This is a guest post by Scott.

In tough economic times, many people are looking at ways to save money. With rising inflation and the dollar having decreased buying power, it is more important than ever you make your money go as far as possible. In general terms, you would need $700 in 2011 to buy the same amount $100 would have bought in 1962.

Ten Tips to Save Money in 2012

1. Turn Off the TV

The average cost of a basic cable package, without fees and taxes, is $50 a month, which adds up to a total cost of $600 a year. By switching to an online streaming service, you won’t have to miss out on your favorite movies and TV-series. Netflix’s streaming package is $7.99 a month with no additional fees or taxes. That leaves you a cost savings of $504 a year.

Note from Stefan: You probably know how I hate television. Serious, this number one tip can save you LOTS of time and money.

2. Become a List Shopper

The easiest way families will blow their budget is at the grocery store, especially if you go shopping for groceries when you are hungry. Write down a list of all the essentials you need and stick to the list. You can also sign up for customer reward programs. Be on the scope for sales in order to find the best price or try your hand at couponing. Ten years ago, the cost of milk was $2.00 a gallon, now it is hard to find for under $3.00 unless you look for the sales.

3. Pay Your Credit Card Debt

Another significant drain on the family’s budget is credit card debt. The average American family has ten credit cards. Consider keeping only two with the lowest interest rates and balances. If you cannot afford to pay more than the minimum monthly payment, pay more on the cards with the highest interest rates. Call the credit card number on the back of your cards and ask for an interest rate reduction. If they say no at first, ask to talk to a supervisor and explain you can take your business elsewhere. Most of the time, they will reduce the interest rate. However, this really only works if your account is in good standing and you have been making the payments on time.

4. Kick Bad Habits to the Curb

If you have never sat down and figured out how much money you spend on smoking every year, just on cigarettes alone, not including doctor bills or increased insurance premiums, you may want to consider doing just that. Most people who are smokers will smoke a pack per day and the average cost of a pack of cigarettes, depending on your brand, is $6.87. That is an average cost of $48.09 a week, $192.36 a month and $2500.68 a year.

5. Turn Off…Everything

Turn all electrical devices completely off when they are not in use and pretty soon you will see the savings on your utility bill. If an electrical device has a power light that stays on even when it is turned off, it is still drawing electricity and costing you money. Over time, you will start to see a savings.

6. Get Your Yard Sale On

In the past, used items seemed to get stigmatized and everyone was all about buying everything brand new. This is not the case anymore. If going to garage sales is not your thing, try searching classified sites online like Craigslist or auction sites like eBay. You can also visit second hand stores or consignment shops for a significant savings over the cost of retail.

7. Try Your Hand at Gardening

Growing your own vegetables is stress-relieving and saves you a ton of money. Grow your own tomatoes and make your own spaghetti and pizza sauces. It is simple to do and it saves you from buying bland and tasteless store bought sauces. You also do not need a lot of room to garden most vegetables, especially tomatoes. An outdoor deck will work fine. Do some research about container gardening to find more cost-effective ways of growing your own food.

Note from Stefan: I’m growing my own peppers – amazing taste and they are growing in my growing in my window

8. Car Maintenance

Keep your car in good running order and you can save yourself hundreds if not thousands of dollars in repair costs. Also, be sure to keep your tires aired up according to the manufacturer’s recommendation. You lose 1% gas mileage for every 2 PSI your tires are under, so keeping them aired up is almost like getting free gas.

9. Home Maintenance

The same concept applies to your home. Fix leaks as soon as they appear in order to prevent future problems with rot, mold or mildew which can be expensive to remedy. Make sure all your windows are sealed properly to prevent the loss of heat in the winter and cool air in the summer.

10. Create a Budget

Creating a budget can be one of the best ways to see where and how you spend your money and the areas that offer the most potential for saving money. Stick to your budget and do not give up if you go over, just reaffirm your decision to save money and try again.

Note from Stefan: Probably going to write an entire article about it, but if you want to learn more ways to save money and to handle money responsibly, check outI Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Best personal finance book if you ask me.

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

This is a guest post by Jabe from MindMaple.

As a college student, my lack of organization skills was often an obstacle to my success. I am a creative thinker, but if I let my creativity run wild it can become as much a problem as it is a benefit. When generating ideas for an essay or project in college, I never found myself stumped by a lack of inspiration but rather by an excess of unfocused ideas. After a brainstorming session I would often end up surrounded by more ideas than I knew what to do with, and without any idea of how to integrate my thoughts into a unified argument.

In our electronic age, we have access to an enormous amount of information. However, without effective methods of organizing and connecting this information, we can be easily overwhelmed. In this post I will show how mind mapping software, a creative organization tool used by many professionals to manage projects and information, can also be an extremely valuable tool for students.

Mind mapping allows us to represent information visually. We can organize topics and ideas by categories and subcategories, and it is easy to show the relationships between different ideas. Using mind maps, we can analyze specific ideas in detail while maintaining an awareness of our general goals and concerns. Mind maps can be used for brainstorming, taking and sharing notes, organizing projects and schedules, and many other purposes.

