Grad Hacker

Let me be straight with you, I like the idea of routines. I like the idea of having a life where I know that at this time, I’m working, and at that time, Im not working, letting me thus “not work” guilt free. Fixed schedules seem to allow avoiding two deadly grad school traps: 1) the distracted i’m-at-work-but-wasting-time-pretending-to-work trap and 2) the i’m-at-home-and-feeling-guilty-about-not-being-at-work effect. In fact, some parts of my life are all about routine. I eat the same dinner and breakfast almost every day of the week that I’m home. No joke. But I have a lot of trouble following a prescribed work/play routine consistently.

Thus, I have e a predicament: I can’t seem to follow fixed work schedules, but I hate those two grad school ills more than tax-dollar funded corporate bonuses.

What’s a nerd to do?

First, we should ask why I can’t follow a fixed schedule: a legitimate question. I can boil it down to two main reasons: 1) I don’t want to go home when I have momentum. 2) I like variety. Let’s discuss each.

Momentum

Momentum is key in my work. I’m in the natural sciences and a lot of key results come from seeing a pattern in data, supposing that it is a result of some physical principle (modeling the data), and doing, if necessary, further experiments to see whether your model is right. For idiots like me, this is tricky work. If you miss a pattern in the data or think you see something, which later turns out to be a mirage, it could cost you weeks, months, or years of work. The cold truth is, there’s not much you can do about this. It’s how science works. Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong, but hopefully you’re right more than you’re wrong.

So what do I do when I have a new idea, think I see a new pattern, or think I see how an old hypothesis is wrong at 8:00pm on a Tuesday night? Do I watch some TV and say I’ll get to it in the morning? It’s certainly an option. I’ll definitely be enthusiastic about getting to work on my new ideas in the morning. But I could also forget a lot of the subtlety in my ideas by that time. I have a lot of sympathy towards the idea that a fixed, limited work schedule preserves creativity, focus, and energy by not trying to do work at all waking hours. But if I think I have a decent idea, or if things start to go my way, previous reasons for not working late begin to melt away; that is, energy, enthusiasm, and focus are easy to come by when you think you’re on to something. So in times like these I clear my desk, get scratch paper or my computer out and play with the ideas.

This is what I mean by preserving momentum.

Variety

What’s there to say about variety other than that it kicks ass? Work can get repetitive and boring and variety is the cure for it. Specifically in terms of work schedule variety, I mean: sometimes going in early and leaving early, sometimes working at night, sometimes taking a break in the afternoon and coming back, sometimes working morning to night and taking the next morning off, you get the idea.

Problems

But that can cause problems: adopting a work schedule with “variety” quickly leads to an “I work whenever the hell I feel like it” schedule, which leads to the two grad student ills I described above. How? First, “I need variety” can often mean sitting at your desk and browsing the internet all day. Then doing the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, until the week goes by and you start to feel bad about not having done anything. Second, with a variety schedule you have no clear boundaries between when you’re “supposed to” work and not work, so you can easily start to feel guilty about not working during your play time, which is a miserable, horrible place to be.

Solution

I’m not clear I have a good solution but I’ll suggest some ideas and let you list your brilliant ideas in the comments.

Simply count your hours of honest work. I know this isn’t a sexy idea, it’s old school, it’s not what bloggers say, but there is simply no substitute for doing work, and if you want to make sure you do a certain amount of work each day, while still maintaining the freshness of different schedules, you can just try to make sure you hit your goal each day; plain and simple. You don’t have to be anal, just make sure you’re getting roughly x hours of honest, uninterrupted work in a day. I know there are all these timer widgets and online things that time your work, but simply remembering you’re at some number and have to reach another number by the end of the day is usually good enough; you’ll know if for the past few days you’ve basically been doing diddly squat. Of course, this may be okay if a break is what you need, but you should be aware.

Don’t go overboard.  That is, don’t change your schedule from a sane, practical work schedule too much. At least, unless you feel you have a really good handle on avoiding the grad student ills of distracted work and guilty play. For example, I’ve learned that if I have a huge break in the middle of the day and try to go back and work in the evening, my chances of failure are high, so I usually just switch between morning and evening schedules as well as super-sized-days and half-sized days.

Such is what I’ve been doing lately, and although I’m not sure whether it’s made me more “productive” in the sense of “output” I don’t care, because it has served it’s real purpose, which is that it has let me enjoy work more, it has made work feel more fresh, and it’s kept my energy and enthusiasm up. Hopefully this will last.

