get a general overview of the topic
• Go to the library – books on a single topic will always be more detailed than a website. Make sure you read more than one book though to get various viewpoints
• Read journal articles – journals provide the latest research on hundreds of topics, and are an invaluable source for any student

Once you fully understand the topic you are being marked on you can begin to write.
Until you have begun researching, your writing will all be pointless and often wrong. I like to call this filler or fluff. Your assignments should contain as little fluff as possible and that can only come through research.

Check out freerice.com. The site will give you a word and 4 choices. If you choose the correct definition, they will donate 10 grains of rice through the UN.

Why should a student care? If you will be taking the SATs, GREs, GMATs, LSATs, MCATs, or any OTHER standardized test you will get a better grade if you know more vocabulary. Here is a way to learn some more and help people at the same time.

Rebecca is a PhD student who is blogging about her academic experiences at protoscholar.com

We’ve established that Launchy is a great time-saver in previous articles. What’s that? You still don’t believe me?

Another great feature of Launchy is that it indexes your control panel with the Controly plugin.

If you tend to forget the date like me (fine, maybe it’s just me), Launchy can tell you.

Hyphenation is a great way to make your documents look fuller and make good use of space. However sometimes, depending on what you are doing, you won’t want long words to break up when they reach the margin. Here is how you can turn off hyphenation in Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, the two most likely programs you will need to do this on.

In Microsoft Office:

1. Go to the Tools Menu, Language, and then choose Hyphenation.
2. Uncheck the Automatically hyphenate document check box.
3. Enjoy your non-hyphenated document!

In Adobe Photoshop:

1. Make sure the Paragraph palette is visible by turning on Window > Paragraph.
2. In the Paragraph palette, uncheck the Hyphenation box.
3. Enjoy your non-hyphenated image!

Know any other tricks to disable hyphenation on popular applications? Share it with us in a comment below!