Let’s imagine we have an assignment to write an essay on Shakespeare’s play Macbeth for an English class. Our end goal is to have an essay that makes a clear argument by guiding the reader step-by-step through a complex but organized system of information. The essay must be linear and highly structured: it must have an introduction which leads the reader into a rich body of related ideas that support and develop one another, and eventually it must bring the reader to a sensible conclusion.

When we are initially brainstorming for the essay, however, our thought process will be anything but structured. Different characters, scenes and themes from the play will flash through our mind. Our mind will be making constant transient connections between different elements of the play. The challenge of writing an essay, or creating any kind of presentation, is turning this unstructured intuitive thinking into a structured argument.

To organize our thoughts, we might think to make an outline or list using a word processor. However, the problem with word processing, or even writing an outline by hand, is that outlining is an inherently linear form of organizing ideas—one idea must follow another directly, and it is difficult to represent complex relationships and networks. An outline can be useful for representing the basics of the final essay, but it is hardly an ideal tool for planning in the early stages of the project.

Mind mapping can provide a solution to this challenge. Mind mapping’s ability to represent ideas spatially provides an enormous advantage to us as we consider various thoughts and ideas. When we are children, our brains learn to process complex visual information long before we are able to use language effectively. Organizing thoughts visually is a highly intuitive process, and allows us to think about information in new ways, often revealing ideas and connections we might otherwise miss.

The following images provide an example of the enormous difference between organizing thoughts with mind mapping (using the recently-released mind mapping software MindMaple) and with a commonly used word processor. For this example, I imagined having to brainstorm ideas for the Macbeth essay.

The difference between the two formats speaks for itself. Making a mind map is fun! It encourages us to be creative and follow our intuition. There is always space to add new categories and ideas, and it is simple to illustrate the relationship between different ideas. My mind map is somewhat cluttered, but you can make your mind maps as organized as you like. A simple web search will bring up countless
examples of organized mind maps on a variety of topics. The specific mind mapping software MindMaple is perfect for both beginners and advanced mind mappers. Unlike many other software products, which restrict the placement of new topics, MindMaple allows you to move and rearrange products freely. For beginning users, or for users who might prefer more structured maps, MindMaple also includes numerous formatting features to help you keep your maps organized and clean, as well as tools for integrating documents, pictures, and other features into your maps.MindMaple is available for download at www.mindmaple.com

As mentioned in the latest post I started with a new project to earn a residual income. This project is writing articles for a website which shows 75% of the time my Google Adsense ads.

I write for InfoBarrel, a revenue sharing website. The idea is really simple. There are two big ads on the website and 75% of the time they show ads with the ID of the writer of the specific article. Now, the writer only needs to write articles and he will have his ads on the internet!

Really? That is all? Yup. That is really all!

Passive Income: the Intriging Aspects for Students

I got interested in this website after listening to tons of podcasts from Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com. He talks a lot about how to create passive income streams to get a steady income without doing anything. Passive income is all about working hard now and chillaxing later while getting your income automatic!

As probably everybody I am interested in automatic income without doing anything. The main problem with passive income though is it takes a really long time to create. I am not going to lie to you, if you start now with creating passive income streams, you are not very likely to have a good stream of income in the upcoming year. And that is the main problem for students: we don’t need money later, we need money now. As a med student I am pretty certain of a good salary later for instance. But there is still a big reason to work on passive income anyway:

A free income stream. Not only for the near future, but for forever.

The thing with passive income is you don’t need to put any money in it right now, you can start writing articles for free right now and create some income. With that money you could start some niche sites and earn even more money.

My personal goal is earning around 100$-200$ by September 2012, most of all because I will start with residencies by then. I will be in the clinic for 3 years, without payment. Besides that the Dutch government took some measurements which make the life of students way more expensive in the upcoming years. Because I won’t have any time anymore to work side jobs, I find the idea of a passive income stream interesting!

Passive Income Stream: InfoBarrel

I started to write for InfoBarrel, a revenue sharing site. As said above, you write articles and your ads will be shown to your audience. This will result in clicks which result again in money!

Why InfoBarrel is interesting for students:

• Students have tons of knowledge. On InfoBarrel you write articles about every subject you want to write about. We have the advantage of continuously learning new information as students. You can put this information straight into an article and you will have an extra article to make money from! For instance, if you have a class and you make really good notes, it can be pretty easy to write an article from your actual notes. As we are learning everyday something new, we can share this new information and make money from it.
• It’s free to use. You don’t need a starting capital to register a domain name, no need to buy hosting, you can just start writing and start earning!
• It has a great revenue sharing model (especially if you have time). No we don’t have a lot of money as students, but most of us have free time. The good thing with InfoBarrel is that it is great if you have time. The revenue sharing model is you get 75% of the income. But if you write more articles, or write on certain topics, you can earn up to 90%! When your goals are only long term, this won’t really work for you, as you have to keep writing, but if you want to earn a buck now as well, this is better, because you have a higher chance for clicks, thus income!
• InfoBarrel has a great community. I knew something about internet marketing. I did knew a couple of things about SEO as well. But I learnt a lot in a small time frame, thanks to the community. InfoBarrel has a forum where even the top writers are sharing their secrets. The thing I love the most about the forums is how motivating they are.

Writing for InfoBarrel: What is the Next Action?

