Many, many moons ago, I wrote an article here on Gearfire about balance being the key to success as a student. One thing I never really went over though, is how to achieve that balance. I was young, and didn’t really know what to say on the topic. So, I spent many, many hours over the past many, many moons, doing my own personal research on how one goes about walking the middle path. At this point, I’d say that Aristotle would be quite proud of me.I film a weekly webshow for my own website, a self titled blog called A.Y. Daring. I write to young entrepreneurs, visionaries and lifestyle artists to inspire them, encourage them, and remind them of their purpose and goals. The show is called The A.Y. Daring Show. (I like to keep things simple and straightforward with naming.) This week’s episode was about how to achieve the balance I was talking about earlier, based on all the research I’ve been doing. It summarizes all the themes in all the works I’ve read into three key points, an is presented in less than 10 minutes. And since it directly relates to my earlier article, I want to share it with you guys and share these themes on Gearfire. Behold.

So in that episode, I discussed the three themes that I picked up on in my research. For a little more of an explanation, or if you can’t turn on your volume to watch it right now:

1) You have to make time for the things that matter to you.This is everything you hear about planning and prioritizing. As in, doing things now, making a study schedule, doing readings on time, etc. There’s nothing new to say here. Except that planning and prioritizing are both learned skills that require practise. I’d say you should give yourself a full term to break all the old habits of your past. If you’re not well on your way towards good study habits and learning skills by the end of the term (you be the judge of that!) then you’re not trying hard enough to make time for the things that matter, and a different strategy is in order.

2)  You have to learn to say no. This means letting go of you’re ego and admitting you can’t do it all. This also means that, to everything you say “yes”, you must commit yourself to it wholeheartedly and be honest when your whole heart isn’t enough to hold your attention or keep you motivated. I’m talking to you, girl-who’s-on-11-different-commitees-but-is-only-serious-about-two! And you too guy-who’s-only-going-to-law-school-to-impress-people!

3)  Making time for yourself. This is the theme behind all the things you read in the yoga and spirituality and beauty sections of the bookstore and what “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” talks about in the chapter about “sharpening the saw”. It’s why I spend so much time doing my hair, nails and makeup each morning. As I like to say “burnouts don’t make billions” as in, if you don’t take time to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labour, all your gardening efforts will be for naught. You get my metaphor.So now, go pour yourself a glass of champagne, run yourself a bubble bath, and sit int he tub for a while, thinking about what’s important to you, and what’s not, and how you’re going to do your priorities justice.

Question? Comments? Praise? Don’t forget to comment and tell me what you think!

So, my questions to you to get the conversation rolling:

1) What’s the one thing you always make time for each day, and why?

2) How do you say no politely?

3) What’s you’re favourite way to unwind at the end of the day?

My responses:

1) I always make time for makeup and doing my nails. Always. If you ever meet me in the street, and I’m not made up and my nails look ragged, feel free to ask my why my life is falling apart at the seams, as that would be the only thing that would keep me from looking my absolute best. I just do it for no other reason than the fact that I enjoy it. I can’t draw to save my life, but I can make a masterpiece with a tube of liquid eyeliner and some lipgloss, you know?

2) I have no clue! But I have learned that if someone asks you for help with something, and you don’t have time to help them, referring them to someone who could is a really great way to absolve yourself of the guilt!

3) At the end of each day, I unwind by drinking green tea and writing in my journal. I’ve started reading again too, which is helping me sleep better. I used to watch television like an addict, but then I stopped randomly and replaced evening screen time with a book. I feel like such an old person, snuggling up in my bed with tea and a digestive cookie (both of which I bring to bed with me) and a book, but it helps me sleep like lullaby.

Don’t get me wrong- I also enjoy having Lil’ Wayne and Kesha in the background while I study. But let’s all be honest with each other- anything on a top 40 countdown is not conducive to major academic accomplishments. It’s been scientifically proven that the best music to listen to while studying is classical baroque music. I know it’s scientifically proven, because I read it on Wikipedia. True story.