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don’t really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, we will periodically provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

In the age of the interweb, your online presence is your life. If you’re still commuting to work, working in an office with other humans, and physically handing-in paper reports to your boss, you clearly didn’t get the memo. We have home offices now, and we communicate online. But that’s cool, if you still go to school to “do experiments” or “TA a class”, or go to the office to “sit in your cubicle”, don’t worry, this advice will still apply, because I’m sure you’ve learned by now to have your computer with you always to check email often, and while you’re checking email I can bet a chat service is up and running in the background.

Now, here’s what separates the women from the girls: does your chat status look green or say “available”? “Yes,” you say, “I want to talk to my friends, that’s why I’m online.” What an amateur response. You need to ask yourself what kind of message this sends to the world, especially the chat world, which consists of your close friends and colleagues. How often are you online? (if you answered “not often” please re-read the first paragraph). How often are you broadcasting to the world that you are “available”? Do you know what this means? “Available” directly translates to “I have nothing to do. I have no active projects on my plate right now. I am accomplishing nothing in my life. I do not contribute to society. I am worthless as a human being.” Is this really the kind of message you want to send to the world?

Fret not, however, because your problems are easily solved with a simple click of the mouse. Wave goodbye to that little green dot next to your name and turn it red. Simply change your status to busy. Ideally you should type something that emphasizes how stressed out you are because of how many things you’re doing at the same time. Try to be more creative than what I’ve shown in the picture above, but otherwise the redness of your status will suffice. Notice how the image at the top of the post makes you want to talk to me a lot more than the green image below it: “What are they doing?! Why are they so busy?!” It also inspires you: “I better get to work too. I don’t want to be seen as worthless!” Inspiring others is important, it makes your stock go up.

Lastly notice how I didn’t ask you to sign off. True, you may actually get more work done if you sign off altogether, but that simply doesn’t allow you to inspire others with your displayed productivity.

So take a second right now to look at your chat status and ask yourself how you want to be perceived: worthless, or productive?

Find the full list of How to Act Productive posts here.

When you’re in school of any kind, grad school, college, high school, what have you, you interact with or simply overhear a lot of people. They say things. You say things. This is life. But sometimes things that are said are so precious that they should be remembered and posted on a blog somewhere, like here.

“Grad school is like a mullet. Business in front, party in the back.”

In discussing grad school and how our “research is going” with a friend of mine, he uttered the above quote. I laughed really hard. Then I thought about it and realized that the philosophy behind it isn’t too bad. What he meant was simply that you gotta take care of your business when it’s time to take care of business. Do your work. Then, to maintain sanity and not get into “my life sucks” lamenting mode that doesn’t benefit anyone, you just gotta have some fun. In other words, have balance, a idea that has been taught by parents and teachers and everyone else for ages, but never quite so eloquently put.

Photo by: Prabhu B

It’s true. Admit it, being over GTD is the new GTD. I’ll be the first one to admit I’ve been on this train for a while now. Here are some of my “GTD is so not cool” posts: 

-It started off with me talking about how I think priorites are important: Priorities and Getting Things Done.

-Then really emphasizing the idea that some stuff just doesn’t need to be tracked: Are all open loops really created equal?

-Then I decided I could ditch contexts totally, I mean seriously, what am I a businessman?: Simply GTD: Do You Really Need Contexts?

-Then I went even further and said a next actions list is also getting chucked: The danger of next actions lists and what to do instead

So I love priorities, don’t like contexts, and I don’t even have a next actions list. So after all that, I’m clearly on the “GTD is so 2008″ bandwagon right? Kind of. But kind of not. GTD is still badass in my book. Here’s why I still think so and what ideas I still implement. 

It’s main idea, and I’ll stick by this, is simply that you gotta do what you gotta do to get crap off your mind. That’s it. That’s the main premise. All the other stuff is what David Allen has learned is useful to that end. But in the end he has said in multiple interviews that the extent to which you use any of the tips in the book is simply determined by what you gotta do to get stuff off your mind. If writing down a task and a half every other day does that, so be it. This idea of just getting things off your mind makes sense to me. I like it. I like being able to get lost in whatever I’m doing. I think that’s badass. 

Getting in the habit of capturing ideas so they don’t bother you and let you get lost jives with me. It makes sense. I think that’s badass. Of course having 18 different capture tools that waste time but cost money is ridiculous, but simply texting something to yourself makes sense to me. 