Hopefully you got enthusiast about the idea to write for InfoBarrel. But what is the next action? What do you need to do right now? Let me give some advice:

1. Sign up for InfoBarrel right now. Get an account and see what is what. Introduce yourself in the forums and enjoy the reactions.
2. Browse the forums and find some nuggets concerning keyword research and how to write for InfoBarrel. My biggest mistake with InfoBarrel is I just started to write. I had no clue about what keywords would make money and which not. I actually wrote an article about a button on Facebook and things about Barney Stinson. But if you want to write successfully for InfoBarrel you need to write articles which could make money. Things about finance for instance do good on Google Adsense, so will do pretty well on InfoBarrel as well probably! But this is a high competitive niche, so it will be hard to have a successful article. This all comes down to keyword research. I will later devote a complete article on keyword research here for you guys. A good forum post to start with is the ‘Consolidated, Ongoing, InfoBarrel 1-tip Thread‘!
3. Write articles and learn while doing! Just try something, just write and see what works or not. When you are writing more you will find what type of articles work for you and what not.
4. Don’t stop because you ‘are not earning anything. At InfoBarrel your success won’t come overnight, well, it won’t even come within two months. The articles need time to mature and you need to write more to make more money. Give it time and have a steady pace with your writing, but make sure you don’t give up!
5. Share your success here! I would love to hear from people who give it a try! I would love to help you as well with your InfoBarrel career. With over 60 articles I learned a few things. I did actually made money with it as well already, around 15$ now! Although it is not a lot, I am already really, really happy with it!

Hopefully you got interested to write for InfoBarrel. It wouldn’t harm if you just tried it out.

Please note: I used a referral link in this article. If you sign up for InfoBarrel, 2% of the time my ads will be shown on your article, which is taken off of InfoBarrel’s cut. Not yours. Besides this I can see how many people sign up. So if you sign up, I can directly friend you and therefore help you!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

College success starts with attitude. There is only one thing in life you have full control over: your attitude. Pay attention to your attitude and you will find that studying becomes easier and your grades will improve.

Towards the end of fall, when the weather starts to get darker and colder and college classes have turned into nightmares taught by evil demons it’s easy to let your attitude slip. Dorm room living can make the entire experience seem like you are stuck in some level of Dante’s Inferno. However don’t despair, here are some quick and easy tips you can use to beat the dorm room boarding blues.

• Add a few funny customized ring tones to your cell phone. Many free and inexpensive ring tones are available and there is no better way to meet new people and brighten up even the dreariest day. An added bonus is that most smart phones will let you assign different ring tones for everything from notifications to calls from special people.
• Buy a bag of mini marshmallows. Marshmallows actually have a medicinal past and they can be good for your health! Even if you don’t like hot chocolate or marshmallows it’s a sure bet some of the people on your dorm room floor will. It’s amazing how fighting over melting lumps of gelatin can instantly turn enemies into friends and brighten everyone’s mood.
• Clean up your dorm room and get organized. No matter how many classes you have, take some time to make your dorm room clean and inviting. This is where you come to rest and recharge. If your space is horrible it will most certainly affect the quality of your rest, your attitude and your studies.
• Along the same lines, get a warm, comfortable dorm room bedding set. All mammals make a nest when they sleep. If you are cold or uncomfortable in your dorm room bed there is no faster way to get the boarding blues.
• Make amends with your horrible roommate or move. By now you and your roommate either like each other or you don’t. Take an honest look at the relationship and decide if it is taking a toll on your attitude. If it is, get over and talk to your resident advisor. If they can’t or won’t do anything for you, talk to the manager of the dorm. In roommate situations the squeaky wheels get to move. Living with a gargoyle who makes it impossible for you to study is absolutely not an option.
• Use music to lighten up your mood and improve your attitude. The power of a new tune is unbeatable. Humming and singing have also been proven to improve circulation and stimulate multiple “feel good” centers in the brain. Music and radio are fantastic because they free up your hands and body to do something else. For students who spend so much time sitting and studying movement is critical for maintaining a healthy body and spirit.

Depression among young adults isn’t funny. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young adults ages 15-24. Take care of your attitude because this is your most valuable possession. Feeling glum this time of year if you live in dorm is pretty normal. Lets face it the rooms are pretty small and uncomfortable and the food is usually less than divine. However, with a good attitude you can make almost anything fun- or at least funny!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

File storage. I had problems with it, big time. No idea where everything was and no idea where I should put them. Until Martijn Engler came along. Martijn is a Dutch Apple Coach which knows, and has a lot of experience in, a lot about file storage. He developed a system where you will never lose a file again. There are some real nuggets in this 45 minutes long episode!

Items Mentioned in this Episode:

• Obviously: Dropbox!
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Selected Sync
• Free Extra Storage on Dropbox
• Martijn Engler on Twitter: @martijnengler
• Stefan Knapen on Twitter: @StefanSSF

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

• Click Here to Subscribe through iTunes
• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS-feed (non-iTunes)

Thank you a lot for your support. I would love it if you could leave a rating or review. Please leave me an honest one on iTunes here. It will help the show and it’s ranking in iTunes immensely! I appreciate it!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
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My very dear readers of StudySuccessful! I’ve not handled this site as I should. To be honest, StudySuccessful, my baby, got to the background the last couple of months. Not because I was that busy with offline life or something (well, as well actually). I got busy with other things online, which I will share in a second.