I won’t lie to you- classical music is an acquired taste. When I first started listening to it, I was more distracted by how much I didn’t like it than I would have been if I had just kept on singing to the Paradiso Girls. But eventually I got into “the zone” of when I actually focused in on my work, and miracles happened. My back-ache was cured, my runny nose dried up and I no longer need to wear my glasses to see long distances! OK, maybe not. But I can and will vouch for this classical baroque stuff. It really is significantly more calming than listening to all my favorite hits. I focus better, so my readings get done faster.

And because I love it so much, I’m sharing it with you for free- yes, FREE- today on YouTube. It’s a 16 song playlist, so you’ll probably  finish before it does. (That’s what she said!) Behold:

Also, I think it would be approximately 15 different kinds of awesome if we could all build this playlist together. As in, after you begin to listen to classical music and your tastes grow, you let me know of songs to be added to the list, and I’ll add it on. And then we’ll have a hugely epic, 9 hour long classical baroque playlist for those kids who don’t do their assignments timely and need something in the background for all nighters. Cool, right? Yes, I thought so too.P.S. I lied. This list is not 100% classical baroque, but there were some other classical pieces that I thought just needed to be in the mix, as they are too bad to pass up. Don’t worry- nothing bad will happen to you. Enjoy your programming as normal.

P.P.S. If you liked this post, you should see what I post to twitter each day. follow @aydaring.

Ever student knows that they can go to Wikipedia for an overview of a subject, that they can go to Google for a wide variety of perspectives and popular media,  Google Scholar for academic journal references, and Google Books for searching within books, both current and obscure.  The new Google Squared even organizes output into a table of key concepts to help you organize your research.

But there is a key weakness to all of these resources:  they are designed to point you to documents that might have the answer.   Google can do some simple calculations and conversion from the search box, but in general you end up with links to resources that MIGHT have the answer you are looking for.

An alternative to your normal searches

WolframAlpha is different; very different.   Read the rest of this entry »

 

I have 2 weekend, 3 weeks and 3 blue Post-Its until my first exam. Yes- 3 blue Post-Its. See:

My first exam is the first blue blue Post-It in the third row, and there are three blue Post-Its before it. The green Post-Its are the weekends I have to study (far right), and the yellow ones are days where I don’t currently have any event scheduled that will require my mental or physical energy. (I apologize for the blurriness. Walls are surprisingly difficult to photograph!)

Why all the Post-Its? Because I woke up on Saturday morning in a cold sweat, panicked about everything I knew I had to do, but was completely unable to conceptualize how much time I had to do it all. Everything was written down, but I couldn’t turn the words on the paper in my day-timer into anything that made events clear in my mind. It’s my very last exam set of high school (I’m graduating afterwards!) and I’ve been feeling/putting a lot of pressure on myself to go out with a bang. But I wasn’t anticipating the high blood pressure that my personal expectations would bring. So I took 10 deep breaths and tried to figure out how to get organized so I can maximize my productivity in preparation for my exams.

When it comes to my world, I like three things:

• lists
• colour
• Post-It notes
• and Tina Fey

Okay, so that 4 things, but lets pretend it’s 3. So, I combined all of these things and made a Post-It calendar. Actually, it’s not a full calendar of the month, but I leave on June 26 for a 6 week vacation travelling the other side of the planet, so I didn’t bother with the rest of the days. The day my plane takes off is the last thing I’ve written:

I like this idea because I can see at a glance when everything is, as opposed to flipping through pages. I do have a month-at-a-glace page in my planner, but it had gotten messy with “maybe-happenings” and “not-sures.”  I applied the GTD principle of only putting in concrete events. For each of the days I have an exam, I also wrote the time and place so I won’t forget. It helps to keep this from becoming another ambiguous list of things that may-or-may not occur so you then have to spend more energy sorting it in your mind. Whew, that last sentence was a mouthful!

This calendar is on the wall beside my computer, where I notice it every time I look up. So when I’ve been spending too much time on Facebook, out of the corner of my eye, I notice everything I have to do, and I log off :

This calendar is easy to replicate for yourself, using any colour combination you wish.