The idea of writing things down makes sense to me. I’ve talked about a bunch of notecards of the day. I use a txt file for the day if I’m at my computer a lot. I have a work.txt file where I list projects, ideas, thoughts, and even, hypocrytically, some next actions if the mood shall strike me. Whatever. But the point is, I write stuff down so it doesn’t get lost in space, and I check that writing often enough so that, again, it doesn’t get lost in space. Writing stuff down (one could say, making lists, if ’stuff’ is in that form) to keep crap off my mind makes sense to me. I think it’s badass. How much do I write down? However much I need to not keep thinking about it. That’s it. 

The idea of reviewing where I am and what I’m doing makes sense to me. It’s easy to get lost in tunnel vision mode as a grad student and stepping back every once in a while and seeing what you’ve done, patting yourself on the back, looking to where you want to go, and making a plan of attack is useful. Doing this regularly makes me feel good, so I think it’s badass as well. 

So this constant association of GTD with 43 folders, a palm pilot, a moleskine, a label maker, a million lists, and all the rest is, in my opinion, ridiculous. If you think GTD is “too complicated” and “wastes more time than it saves,” your revelation is not original, sorry. All that crap I listed is overkill indeed, but it’s crap hyped up on the internet, that’s all. The “system” is pretty flexible and it’s premise remains the same, just do what you gotta do to get crap off your mind so you can enjoy the feeling of getting lost in work and getting lost in play. That’s badass.

Photo by: cesarastudillo

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don’t really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, we will periodically provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

2009 can be the year you get your useless, lazy ass off your swivel chair and start contributing to society. That is, as long as you pick your resolutions from this list. (Yeah my resolutions post is later than all the other blogs in your reader, so what?) 

Resolution #1: Get in Shape Already.
You make this resolution every year and yet you still see other, more attractive grad students getting play when you aren’t. This can end in 2009! You just need a good plan. Here’s a good one: Wake up at 5 am every day, make it to the gym by 6, workout for an hour, shower, and chances are you’ll be in at work by 8 am. This plan never fails. Seriously, I had this one friend that got huge with it.

Resolution #2: Work through Lunch.
Lunch is such a time waster, what with all that eating and socializing. Resolve to bring sandwiches you can eat at your desk this year. Your morning momentum will no longer be broken. Skipping it altogether is also an option.

Resolution #3: Find Some More Extracurriculars.
You can’t feel useful to the world by just doing the same boring crap all day. Most famous and successful people have a million things going on. I mean, you think Donald Trump got rich by running just one business? Hell no. So what are you waiting for? Become a secretary or treasurer of a couple extra organizations this year. It will boost your resume and keep your ideas fresh.

Resolution #4: Find a New Productivity System.
Preferably one that works this time.

Resolution #5: Buy Some Really Big Headphones.
Let’s be honest, the other people in your workspace are the ones that are really bogging you down. Chatting, music, coughing really loud. It’s obnoxious. You need to take care of it. One method is to use discrete earplugs or earbuds from your iPod. That’s okay, but it doesn’t quite say “You’re annoying and I’m too cool to listen to your annoyingness” the way really big headphones do. You don’t even need to listen to anything through them, just put them on so people know your time is too valuable to listen to them.

Resolution #6: Get a new PDA.
Don’t pretend like you didn’t see at least one ad for a pimped out phone during the holidays. The newest tech tools are like the latest steroids for baseball players, it gives you an edge over the competition. How are you supposed to compete with your peers when they have the ability to buy things on eBay or Amazon at lightning 3G speeds while you’re still just SMSing your way through the day? Please.

Resolution #7: Make Your Own Website. About Yourself.
Welcome to the digital age, rookie. A Facebook profile aint gonna cut it in the real world. What you need is a professional website about yourself that highlights how cool you are. If the url has .geocities somewhere in it, you’ve scored big.

Resolution #8: Finally Fix Your Computer. Like Clean Your Registry.
Your lack of productivity is definitely due to your crappy old computer, investing in a lightning fast new one is always a good bet. Or you could spend the time with some registry cleaners, a format and reinstall, even a new operating system. I hear Windows Vista is pretty slick. Whatever you do, make sure you spend some serious amounts of time getting every megabyte of RAM working for you.