But I am back to business. A recent guest post, The Best Music for Writing, Reading, and Studying went viral on StumbleUpon and now there is simply a big mass of readers coming to the site. (A really big mass, I almost fainted when I saw the number.) Now that is some motivation, right?

Let’s dive in what got me busy and what I have in store for you.

What Got Me Busy?

Basically it was both an online problem as it was an offline problem.

In real life the academic year started again, which is always a busy time. Starting going to lectures again, starting with a committee I am doing and some parties of course. Not a lot, but it got me busy. Besides the normal curricalar stuff I am going to do research in the psychiatric field. Research in sleep, which should bring up a ton of interesting articles, both about sleep and about doing research.

Online there is more I want to talk about. To be honest there have been two major things I have been working on. Both of these are money-generating adventures, while StudySuccessful is, in the first place, an information-sharing place, where I just want to write what interests me and what I think will interest you as well. I do earn money from this site, but not a ton. As I am going to start with my clerkships next year, where I don’t have any time for anything, I want to build up a residual income, therefore I started a couple of projects. Let’s get into them.

Revenue Sharing Site: Writing for Money

I started to write for a site called ‘InfoBarrel‘. At InfoBarrel the writers can write up articles and 75% of the time the website will show the ads of the writer and 25% of the time the ad of their own.

This site is becoming a bigger and bigger authority site on information. With over 30,000 writers and some critical admins there is being put a lot of (quality) content on that site. You can lift on the success of the site because when others are doing good, you will do better as well.

One of the most amazing things of this website is when your content is on there it will stay on forever. And even better, your ads will stay on this content as well forever! So if I write an article right now, people can still find that particular article in 3 years from now and I can generate income from it.

The thing is writing a lot for the website. If you have a lot of content you are more likely to generate traffic and therefore revenue. So I am writing a lot for this website. I have some amazing goals for October which I am, if I continue like this, am going to reach.

InfoBarrel is an amazing platform and I will talk about it a little more in the upcoming future! Check it out yourself right now, I can highly recommend the nice forums and the easy way to start writing! (If you click on this link I will earn a commission on whatever you earn (2%), of course this is paid by the admins, not by your income!)

Niche Site: Legendary Barney Stinson

You guys know I am a fan of How I Met Your Mother and in particular of Barney Stinson, one of the five main characters.

As ‘Five Things We Can Learn From the AWESOME Barney Stinson‘ continued to be one of my top posts (in traffic) on this website I decided to create a niche site out of it, called ‘Legendary Barney Stinson’. A Niche site is a website which is focused towards a niche or only one topic. StudySuccessful could fall under the ‘college’ niche, but I don’t write specific enough to think myself of a college blogger alone.

LegendaryBarneyStinson.com is a niche site. The articles only focus around our Legendary bro and nothing more. My aim with this site is to provide content about Barney Stinson with, where necessary, links to Amazon. I have a post about Barney Stinson’s Halloween Costumes for instance where I link to Amazon where you can buy the complete outfits. There are articles as well about Barney Stinson’s Bro Code and Barney Stinson’s Playbook.

Recently I started a newsletter at this site, which enable me to cater the readers even better with even more targeted articles.

One of the cool things is: I have an amazing PDF file for your in store when you sign up. 214 Quotes from the Legendary Barney Stinson! And there are more good things coming your way when you are signed up to that newsletter! (How many awesome high fives do you want? )

What Do I Have in Store Now?

So that is cool. Did I sell out? I don’t think so, I just had to focus a little more on revenue generating opportunities, most of all because I am starting my clerkships next year and also because a little extra money never hurts.

For now I have a couple of things in store. As said, I am doing research in the field of sleep, so I gained knowledge about that subject. You can expect an article about sleep soon, with real references.

Besides that I have a podcast scheduled for tomorrow! A podcast with a Dutch buddy of mine solely about Dropbox! Two nerds talking online storage for 45 minutes.

Thirdly I am going to talk a little bit more about InfoBarrel soon, revenu sharing sites are really interesting for college students and a great way to earn some passive income!

That is it for now. I know Darren Rowse from ProBlogger says you should never excuse yourself for not being as up to date as you should be, but I feel good I told all of this. I think being honest can make the SSF community even more awesome!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

This is a guest post by the writing team of BusinessInsuance, if you would like to feature a guest post send me an email!

I know. Not everyone prefers listening to music while studying or reading or writing or creating art or whatever. But I think most of us can agree that it’s nice to have music around for activities like these. They can help set a pace for your project, break up the monotony, and (in their greater moments) inspire us. Of course, not all music provides the optimal environment or setting for creating or digesting words and ideas. Some music is too distracting or abrasive while other music might just put you in the wrong mood. This is why it’s important to have an extensive arsenal of a variety of musical styles that fit your every aural need in your quest for knowledge or creation. So without further ado, below is some of the best music to accompany your writing, reading, and studying endeavors.

Sigur Rós

What music is better for working and proving something of yourself than an epic dream-like post-rock band from Iceland that uses a hybrid of Icelandic and English and bowstrings on their guitars? This band has a variety of track lengths, but most of them are well beyond the five minute mark, which lends the music well for writing or any extended focus activity. Most Sigur Rós songs, like “Glósóli” linked above, begin with a very soothing, beautiful opening and just build upon that opening with a rich arrangement of sounds that just get bigger and bigger until you feel like the song is representing the most important moment of your life. In short, Sigur Rós sets the perfect soundtrack for doing activities that are important to your life, and they inspire.

