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Gearfire Productivity

Student productivity, organization, and GTD

Write and Highlight All Over the Web With WebNotesNovember 14

 

 

(Update: I’ve been given 25 invites from WebNotes to give our readers to their private beta. The first 25 comments here will get invites. It’s worth it, give it a try! Even if you can’t get an invite, sign up on their site. The turnaround, in my experience, is pretty fast.)

Most, if not all, of the research I do is on the Web. When I write papers, do presentations, or study for finals, I spend a lot of time on the Web looking for information.

It used to be that I would find a page with something interesting on it, and either save the whole page and spend forever trying to find the interesting part again or have to copy and paste the interesting part elsewhere.

Not anymore. WebNotes, a new startup and new favorite of mine, has made research an easy, fun, and efficient process.

With WebNotes, the process couldn’t be simpler. You sign up, save a bookmarklet, and go Web surfing. When you get to a page with information you want to save, you click the bookmarklet, and up come your options. You can highlight text, or write sticky notes on the page- anywhere on the Web.

If you’re a Firefox user,

5 Ways to Get Yourself StartedNovember 10

Procrastinating is a wonderful thing. I’ll ruffle some feathers saying this, but I think procrastinating is often a really useful thing to do. When I’m avoiding the thing I want to do least (currently? Writing a history paper), I get a ton of other things done.

However, it does get to a point when you need to stop procrastinating, and get working. When asked how to stop procrastinating, most people say “just do it!” That’s not helpful for me, so I decided to look into easy, tangible ways to get myself started on things I don’t always want to do.

Here are five tips for making that process a little easier, and to help you get started on the big, hairy projects you don’t want to do:

Define the task.
When I’m working, most of my issues in getting started come from not knowing what it is I need to do. Maybe it’s “write a paper.” Instead, break it down: A paper about what? What’s your thesis? What’s your first paragraph about? When you understand what you need to do, it becomes much less overwhelming. Procrastination is usually the forgoing of things we don’t know how to do in favor of

My Tools for Getting Stuff DoneNovember 6

I wrote a post last week called “The 3 Step Plan to Owning Your Task List”, in which I talked a bit about the few productivity principles that have become critical in my life as a student. I’ve read a number of productivity books, and enjoyed many of them, but it’s always boiled down to the three points I mention in the post.

This time, I’m going to show you a bit of my brain, and detail my essential productivity system. The three step process is what I work by,  and I’ve ironed each down a bit more.

Here’s how I, a college student, keep my brain and life in order.

1. Write EVERYTHING down, in the same place. My “ubiquitous capture tool”, as it’s referred to in GTD circles, is Evernote.  Evernote is a web, desktop, iPhone, and cell phone-based system for taking notes of any kind. You can clip screenshots, take pictures, record voice notes. Add them to notebooks, add tags, search through everything (including the text of pictures- HUGE for things like business cards), and access it all from one place. 

The reason I use it, though, is that I can access it from 

Revision Tip: Question, Question, QuestionOctober 31

 

Another post on revision tips from me today. Mid-terms are coming up for many of you so I hope this is proving to be useful.

One thing that I’ve found very useful in my revision is not using rote review. I can read something time and time again, and never really get to grips with it. What I find is better to do is to quiz yourself on the work covered so far, perhaps using a set of prepared questions. Then run through these questions, and compare what you remembered to the notes you made. This helps to identify what is missing and needs to be revised, and also, helps to build a deeper understanding of content, not just the regurgitation of it.

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The five most deadly study tips of all timeOctober 30

 It’s unbelievable at times the things people believe about the best way to study, so I figured it’s time to dispel some of those myths!

Myth One: 3am is the ideal time to study
I am sure many of you have been there. Picture it now, it is 3am, you are sat there, pen in one hand, energy drink in the other, trying to stay awake whilst writing revising for an exam the next day. Here’s a tip for you, it does not work. When you are tired, your brain does not work as well (unless you really are a night person) and therefore you will absorb a lot less information. Work out the best time for you to study, and study then. Hence I would rather get an early start to a day of studying than work into the night. On a side note, nobody cares how late you stayed up studying, so please do not come into a class with me and start bragging about this type of studying!

Myth Two: Never start studying until the night before your exam
Some people seem to believe that studying in advance, you will forget it before the exam. Although you might have to brush up again after the first study session, it won’t be as laborious as the first time! It’s much better to be prepared, as if you discover that you’ve missed something out and still need to learn something, there is time to do so.

Myth Three: You have to know every minor fact and statistic
In essay based subjects in particular, minor facts and statistics have almost no bearing on your g