Productivity is way out of your comfort zone

All the productivity tricks and hacks you implement in your daily life don’t feel good. You don’t feel good when you are finishing a task really fast, while you actually want to check some things about the task again. You don’t feel good when you’ve shut down everything and working on an empty word document. You don’t feel good when your life is ruled by lists. And that is probably one of the reasons people don’t do those things. We all want to reach high productivity, but the final step is something we can’t take. We try remember the milk for a while, but we never learn how to use it all the time.

Wanting productivity is in your comfort zone

We all want to reach productivity though. And we like that, we like to test a system for a week and throw it away eventually. Why? Not sure. Probably because we can tell others about what we do with productivity and being familiar with ways to be productive. Maybe so we have the opportunity to be productive anything we want.

Productivity isn’t the solution (always)

Productivity works pretty often, but not always. If you want to get a diploma, productivity can help you, but won’t be the key factor of earning the diploma or not. Passion is. If we are passionate about something, we don’t need fancy tricks for high productivity, we want to work on it all the time than. We are willing to work on a project for a whole night, we don’t need productivity, why finishing something you like as fast as possible. It is a paradox, we want to do a lot with a little time, but we don’t want to work hard. Things are complicated.

I am exactly the same as you guys, I also love productivity, I have never used any productivity system for more than a week, but I have used many for a couple of days. But 2010 is here, and maybe this will actually be the year we start to be productive!

This is a guest post by Stefan Knapen from StudySuccessful.com, a blog about studying successful. Stefan is a med school student from the Netherlands who likes to experiment with study tactics and likes to share his findings to the web!

I love LaTeX and use it for most of the documents I produce. However, there is one feature I was missing from Word, which is the ability to track changes when co-authoring documents. I found the solution to this problem in Subversion, a version control system.
The intended audience for this software is programmers who have to work as a team on the source code of a program. Since tex files
are basically source code, Subversion works great with LaTeX.

The basics

Subversion works as a client/server architecture. The server contains repositories and is the keeper of the files. Each client can checkout files to work on and then commit the changes back to the server when he is done. If two or more clients are working at the same time, the last one to commit will have to decide what to do with the differences. The nice thing is that the Subversion server keeps track of all changes made, so you can go back in time to any previous version easily (this is even better than what you can do with word.

What you need

You will need a server and a client. You can install a server on your own computer, but the easiest way is to use a hosted solution.
Beanstalk is a Subversion hosting service that has a free plan for up to 3 users and 100MB, plus their documentation is great to help you get started. For the client, on Windows the best (and free) alternative is TortoiseSVN and it integrates well with Windows Explorer. On Mac OS, I personally use Version which is shareware, but there are also free command line tools available from openCollabNet.

To learn more about Subversion, the book Version Control with Subversion is available for free online.

Version Control with Subversion

C. Michael Pilato. O’Reilly Media 2008, Paperback, 432 pages, $23.66

Like many grad students, it seems like I never have enough time to do everything on my todo list. More often than I’d like, my exercising suffers for this lack of time. Here are a few simple tips to help you achieve your fitness goals:

1. Take the stairs as often as you can. While taking the stairs is not always an option, like with a group or when you’re in a hurry to go to the tenth floor, it
   is a good habit that helps you stays healthy, one step at a time.
2. Exercise at your desk at least once a day. WebMD has a good article on exercises you can do at or around your desk.
3. Run. Running is cheap (all you need are good shoes and a pair of shorts), effective and easy to fit in your schedule, plus you can listen to audiobooks or recorded lectures if you insist on multitasking.
4. Do push-ups. Push-ups require no equipment at all, which fits perfectly the student budget. Want a program to follow? Check out one hundred pushups
5. Use exercise bands. They’re cheap, small (especially important if you live in a dorm) and can be used for a total body workout. I use them while watching TV.

Want to read more about fitness? Check out my favorite fitness blog, Get Fit Slowly.

Since I entered grad school, one thing I have been struggling with is trying to keep up with all the current research being published. In finance, there are three top journals (Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies), so in order to stay current my routine was to go on each of their website monthly (or more often bi-monthly) to look at the new papers. However, that meant looking at about 40-50 papers, so I usually picked only a few papers based on the title and authors and only looked at the abstracts for those papers. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the other papers, it’s just that it seemed too time consuming to look at all of those papers in one session.

I’ve been a big user of RSS for a while now, subscribing to dozens of blogs (to subscribe to PS, use the big subscribe link in the top-right corner), news service and craigslist search results. Lately, I realized that the publishers of the top finance journals – Elsevier, Wiley InterScience and Oxford Journals – all offer RSS feeds to subscribe to the journals.
Obviously, you still need a paid subscription (usually through your institution) to access the full papers, but the convenience of RSS subscriptions is a big time saver for me. Not all journals are created equal however. For JF and RFS, I get the list of papers only when a new issue comes out. For JFE (published by Elsevier), I get frequent updates whenever a paper gets accepted for publication.

No matter what your field is, I’m confident that the most important journals should have RSS feeds too. If they don’t, it’s probably just a matter of time (but you can speed things up by emailing the publisher).