Most of Sigur Rós’ albums are great for any quiet creative or knowledge work, but in particular, Takk…, Agaetis Byrjun, and (). Their most recent album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust actually has less epic buildups and more contemporary songwriting; both are great albums but not as ideal for writing or studying.

Do Make Say Think

While Do Make Say Think (DMST) falls under the post-rock genre, it sounds quite different than most post-rock bands. DMST employs more of a jazz aesthetic to its sound, using plenty more horns and two drumsets playing simultaneously; the band is mostly instrument although they do use vocals sparingly on rare occasions. DMST does build some epic ten-minute songs, but they are less linear in buildup and tend to have unexpected turns (hence the jazz description). DMST also has a distinctively more rock-band sound, utilizing much more grunge or dirty sounding guitars with less reverb and delay. If you feel like whatever post-rock you’re hearing might be putting you to sleep, try out DMST. The sophisticated musicianship and unexpected songwriting work great in accompanying any creative activity.

DMST has a beefy discography full of great musical moments that are sure to inspire; if you are unsure where to begin, I would advise starting with Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn and following that with & Yet & Yet or You, You’re a History in Rust. Their most recent album Other Truths is also riveting but may be a little too heavy or rock-sounding for some people’s attention spans while studying.

The Field

Let’s take a quick break from post-rock, and look at something entirely different but just as inspiring. The Field is made up of one electronic musician from Stockholm, Sweden named Axel Willner. As far as genre can be discerned, Wikipedia calls it microhouse and ambient techno. I also hear trance elements as well and wouldn’t be surprised if someone described it as intelligent dance music (IDM). The Field usually creates lengthy tracks mostly over five minutes (and some just a bit longer than ten). Sometimes voices are sampled, but they are used distinctively as instruments and wouldn’t distract someone reading how a lyric-heavy band or singer would.

To best describe The Field’s sound, imagine a simple beat on a loop that gradually morphs textures every few seconds until a living, breathing, and moving song emerges. The beat will drive your mind and focus as you work while the subtle variations will keep your mind from becoming restless and wanting to change the music to something else. Since they have a limited discography of only two full albums, I recommend checking out both the critically acclaimed debut From Here We Go Sublime and the more recent Yesterday and Today.

Yo La Tengo

Some of you may be thinking, “Yo La Tengo has lyrics. I can’t read or write while someone is singing in my ear.” Well I’ve got news for you: Yo La Tengo has a good number of instrumental albums. A lot of the instrumental tracks come in the form of soundtrack work, but I think even the soundtrack material has a distinctive Yo La Tengo sound. For those unfamiliar, Yo La Tengo is an indie rock band with a wide variety of sound that fits mostly in a mellow arena of dream-rock. Sill, despite many songs with a lulling go-to-sleep tone, Yo La Tengo also sports a good amount of (almost jarring) noise, distortion, and extraordinarily creative guitar solos in its music. Also, even on albums that do have plenty of lyrics, Yo La Tengo’s lead singer has a very modest voice that I’m sure many won’t find distracting at all while studying.

If you’re looking for Yo La Tengo’s instrumental work, check out the albums The Sounds of the Sounds of Science and They Shoot, We Score (scores for four separate films). For those that can’t work while listening to lyrics, there are also a few instrumental tracks on their regular discography that could enhance your drive; these include “Tired Hippo,” “Pass the Hatchet” (excellent guitar solo!), “Daphnia,” “The Story of Yo La Tengo,” and “The Fireside.”

Flying Lotus

Flying Lotus is the product of an incredibly talented experimental music producer who’s actual name is Steven Ellison. While his music tends to run along a BPM much slower than most electronic music, it is stocked full of innovation, surprises, and rich textures that you won’t even notice the slow tempos. His music style takes on a wide range of jazz, downtempo, dubstep, and just plain experimental (wonky also comes to mind). His beats tend to jitter in perfect precision, thriving on a chaotic feel to keep your mind interested while having just enough order to keep you bobbing your head. There is simply nothing that comes even close to imitating Flying Lotus. Perfect for studying; perfect for dancing at a party.

For those looking for a good entrance to this artist, I would start with Los Angeles or Cosmogramma. Cosmogramma has a bit of a rounder, smoother sound with may render itself better for studying, but Los Angeles is far from disruptive. His debut 1983 is also extremely interesting and innovative, but doesn’t have that flow and finesse of the later two albums.

Battles

For anyone unfamiliar with this band, allow me to warn you fully before first listen: This music may induce seizures. However, it may also induce extremely vibrant thought or drive you threw even the most monotonous workflow. Battles is a heavy-hitting math-rock group that loves utilizing loop and distortion pedals. Their music usually builds on a repetitive beat or musical idea but often takes unexpected turns, sometimes resulting in the perfect combination of layer adding and beat turnarounds. While Battles is not for everyone, I strongly recommend giving it a shot. I’m sure it’s not the most ideal study music for everyone, but when it works, it works extremely well.