And also, since I’m using this to track school work, I put in fun events too, so I don’t forget that life isn’t a 24/7 study session. Like the day of my tattoo appointment:

It’s something to look forward to.

So tell me, what’s your strategy for conquering the mental clutter that exams bring?

As I’ve always said, one of the things that makes students a unique breed is the perpetual state of mobility we’re in. Whether we’re going to class, parties or the library, our time spent in one place is often limited.

That’s why the mobility of our productivity is so important- we have to be able to bring our lives with us as much as possible. For many people, that used to mean owning and carrying a laptop.

Now, it increasingly means owning an iPhone. With the wonder that is the Application Store, you can now do more than ever on the go, right from your iPhone or iPod Touch. As students, we need the added flexibility and anywhere-productivity that the iPhone allows (that’s the line to sell to your parents…)

Here are seven applications for every student’s iPhone or iPod Touch:

Pandora

You have to listen to music, right? The great Web radio application, Pandora, works just as well from your iPhone. Start with a song or an artist, and get a never-ending playlists of songs you’ll love. Great for background music, studying music, or music to jam to to keep you awake during an all-nighter. You can save playlists or create them on the fly- having Pandora is like having a personally-tailored radio station, right at your fingertips.

NimBuzz

Instant Messaging is a staple of most students’ computer screens. With Nimbuzz, your IM contacts can come with you anywhere you go. Nimbuzz aggregates your accounts from Skype, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk and many others. All the messaging you could possibly want to do, you can do with Nimbuzz. There’s a Web app, a desktop app, and apps for many mobile phones- including the iPhone. With Nimbuzz, all your friends are just a click away.

Facebook

This one’s a no-brainer- Facebook’s the best way to communicate with people in your social world. The application’s not the best, but Facebook is such a critical tool to managing your events, friends, photos and goings-on that it’s increasingly difficult to do anything without Facebook. For me, my whole social life is becoming centered around Facebook- right down to the chat application letting you leverage your Facebook contacts to talk instantly with your friends.

A2ZPro

At least one of these has to be school-related, right? A2ZPro is a super-converter of an application, perfect for anyone in the math or science fields- or just anyone who needs to figure out how many cups are in a quart after all. There are 154 things between which you can convert, and you can add any one that’s not already included. You can customize the list to your liking, and all the converting you could need is right in front of you.

Remember the Milk

We’ve all got stuff to do, right? Remember The Milk’s iPhone application lets you add, edit, and manage your tasks either on or offline. The best part, particularly for students, is the “Nearby” feature- you can view all the tasks, errands, etc. that take place near wherever you currently are. It’s perfect for anyone who’s mobile, but still needs to be able to get things done.

Twitterfon

Twitter, in addition to being the easiest way to waste a ton of time on the Web, has potential to be hugely useful. It’s a great way to find interesting things to read, get questions answered, or communicate with other people similar to you. Twitterfon’s also the free Twitter app of choice- offering easy way to read and write tweets, and organize your messages, replies, and friends. If you can avoid the time-drain that Twitter can be, it’s a powerful way to manage your information and learn a lot at the same time. (I should mention- this isn’t the only Twitter app out there, or even my favorite, but it’s the best free one there is. If you want my favorite, try Tweetie.)

Stanza

Reading. Apparently that’s a critical part of school. With Stanza, you’ll have an e-book reader available right on your iPhone. You can download books, either for a fraction of their print price or often nothing at all, and read them at your leisure, right from your iPhone. There is a huge, and growing, list of books to read- both school-like and otherwise. With Stanza, you might not need a Kindle, an eReader, or anything else!

Your iPhone or iPod Touch really can be your one-stop productivity and fun spot as a student, all without costing you another penny.

What iPhone or iPod Touch apps do you use?

Though more and more of what we do on a daily basis is being moved online, most people still have significant use for paper. It’s the standard for turning in assignments, taking notes, and the like. Paper is becoming unnecessary in more and more places, but it’s impossible to avoid the event of needing and using paper. Sorry, trees.