If your don’t already have a RSS feed reader, the most popular one (according to the stats of PS) are Google Reader and NewsGator Online.
On my Mac I use NetNewsWire, a free feed reader that syncs with its companion app on iPhone and iPod Touch. The windows software from the same company, FeedDemon, also syncs with the iPhone app. You can also subscribe directly in Firefox or Safari.

Alisa Miller at MatchACollege.com posted a list of 100 Blogs that Will Save You Time & Make You More Productive.

In this list, you’ll find many student-oriented and academia-oriented blogs.

Thanks to Alisa for including Productive Scholar in her list!

As a grad student, I have a lot of important files on my computer. For that reason, I do regular backups (and you should too!) of all my files to an external hard drive using Time Machine. While such a backup solution is fine for mp3s, some files require more than that. I cannot imagine losing files from my research projects or my working papers (I’m shivering just by writing about it). Countless hours of work would be lost, which would surely result in a large financial loss if it delays my studies.

To protect me against that catastrophic scenario, I use an online backup solution from Mozy [if you signup following that link, I get 0.25GB more for free and so do you!]. All I had to do is install the MozyClient software (available Windows and Mac) on my computer and now my files get backed up regularly, automatically. Best of all, since my most important files are rather small (text and code), the free service of 2GB is quite enough for my needs (for now at least). If the worst ever happens, I can restore my files using the MoxyClient software, via a web interface or have them ship me my files on DVD (that last option isn’t free, obviously). If the 2 GB isn’t enough for you, the unlimited plan is $4.95/month, one of the cheapest on the market.

Here is a quick list of online backup solutions with free plans:

• Mozy: My favorite, this is the one I use. Mac and Windows, 2GB for free.
• Dropbox: Mac, Windows and Linux, 2GB for free.
• Box.net: Web-based, 1GB for free. Offers collaboration features.
• humyo.com: Windows only, 10GB for free.

I chose to live in downtown Vancouver instead of on campus for many reasons and I’m really happy with my decision. However, there is one big drawback to living off campus: the time spent commuting. I take the bus every day and my commute takes me about 1h30 (45 min each way). I use the bus for three main reasons:

1. At UBC, a bus pass is included with your tuition (you pay for it, but you can’t opt out). Therefore, commuting by bus is virtually free (no extra cost).
2. I don’t own a car. I just find it cheaper to rent one every time I need it. Car sharing services like Zipcar are very convenient for those in my situation.
3. My daily bus ride is a great time to be productive and get things done.

Indeed, there are many things you can get done while on the bus (or in the subway):

• Read: The most obvious and the one I do the most often. I try to bring on the bus reading material that isn’t to bulky, like magazines, academic papers, lecture notes or small books. My favorite bookmark is the post it note. With a sticky note, you can mark not only a page but also a line on the page. Since it is cheap and disposable, you can also use it to take notes or to keep a list of sections to read in a book.
• Listen to audiobooks: Some people don’t like to read on the bus, and that’s fine. Listening to audiobooks is one alternative to reading. There are a lot of books available for purchase from Audible and iTMS or you can make your own using text to speech software (some have a text to mp3 function). One of my favorite magazine, The Economist, offers an audio version for free to its subscribers.
• Clear your inbox: If you’re lucky enough to have a Blackberry or an iPhone (not yet available in Canda… one day maybe), your commute can be a good time to clear your inbox and respond to all your emails/facebook mails/other forms of electronic communications.
• Brainstorm: Let’s be realistic, you won’t get any real work done like writing a paper on the bus. However, with a pen and a small piece of paper, it can be a good place to start brainstorming or organizing your ideas.

One thing I consider a must-have if you want to do anything productive in public transportation are headphones (preferrably attached to something like an iPod). I personnaly use some cheap “noise cancelling” earbuds from Skullcandy, but with a bigger budget I would definitely go for the Bose ones.

In academia, LaTeX is a popular alternative to PowerPoint for presentations. In this how-to, I’ll introduce you by example to the beamer class for creating presentation in LaTex. Using LaTex for this purpose has many advantages:

• Present great-looking equations.
• If you use LaTeX for your papers, you can easily reuse your equations and tables.
• A more “professionnal” overall look.
• Avoid compatibility problems when using computers other than your own. While you don’t always know which PowerPoint version is going to be available (if any), you’re almost sure to find a PDF reader. Just to be on the safe side, you can carry with you a standalone PDF reader like Sumatra PDF portable.

However, using LaTeX has limitations such as the lack of a user-friendly graphical interface and the impossibility to add media elements such as videos and animations. Furthermore, you have to say goodbye all those great transitions (just kidding, I hate transitions).

Before we start, if you are new to LaTeX I suggest you first have a look at Getting Started with LaTex.

To introduce you to the use of the beamer class, I will go throught a sample presentation:

• Beamer Example (LaTeX)
• Beamer Example (PDF)

\documentclass{beamer}

\usetheme[secheader]{Boadilla}
\usecolortheme{seahorse}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}

These commands tell the TeX engine that the document is going to be a beamer presentation. To see what other themes and colorthemes are available, check out the beamer class user guide [PDF].