Battles has a fairly limited discography. I recommend both its full length albums although I personally believe Mirrored is by far the band’s best work. Gloss Drop is still plenty engaging, and be sure to check out the various confusingly titled EPs (IP C, B EP, and EPC if you can find them

.

Jon Hopkins and Brian Eno

I hate lumping these two extremely talented musicians together, but I only do so that I have enough space for other artists. Also, they’ve become long-term collaborators since teaming up in 2004, and their work together produces amazing tracks like this. For those wanting one word describe the music of these two artists: Ambient. However, both musicians have created material spanning far outside the constraints of that genre (sometimes even dipping into relatives of dubstep). It’s extremely difficult to describe their sound, particularly since Eno’s career extends all the way into the seventies (he has a whole wikipedia page dedicated solely to his lengthy discography. I will say that they both arrange and polish massive soundscapes that can make you feel like you’re the only person around for miles or that there is some lurking figure sneaking around behind you.

Where to start. For Hopkins, I recommend checking out any of his full length albums as his career as a musician is only budding. For Eno, I’d start with Music for Airports, which is great for any quiet, concentration work and then start working your way through his ambient career, just going on intuition. He has so many albums available that just listening through a few seconds on each one will give you a glimpse of which albums you make like more than others.

Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails has so much material ranging from noisy industrial rock to more eerie acoustic work. It’s only natural that it has some great studying music. Not all of Nine Inch Nails lends itself to great studying music, but there is definitely some great material out there for getting your thoughtful work done. While some of the sound can be a bit grating, even the noisier moments all conform to solid rules of great songwriting. Trent Reznor always seems to deliver.

A great place to start for studying is their double LP work called The Fragile. The album transitioned away from the gritty and distorted industrial sound of The Downward Spiral and headed more towards an ambient direction full of soundscapes, ambient noise, and much more melodies and harmonies. This album does have lyrics, but you can tell there is definitely an instrumental emphasis. Of course another solid choice for studying is Ghosts I-IV which is an entirely instrumental concept album full of soundscapes and soundtrack-like work.

This content was recommended by the writing team at BusinessInsurance.org special thanks!

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As promised, I would share this link with you, the microsite of the Adobe. Adobe is organizing a challenge especially for students, called the ‘Imagination Challenge‘.

Express yourself and win $10,000 in the Imagination Challenge

If you show the power and depth of your imagination using the Adobe CS 5.5 Student and Teacher edition software you can win up to $10,000! And that is a lot of money..

But you know what is cool? There isn’t just one chance to win the $10k, but 5 times! Besides that, there are 36 chances to win $550!

Nice right?

Four chances to win: four periods

There are four different periods, with four different periods of voting as well. So if you wanna make more chance, participate four times!

• First period: 8/21/11 – 9/3/11
• Second period: 9/4/11 – 9/17/11
• Third period: 9/18/18 – 10/1/11
• Fourth period: 10/2/11 – 10/15/11

So the first entry period is on August 21st! You have to use an Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Student and Teacher edition (80% cheaper than the normal edition) product to be eligible for the prizes. Don’t have a Creative Suite 5.5 yet? You can get a 30-day free trial as well!

The Products:

Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection Student and Teacher Edition-Full

Fire off a great new app, website or video with Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection Student and Teacher Edition. Create without limits – Master Collection has all the tools you need to express your ideas faster and better than ever before.

The Mastercollection includes: Adobe Acrobat X Pro , Adobe PhotoShop CS5 Extended , InDesign CS5.5, Illustrator CS5, Contribute CS5, Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5, Fireworks CS5, Flash Builder Premium 4.5, Flash Catalyst 5.5, Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5, After Effects CS5.5, Premiere Pro CS5.5, Adobe Auditions CS5.5.

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium Student and Teacher Edition-Full

With CS 5.5 Design Premium Student and Teacher Edition, you can bring your stories to life in web, print, eBook or digital magazines, as well as on smartphones or tablets. Your creative storytelling doesn’t have to be expensive, because Adobe offers student discounts to those developing their talents.

Design Premium includes: Adobe Acrobat X Pro , Adobe PhotoShop CS5 Extended , InDesign CS5.5, Illustrator CS5, Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5, Fireworks CS5, Flash Catalyst 5.5, Adobe Acrobat X Pro.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium Student and Teacher Edition-Full

The web has endless options and you have endless ideas for how to use it. Revolutionize an existing idea or set your own path with a brand-new concept for desktops, smartphones, tablets or television with CS 5.5 Web Premium Student and Teacher Edition.

Web Premium includes: Adobe Acrobat X Pro , Adobe PhotoShop CS5 Extended , Illustrator CS5, Contribute CS5, Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5, Fireworks CS5, Flash Builder Premium 4.5, Flash Catalyst 5.5, Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium Student and Teacher Edition-Full

You don’t need Hollywood or a huge budget to make a great film – just your vision, time and talent. With CS 5.5 Production Premium Student and Teachter Edition, Adobe has your back on everything else. Production Premium comes on student discount tot take some of the worry out of learning about movie making.

Production Premium includes: Adobe PhotoShop CS5 Extended , Illustrator CS5, Flash Catalyst 5.5, Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5, After Effects CS5.5, Premiere Pro CS5.5, Adobe Auditions CS5.5.

So far this update, I’ll keep you up to date with more details on this contest later! Don’t forget to enter on August 21st!