Paper can be a pain, though. Graphing paper, lined paper, dot paper, music paper. Who knew there were so many kinds of paper out there? Lots to buy, keep track of, and panic when you can’t find.

Or, just use Printable Paper, a web application designed to keep you fully stocked with the kind of paper you need. Using Printable Paper, you can find just about any kind of paper template you can imagine. Whether you’re looking for “Columnar Paper with three columns on letter-sized paper in portrait orientation paper” (I don’t even know what that is), or just a simple “Bowling Score Sheet,” you can get any kind of paper you need, with just blank paper and ink.

Downloading the printable papers couldn’t be easier- just find the one you want, and click on it. You’ll get the option to download it as a PDF, which will stay on your desktop forever, meaning you can use it whenever you want to. Printing is equally simple- fire up the PDF, and then print it out. It’ll print out looking just like you bought it that way.

They come out as blank pieces of paper, ready to be filled in. There’s no evidence you printed them instead of buying them, and they’re as easy to use as any other paper template. Though I don’t necessarily recommend getting all of your paper this way, it’s dead useful in a pinch. If you need notepaper, or graph paper, or even a calendar, Printable Paper’s the best way to get it quickly.

If you’re looking for more than just 8.5 x 11″ paper, sign up for the newsletter when you first get to the site. There, you’ll get updates about Fax Cover Sheets, Business Cards, Stationery, and Cash Receipts. Whether you’re looking to lower business costs, or just find some paper with the Cornell note template on it, Printable Paper’s a great place to look.

All you’ll need is a stack of printer paper, ink and staples, and you’re ready to become your very own Staples- the paper section, at least.

As students, we accumulate a ton of stuff. Papers, handouts, syllabi, class notes, tests, and a whole variety of other things cross our desks during the course of a semester.

This semester, I’ve resolved to do a better job of handling it all. I need a better way to collect and process all the things I get for school, and then use them over the course of the semester. Not to mention, I don’t want to lose things anymore- like paper assignments. Hmm…

My solution has been to use Evernote, the note-taking program that’s increasingly gaining popularity. With a little bit of tweaking, Evernote’s a killer way to manage everything (and I mean everything) you deal with this semester.

Before we get going, there are a few background things to do: first, create a free Evernote account. Second, download the desktop managers (having offline access is key). Those done, we’re ready to go!

Here’s how I started, the basic set-up: In Evernote, create a Notebook called “School.” Then, under “Tags,” create one for each class- something like “History” or “BIO252.” Then create tags for each type of media you’ll get- “class notes,” “handouts,” “tests,” and the like. Also, create and make default a Notebook called “Inbox.”

Now here’s how the system works: in class, take notes in Evernote. If you’re not wild about that, take them in Word and copy them into Evernote. At the end of every class period, make sure everything you’ve written ends up in Evernote. Date the note something like “090121 Class Notes”- the format is useful for sorting notes by date. Then, tag it with “class notes” and the class title, and put in the “School” notebook.

For every handout you get (this is the time-intensive part, but is hugely worth it), scan it or take a picture of it and put it into Evernote. Tag it with the classs and the type, date it and put it into the “School Notebook.” You can either scan the page, or take a picture of it and move it into Evernote that way. Backing up your handouts is good practice anyway, but Evernote offers the ability to search the text of an image, which means you can search through handouts for the information you want instead of having to flip through every piece of paper you get.

Evernote isn’t designed to manage tasks and calendars, but can do so pretty easily. I created a Notebook called “Tickler,” and everything with date-specific information goes in there. Whether it’s “Paper due 080213″ or “08308 HIUS Test 8am”, I’m able to open up the Tickler and see what’s coming up for me. I can either do a search for a particular date to see everything for and from that day, or just open up the Tickler and see what’s coming.

There are a number of advantages to this system. First, you’re able to see everything for a class in one place, instead of having to go through all your notes in one file, your handouts in another, and the random things you balled up into your backpack in another. Second, searchability is awesome. If you’re looking for an ID or a quote, instead of looking through all of your notes one by one, you can search them in, like, five seconds. The time saved by that alone makes it worth it. Third, it’s just cleaner. I find I’m much less stressed when I’m neat, and when I know where everything is. With tons of papers everywhere, I inevitably lose things, or take forever to find them. With Evernote, everything’s easy to find and manage.