Resolution #9: Get Organized.
What’s all that crap under your bed? Or those papers from courses during Spring ‘06? That’s it! That crap is what’s slowing you down, what’s preventing you from reaching your dreams! Clean that up. Get a bunch of manilla folders, buy a label maker, do what needs to be done. With all that crap in its proper place you’ll be ready to roll into 2009. 

Resolution #10: Stop Wasting Time This Year!
As Brent Musberger would say, this is “the grandaddy of them all.” You are wondering where the hell 2008 went aren’t you? Yes, yes you are. Well it went somewhere and that’s all that matters. You don’t want 2009 to go by like this one did, into the starry night with nothing but a few extra pounds in your midsection to show for it (see Resolution #1). So you need to have a specific, foolproof plan to capture 2009 and do something useful with it. The plan? Stop wasting time. You can’t get more specific and foolproof than that.

“Should old Aunt Quaintance be forgot?…”

This is an inspiring way to start off the new year. Students doing cool things. Click the link below and scroll down to “23 Student Innovations.” I want to highlight a prof’’s comments in the first article about the movie listings iPhone app:

Students come to Mr. Von Ahn during his office hours to talk about business models. “One thing I recommend to them,” he says, is that if they are going to apply for a job or grad school, “it looks so much better that you started a company versus a 4.0 G.P.A.”

Hmm…where have I heard this before?

Link: NY Times: 23 Student Innovations.

Photo by: Michel Filion

I’ve written a couple posts about why I think working on important stuff is a lot better for your blood pressure than working in context. In fact, slowly, I realized I didn’t really need contexts at all. 

One evening this week, I took a dose of my own medicine to great success, and I want to share it with you in hopes that this one data point will convince you that my entire philosophy is correct. Such is my master plan.

The Story

I live in an apartment building where if you’re not there to answer the doorbell when UPS arrives, they don’t leave the package outside, they leave a note and come back tomorrow between the hours of early and late. They do this 3 times then ask you to drive to their regional center many miles away. It sucks. That day, I had to run around the city during the day and when I came home in the afternoon, I saw no note, which means they hadn’t come yet, score! So I waited. and waited. Oh the holiday season when everyone is sending packages. Why the impatience? Well it just so happened that on that day, I had an evening meeting with someone for which I desperately needed to do some data processing beforehand. But I wanted this damn package. So I waited. And then I had this moment of questioning? What is this best use of my time while I’m stuck here in this unique contextual situation: waiting for UPS without my work computer when the most important thing I need to do right now is a specific bit of work?

I was antsy, I didn’t know what to do. I should do something right? I should make good use of this time. So the lure of next action lists arranged by context called. I don’t have those. I think they’re overkill. So I looked up my list and saw things I could do at home, with a computer, on the internet, etc. “Download such and such program and try it out.” “Clean bathroom.” “Make lunches for the week”. I was tempted to try doing some of those, because David Allen told me so, but I resisted. Really, it didn’t take much resistance. This meeting was important and all I could think of was when the m’fing UPS truck would show up, and whether I’d have enough time to process my data and get to the meeting. I started to worry. There was a lot of data. The processing would take time. I needed to plot stuff in a certain way. Even making the Excel spreadsheet for that would take time. And that’s when it struck me. 

The Idea

Let me do all possible thinking and planning and doing for this data processing that I can do right now with the tools that I have. That way, even if I hardly *do* anything because I don’t have my data, I can at least have thought of how I’m going to do everything and when I get to school, I’ll be speeding through the work with the thinking already done. And to top it all off, brainstorming exactly what needed to be done would make me worry a lot less while I sit here and wait. 

So I went to work. 

I whipped out a clean sheet of paper and started scheming. I’d put this here, plot that there, move that here. I then realized I could make the template for my worksheet on my crappy home computer, make the plots look better than that nasty theme Excel defaults to, tweak it, etc. I did that. I spent nearly an hour doing this. The template was ready to go. I emailed it to myself and then made a list of the tasks I’d do when I got to school in order. Waited some more. The UPS dude finally showed up. I grabbed my package, headed out the door, went to school, worked off my list to process data, used my handy dandy template I just made at home and made it well within time for my meeting. Money. 

Lessons Learned

If I had done “@home” tasks since I was stuck @ home, I would have had to spend an additional hour processing data at school. I would have also done my @home tasks poorly since my mind would have been on the looming important task. I would have had to suffer through a lot more worrying. Instead I was anal retentive on working on the most important thing at that moment and it paid off. What’s the lesson learned? If you’re going to be anal about something, don’t have it be on some esoteric productivity system that’s “so hot right now”. Let it simply be on getting important stuff done. Somehow, someway, with even as little as a blank sheet of paper and a pen, do something, on that which is worrying you most. It’s so not-cool these days to say it but it’s true: The most important thing you need to get a thing done is to do it.