To become the successful student we want to become and to become the best person we can every be there is a constant need for information. You need to be a sponge, you need the urge to suck up all the information you can get.

But how do you gather all that information? I’ve received this question multiple times over email and in real-life. And during the past years and especially during the last half a year (I have a smartphone in my possession now for half a year) I’ve developed a system how I can gather all the information I want to read on semi-autopilot. The semi is for the human filter (me) which is always needed when you are sorting out information you would like or not.

The Sure-Fire Way To Read (And Share) EVERYTHING

When I say ‘read’ please read ‘consume links’. This is because I use this system not only to read articles, but also to consume video’s, websites and everything.

This method will enable you to read all the interesting things you come across on the internet, with internet I mean everything: also email, twitter and other social media. What is special about this method is that you not only have a way to capture everything online, but this works also offline.

You know the feeling of course. You are on Twitter, somebody shares an interesting article about for instance Google Plus. You click the link only to find out the article is around 4000 words. You know you would like to read it, but you don’t have the time right now. Four thousand words take around 12 minutes to read when you are an average reader (maybe 8 when you implement some speedreading techniques) and this is simply too long. So you want to bookmark the page or something only to never look at your bookmarks again.

Offline this is even worse. You are talking to a friend with an interesting article he mentioned. You jot it down somewhere, hoping to find it with Google and you lose the paper you’ve written on it.

Not with this system! Let’s get into it.

Your Toolkit

• an Android/iOS smartphone. We are going to use a couple of apps which require a smartphone. Also the reading itself will be done mainly on a smartphone itself!
• Google RSS Reader. This RSS reader is simply still the best reader for me to subscribe to all of my RSS feeds.
• an IFTTT-account. IFTTT stands for ‘If This Then That’ and is a service which connects different services (like Google Reader and Read It Later) to each other. The service is now in Beta and I have 25 invites. The first 25 commenters who ask for an invite will get one. And a smart move would be if those lucky people with an invite will invite others as well (you get 5 invites to give out).
• Read It Later. Both the phone app and the web app. If you want to share the read articles on your iPhone you need to get Read It Later Pro, to only read the free app will be sufficient.
• Twitter. Obvious there should be a way to get all the interesting information to you. Therefor is Twitter of course. With an app like Tweetdeck you can even create filters to filter out irrelevant content. I can work with the normal Twitter app (necessary for Read It Later!) and some lists made for this workflow.
• Captio. Captio is an iPhone app which enables you to send notes immediately to an email address. Combined with the following tool the ultimate productivity to-do system. For Android users there is Jotter.
• Toodledo app. Combined with tags and Captio a great application to fix to-do lists! Android users, there are 3rd party apps which you can use!
• Just a little discipline. If something requires ‘a lot’ discipline it won’t work for me. This is just a little and I can stick to it, so I know for sure you can too!

Gathered everything? Alright! The best way to show you guys how I use this system is to make a flow-chart. You can find the flowchart below (click to enlarge). I will write it down as well.

My reading system is Read It Later. This is where everything comes in and this is the place where I can share everything to Twitter/Tumblr/whatever. I use Read It Later as well to read all the articles of course. Read It Later is the center of my Reading System.

Offline articles are captured through Captio. On a post at Stepcase Lifehack I explaind how I connected Captio with Toodledo with email. That post will explain a lot of things I am doing right here, so it is highly recommended to read first! Again the link: Editing To-Do Lists on the Go: Integrating Captio with Toodledo

Every note captured on Captio will be automatically send to Toodledo. I use the %read tag to sort make these notes stand out from the rest of my notes/to-do’s. So when somebody says ‘Stefan, did you read the article on X or X?’ I will say no and ask for the title of the article. Save the name of the article as a note through Captio (captio is one of the most used apps on my iPhone). If they don’t remember the name, ask if they can send you the article over email. Because they won’t remember this (please, refer them to my to-do system article, I want people not to forget these things!) save this as a note yourself. Write something down like ‘Asking Tom for the article on Google Plus %email’. When they get to their email again they are online anyway and can look the article up real quick.

Online articles are split up in 3 categories: 1) ‘Surfing’, 2) Social Media and 3) RSS Feeds.

1. Surfing articles. Of course sometime you are just wandering across the internet. And sometimes you stumble upon something awesome and want to read it later. You need to install the Read It Later bookmarklet on your browser for this situations. When you come across something awesome just hit the ‘Read It Later’ button and it will be saved to read later! (Install this bookmarklet also on your mobile browsers!)
2. Social Media. This means most of all  Twitter of course. You can install a special app within Twitter with Read It Later where you can hit ‘Read Later’ and the link will be saved to read later. So this is really convenient to do. But what is the most important with Twitter is to create a list. I’ve a list called ‘Interesting’ with people who don’t very often tweet about what they are eating or where they are heading. This list contains most of all people who share interesting stuff. So I have all the ‘link-potential-people’ in one place and this means I only spend a short time on Twitter to scan if I won’t miss anything!
3. RSS Feeds. If you come across one blog more often and you know (most of) the articles are going to be interesting subscribe to it with RSS! I have around 50 subscriptions to different blogs. Once a week I go across all of them and scan articles real quick. If the article is read-worthy I ‘star’ it which means it will be downloaded in Read It Later automatically with IFTTT. The way I’ve set this up is explained below.