\title{My Nice Presentation}
\author{Productive Scholar}
\date{March 12, 2008}
\institute[2008]{ECON 101}

\begin{document}

\frame{\titlepage}

Sets up the title frame. The author and the institute (here I put 2008, but it could be your university) appear on the bottom left corner of every frame.

\section[Outline]{}
\frame{\tableofcontents}

\section{Introduction}

\frame {
	\frametitle{First Frame}
	\begin{itemize}
		\item<1->One good argument
		\item<2->Another good argument, after one click
		\item<3->Last one, after another click
	\end{itemize}
}

The first two lines make the outline frame. The rest create a frame with three bullet points. This frame consists of three actual PDF pages. The first bullet point will appear on all three, the second one on the last two pages and the last one on the last page only. This way, when you “click” (advance one page), a new element appears. To control the page on which the item first appears, change the number in the \item<1-> tag.

\section{Next Section}

\subsection{First Sub Section}

\frame {
	\frametitle{Second Frame}
	This text will stay on all pages.
	\only<1>{
		\begin{itemize}
			\item<1->This will only appear on the first page
			\item<1->This is also only for the first page
		\end{itemize}
	}
	\only<2>{
		\begin{itemize}
			\item<2->This will only appear on the second page
		\item<2->This is also only for the second page
		\end{itemize}
      }
}

In this case the first two bullet point elements appear on the first page of the frame, and only on that one. The other two elements only appear on the second page. To limit a part of the frame to a specific page, put your LaTeX code inside brackets after a \only<#> tag, where # is the page number.

\subsection{Second Sub Section}

\frame {
	\frametitle{Last Frame}
	This is the last frame
}

\end{document}

One last frame and the document is complete.

This short example is only meant to get you started. To learn more advanced stuff, like creating hand-outs or designing your own themes, check out the beamer class user guide [PDF].

On Windows most people use Acrobat Reader for presentation, which is ok (except when an Auto-Update pops-up at the beginning of your prensentation). The free Foxit Reader is another alternative.

On Mac OS X my favorite PDF reader for presentations is Skim. It works great and even allows you to add nice (for those who like transitions) Keynote-like transitions to your presentations (it has to be the same transition for all frames though). I also use the free iRed Lite to control Skim with my Apple remote. [Update: The most recent version of Skim now has built-in support for the Apple remote.]

Please share your beamer tips and tricks in the comments!

Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition)

Helmut Kopka. Addison-Wesley Professional 2003, Paperback, 624 pages, $41.81

Portable Apps are free, open source applications for Windows that have been repackaged so that they do not need to be installed. They can therefore be copied to and used from a USB key (thumb drive), a portable hard drive or even an iPod (mounted as a disk).

If you work in a context similar to my school, these can be very useful. I usually bring my laptop to school, but when I don’t I have to work on one of the shared computers. Since only the PhD students have access to them, we share one account with admin privileges. Basically, it means that we can install anything we want so you can imagine that all kinds of toolbars are installed in every browser. It also means that there’s no point in setting your preferences since somebody is probably going to change them the next time.

Portable Apps offer a great solution for this situation or for a situation where you are not allowed to install anything on the computer. Many portable apps are available, here are the ones that might be the most useful for students:

• Firefox: Keep your browser, your extensions and your bookmarks with you. I recommend installing the Google Browser Sync to keep your bookmarks in sync with your home computer.
• Thunderbird: Sure, you probably can access your emails over the web, but if you prefer to use an email software, Thunderbird is the way to go.
• Miranda IM: For those addicted to instant messaging, Miranda IM is a client compatible with most networks (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Google Talk).
• Pidgin: Another cross-network IM client.
• OpenOffice.org: Take a full office suite with you wherever you go.
• Abiword: Another word processor compatible with Microsoft Word.
• Sumatra PDF: A lightweight pdf viewer.
• Notepad++: A text editor with syntax highlighting support for many languages, including LaTeX.
• 7-Zip: A compression utility with support for Zip, Tar, Rar, 7z and more.
• Clamwin: An antivirus.
• PuTTY: A Ssh and Telnet client.
• Filezilla: An FTP client for your file transfer needs.

The new theme is up and running. Since started Productive Scholar, getting a new theme was on top of my todo list. The old theme looked fine, the main problem was that it is one of the most popular theme for Wordpress blogs (the blog platform I’m using), which means it is used by thousands of other blogs.

The new theme is not a custom one because I’m not good at web design and custom themes are not that cheap. I decided to take a free web template called terrfirma 1.0 by NodeThirtyThree and make a Wordpress theme out of it (adapt it to work with my web platform). Furthermore, I modified it to fit my custom needs (two sidebars, slightly different style). Since this theme is not easily available for other blogs, Productive Scholar should have a fairly distinct look.

The photo on the top right is the view at the end of the Main Mall at the University of British Columbia. It was taken by flickr user sillygwailo.

I’m very pleased with the result and I hope you’ll like it too.