Streamlined Mind

It’s a known fact: the longer the lecture or presentation, the smaller the amount of information that will be remembered. If a lecture is 30 minutes long, students don’t remember the first 15 minutes as well as in a lecture with a duration of only those first 15 minutes. So how can we keep track of the information given to us in a two-hour lecture?

Not Just Reading a Book

When we read a fiction book we probably read a line only once. That’s no problem. We don’t really have to remember that specific line, but we want to understand the story. When we have to learn something, say for our final exams, we really have to study the material and make sure we will not forget what we read. So we have to read it over and over again, or use a smart highlighting system to keep track of the most important fact and information.

However, when we listen to a lecturer or a presenter, we can’t highlight words or read things over several times until we really understand what’s being said Continue reading →

While working on a project it’s important to have a good overview of the process. Planning the project before you start might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people just start, without taking the time to write down what exactly has to be done and who is going to do it (in case of a group project).

For a writer it’s good to think about the story line before starting to write as well as during the process. Writing a paper or a book he might want to outline the chapters first.
While working on our own project, and this can be anything from doing research to writing a thesis or building a piece of software, it’s a good idea to think about the ’story line’ of your project before you start producing anything. Continue reading →

As a follow-up on my previous post A Smart System To Process Your Paperwork I would like to take a closer look at what can be done to get rid of as much paper as possible. A few practical tips.

Eliminate

First of all it’s a good idea to eliminate as much of the incoming paper as possible. Let’s take some time to make a list of all sources of paper sent to us. Bills, obligations and notices, promotional material, things like that. Do we really need them? Do we read all that stuff?

A lot of the information banks and telecom providers send can also be viewed online. A lot of companies offer the possibility to unsubscribe from these mailings and just send an email with a link to the information. If companies send us promotional offers we can Continue reading →

Sometimes a book can give you just what you need at that specific moment. It’s great to read a book and discover how you seem to recognize a lot of the information. It’s like you already know it but you never really thought about it. For me, Steven Pressfield accomplishes this with his book The War of Art - Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

Clear And Concise
It’s a small book containing a lot of short and easy-to-read chapters. This is good. The book is about winning your inner creative battles, and it’s good to see the writer doesn’t need 500 pages to explain this. It’s about starting, so the sooner we are done reading the book, the sooner we can start. Start what? Start creating!

There are negative forces inside each one of us that holds us back from doing what we know we should be doing. Pressfield calls those forces Resistance. Continue reading →

As much as we want to have everything organized inside our computers, there is still a lot of real paperwork sent and given to us. What are we going to do with it?

I’ve been searching for the best way to organize my digital documents for a while now, tried different systems and found great new ways of doing so. Very interesting indeed, but what if too much attention is going to organizing our virtual documents and while inventing and tinkering our best digital file system to date, the papers, letters, presentation or lesson handouts and other printed documents pile up around the computer cluttering our desk.

During a conversation I had with a colleague he described how he organizes his paperwork using a smart and simple system. It goes like this: Continue reading →

Recently I discovered Freedom for Mac OS X. This application disables all wireless and ethernet networking on your computer for up to three hours at a time. When you open the application it asks you ‘how many minutes of freedom’ you would like.

Set the amount, hit ‘OK’ and it you will not be able to use your internet or your wireless network anymore. Afterwards your connections will be re-enabled. You can quit Freedom before the time you set, but this does not get you back on the internet. You will have to restart your computer to for that.

Why would we want to do something like that? Is it so hard to keep yourself focused on your task at hand? Yes, for some people it is! What could be so distracting then? There are more than a few things that can keep you away from what you should be doing. Continue reading →

Whether if it’s an assignment you present or a product you promote, a good presentation can give a great first impression!

Here are 10 important things to be aware of during your presentation:

1. Reading the text on the slides
   What’s the main reason for you to use a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation? To illustrate what you’re saying, to give yourself a good outline for your presentation, or to spice up your words with some flashy graphics? Whatever the reason, make sure you don’t literally read what’s on the slide. Doing that will eliminate the need for the slides to be there in the first place.
2. Speaking towards the screen
   This is directly connected to the first point. When you read what’s on the slides you have to turn your head towards the screen. This doesn’t only make it less interesting to watch, it also projects your voice in the wrong direction, causing it to sound muffled. While projecting your voice towards the audience they will also be able to see the expression on your face, making it easier for them to understand and stay focused. Continue reading →

Sometimes you stumble upon a piece of software that’s just wonderful, and you wish you knew it before. Software that really enhances the computer interface. The most important piece of software in that category is Quicksilver (also read my recent post about Quicksilver).
Another thing I discovered about a year ago was a tool that finishes your sentences. It’s like a fully customizable version of predictive text input for your computer.

What do those little tools do? They help you type. By setting up a list of sentences you use a lot and connecting those sentences to an abbreviation that is easy to remember, you create ’shortcuts’ for your text. This is great when you get a lot of email and a lot of people are asking you the same thing over and over again. You can also use it for URL’s email addresses, and signatures.
While writing code or inserting html tags this can also save you a lot of time, as you can imagine. Continue reading →

I read about Parkinson’s Law in Tim Ferris‘ Four Hour Work Week, and I recently experienced again how this ‘law’ works. It all about deadlines, and avoiding procrastination. Do you know the moment you finish a job just before the deadline and you find out that it didn’t take as much effort as you thought it would beforehand?

The definition Wikipedia gives for Parkinson’s Law is: “[…] a humorous observation (and not a scientific law) that states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.
This basically means that the same job gets bigger and bigger the more time is available to complete it. So because there is more time available it also seems like you need more time for it.

So how can you use Parkinson’s Law? Continue reading →

Many software developers have special prices for students and teachers. You can sometimes get up to 50% discount on the normal retail price. Looking back I realize how much software I bought after I graduated. Luckily the institute where I studies is now my part-time employer, so I can still use the educational prices when I buy a piece of software. But when you are not in this situation and you know you have to buy software for your professional career, don’t wait until you graduate!

During your studies (especially with technical studies), you are sometimes asked to do a project or make an assignment using a specific piece of software. And specialist software tends to be expensive. At school this is no problem as long as they provide you with a computer that has all the necessary tools installed.
You can also work with open source equivalents of course but these are not always available or as powerful and reliable as you often wish they would be. Continue reading →