Though Evernote can’t do much for my epically impressive procrastination skills, it does a wonderful job of making me more productive when I want to be. All the information I need is either one click or one search away, and getting things done and studied is much easier and more connected in Evernote than it would be with any other application I’ve found.

This is just a basic look into how Evernote can help you as a student. What ideas do you have? Are there ways Evernote, or other applications, can help aspects of your school life?

I know, I know, you’re on vacation…

When you do have to head back to school, though, you’ll be right back in the thick of reading, writing, and studying before you even know what happened. Here’s a tool to bookmark that might make the return a bit easier on you.

wePapers is a brand new startup, just into public beta, that calls itself “The YouTube of documents.” Though the tagline’s slightly misleading (i.e. no sneezing pandas), there’s some truth to it. As YouTube is an online database and viewer for videos of all kinds, so is wePapers for academic documents.

wePapers has a huge number of academic papers, books, class notes, and any other resource you might need to feed that brain of yours. You can search them, find them by subject or medium (book, paper, etc.), or go through lists like the “Most Popular” and “Most Commented.” All the documents are uploaded by users, and many of them are created by those users.

The ease with which you can find materials on wePapers is a huge plus. You can sort documents by language, subject, and even institution- meaning if you just want to find the notes from other people who’ve taken a particular class at your school, you can. Though the database isn’t enormous yet, it has serious potential for improving online collaboration.

Once you’ve found the document you want, you’ve got new options: you can view it right in your browser, download it to your computer, or save it to your “Course Box,” a repository, on wePapers, of all the documents you’ve saved. You can also upload your own documents, tag them and share them with the world.

There are also options to share, embed, or email a particular document- helpful for collaborating purposes, instead of having to copy and paste links, send attachments, or what have you. For instance, here’s a document called “Thinking on Paper Cheat Sheet“:

The real usefulness for wePapers, in my opinion, is four things. First, it’s a great place to get both research and study aids. Many of the documents are scholarly and ripe for use in papers, and are easy to find, read and download. Even the ones you probably shouldn’t cite in a paper are useful, like someone’s class notes to Organic Chemistry. Reading the work of other students is a really helpful way to learn something you may not have gotten otherwise, and it makes catching up on missed material a whole lot easier.

The second use, and potentially the coolest, is as a group study guide. wePapers lets you create Contacts, with whom you can collaborate and discuss papers. Here’s my vision: you and your friends in a particular class, wherever you may be, log in to wePapers. You all upload and share your class notes with each other, and then you can discuss the subject and your notes, all over wePapers. No trying to figure out when to meet, or where- just get together on wePapers, and everything you need is right there.

The third use: instant feedback. You can upload a paper you write to wePapers, and instantly have people comment on your paper and writing. Whether it’s people in your class (with whom you’d be connected, so they’d ideally see you uploaded something) or someone totally separate, it’s a great forum for quick and easy feedback. The site is geared to both students and professors, so you’re putting your paper in front of a lot of qualified people.

Fourth, and simplest, wePapers could just be an online notebook for all your school stuff. Upload all your notes, your exams, course lists- everything. It can all be managed from within wePapers, and you’re able to both use and access it from anywhere and share it with others who might have a class or interest in common.

My biggest worry about the site, and the only thing that makes me nervous about its adoption, is cheating. With this many documents, this readily available, it’s easy to just copy a paper someone else wrote on a similar topic and turn it in as your own. This is not the use of the site, but as with any site that asks you to upload your own work, it has risks.

Whether you just want to find a source for a paper, manage your school life, or study with a group, wePapers is a seriously useful tool. It’s still new, so there are some definite issues, mostly to do with the number of documents uploaded; that number will grow quickly, though. As it does, you may find you spend more and more time on the wePapers site, uploading and downloading all your course materials.