Sharing happens from within the Read It Later app. If the article was good, I like to share it on Twitter, basically because I want other people to read it as well. I tweet both in Dutch (my native language and the language of the country where I live in), so I try to read the Dutch articles during the morning and tweet it right out (and tweet in Dutch, the US people will be sleeping) and I read the English articles in the evening, when the American fokes are awake as well!

For sharing you need the Read It Later Pro app, I think it is worth the 4$, because it is a service where I would like to pay for anyway and I think when you are sharing important content your social value will increase. So yes, it is a little investment, but worth the money.

Read It Later System: The Flowchart

Click on the flowchart to enlarge and see how the flowchart is build up. This is exactly how I approach all of my readings.

I check Google Reader and Toodledo once a week (sunday night preferably) to see what I want to read in the upcoming week. The thing with Google Reader is that the feeds are interesting but not every post will be interesting. So I can serve as a human filter to filter out the non-interesting articles and filter in the interesting only

Click the image to enlarge or click here.

Setting up the system

You don’t need to be tech savvy for this system, although it will help. The services are mainstream and made for people without any knowledge of code and everything. But I want to share a couple of links to make sure you set up everything correct.

1. Saving from the web to Read It Later with a bookmarklet
2. Saving from Twitter app to Read It Later with a bookmarklet (explained in the app)
3. Sharing from Read It Later to Twitter (explained in the app)
4. Connect Captio with Toodledo
5. Setting up IFTTT is explained below.

Setting up IFTTT with Google Reader and Read It Later

To use IFTTT you will need an invite. You can get on the list at IFTTT.com or you can have one of the first 25 comments on this post asking for an invite to get one of the 25 invites I can give away.

Setting up IFTTT is really easy. Below you will see screenshots of how I did it.

Create a task

If this will be: starring an item on Google Reader

and then that will be: save to Read It Later.

Missing Things

This system will always be changing. And it will needs some changes, because it isn’t really flawless yet.

• I miss tags. In one way or the other, tags aren’t really coming through. Need to find a way to get that, if you know of a way, please shoot me an email.
• The articles weren’t really ‘findable’  afterwards. Now, you can actually send from Read It Later to Evernote and that is what I do right now. I’m going to think of another way as well, because this requires a little too much right now (I know, I’m lazy).

Recently I got the idea in my head that standing behind a desk is better than sitting.The idea came from an article of Gina Trapani (known as the founder of Lifehacker.com). There are a couple of benefits to it and it has my interest. But the thing for me was, am I going to maintain this set-up? Therefore I decided not to buy a stand-up desk, but to make my own to test out.

First, why?

Using a Stand-Up Desk: Why Would You?

There are a couple of benefits to the system:

• Better condition. Because I have to stand all day when I am behind my computer, I will stand for a lot more hours, this will benefit my condition. Gina, as a woman, of course pointed out there will be a lot more calories burned (something I don’t consider as important), that would be a thing too.
• Better posture. My main reason. I’m pretty tall, so when I’m sitting I have a bad posture, I tend to hunch when I sit. Now I don’t feel anything from that now, but I know I will have backpain in 10-20 years if I continue to sit like this.
• Better productivity. When standing, you tend to work faster. There are studies which show that when meeting would be standing meeting they would go way faster. I think this is the same with standing behind your desk.

So 3 simple reasons to try this system out.

Now, I was wondering how I could test this out, cheap. And I thought of something.

How to Create a Stand-Up Desk for Almost Nothing

Necessities:

• 12 Pringles packages. These tubular things can carry a lot of weight.
• Two simple bookshelves. Again, easy. They should be big enough to carry your laptop (plus external monitor) and keyboard + mouse
• A Desk.

Creating a Stand-Up Desk

1. Divide the pringles boxes in 4 sets. Three boxes at each set.
2. Put one shelf on 2 set of boxes. This makes 6 pringles boxes in total.
3. Repeat step 2 with the other shelf.
4. Put your laptop, monitor, keyboard and mouse on the shelves.
5. Put your chair away and done!

That easy? Yes that easy. Here a picture of my set up:

Now, this is a good test set-up. After three days I can say now that your legs will hurt at the end of the day. But hey, you need to get your workout right?

Again, this is only a test set-up, if you want to go for the real deal right away, the Safco looks right and is only $236.99 on Amazon.

Let me know what you think about this set-up and about this experiment, are you in?

Contest + Giveaway announcement!

On Sunday the 14th the microsite of the Adobe Back to School Contest/Sweeptakes will launch. I will notice you in time and there will be more details by then.

Adobe gave me a CS5.5 package to review and to tell you guys about and I have to tell you, it is pretty awesome! Played around with it for a little bit (actually created this Read It Later workflow with it (more on this in Friday’s post!) and it works pretty smooth. The cool thing is, 80% off for students!

So in the near future I will send out updates about the sweepstakes and the contests! I hope you don’t mind, I mean, I’m giving away free copies, so I don’t think you’ll mind! Last note: I will be on (a well deserved) holiday the upcoming weeks, so my excuses if I don’t respond very fast. I have the posts about the contests and everything scheduled, so their won’t be any problem with that! Thanks!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.