Photo by: flattop341

Let’s get this out in the open once so we don’t have to mention it again and again: We are all busy. We all have too much stuff that we either have to do for ourselves, have to do for someone else or would like to do sometime. The first two categories can be grouped together into a single category we can call, simply, “Shit I Gotta Do.” How do you know if a task or project falls into that category? Because you will hear a derivative of that line in your head. For example, “I gotta do this,” or lines similar to the category name like, “Shit! I gotta do this” or “I gotta do this shit” or the plural form, “I got alotta shit I gotta do.” Frankly, I’m sick of this shit and I want it to be completed as soon as possible because it’s either 1) a necessary step to accomplishing my longer term goals, or 2) I want to get on to the third category of things I’d like to do. Finally, what’s worse than actually doing a lot of this shit, is thinking about the fact that I have to do it, I hate that. I hate that nagging voice in my head that tells me I gotta do shit, but doesn’t offer any useful ideas of how or when I will get it done. 

So…

I want to share with you a simple strategy I’ve been trying hard to use for the past few months which is based on the principle that although doing shit can suck, thinking about shit you gotta do sucks more.  Though it can apply to anyone, I think this strategy is particularly useful for graduate students because, unlike undergrad and high school, our most important tasks are no longer homework assignments, which are (hopefully) clearly defined tasks with a declared deadline. 

Strategy: Make an immediate timeline for the completion of any new item that enters the Shit I Gotta Do category. Immediately. I mean, right now. Write it down.

First, let me make a disclaimer, the idea of making timelines for completion of tasks is not new. A lot of people do this, there is fancy software to do this, etc. The most notable mention of this for me personally is The Reverse Calendar, discussed in Niel Fiore’s The Now Habit (He didn’t pay me, I don’t know him, blah blah blah). The reasons I’m writing this post, though, are: 1. I want to emphasize that a timeline should be made immediately. 2. That it should be made for smaller tasks too, not just when you’re constructing a skyscraper with your company using Microsoft Project and 3. What types of tasks it’s particularly necessary for (hint, tasks without obvious deadlines).

Let’s discuss two specific examples.

The Undefined Deadline Side-Project

Let’s say a professor emails something like this: “Susan, attached are a few papers relevant to your project. This group is working on a similar idea, but with a different technique. I think it may be worthwhile to see if we want to branch in that direction because our technique is more powerful than theirs. I know you are busy, but give the papers and any relevant citations a thorough read when you can and we can discuss what the possibilities are for this side project.”

Note a couple things about this item:

1) It’s a side project. Clearly Susan has a main project that is keeping her busy, she will have to make time for this one.

2) It has an unknown outcome. Potentially this could open up the door to great new results, or it could go nowhere, or anything in between. Right now, neither Susan nor her professor know what will happen.

3) There’s no telling how long it will take. She could spend less than an hour reading the paper and deciding it has little promise, or spend days looking through multiple references chasing a lead.

4) It has no deadline. This is the most important detail. Susan could just keep putting it off forever, and she would never know if there was a great result waiting around the corner.

What is Susan to do? I’ll tell you what, make a timeline. Immediately. These types of items, with: no deadline, an unsure amount of work until completion, an unsure result or value, will likely never get done unless Susan makes a conscious decision about when it she wants it done. She also needs to think honestly about how much work is likely involved. A possible timeline for her (that she would write down in a place she checks often) could be: Completed by next Monday. Read 1st paper Tuesday morning, 2nd and 3rd papers Wed morning. Relevant citations Friday afternoon. Make summary of findings Sunday morning. With this simple timeline, Susan’s nagging voice in her head has no ground to stand on: “Susan, remember that ugly literature task you have to do? Will you ever do it? You don’t have the time. You will never do it like everything else in your life, you loser.” She replies instantly, “Chill, jackass. It’s Friday and I’ve read the 3 papers, I’m reading citations this afternoon, and summarizing on Sunday.” Note that any slacking on the immediacy with which Susan makes her timeline simply gives her nagging voice more credit. It serves her well to make the timeline immediately.

High Importance Projects

On the other side of the coin are the high-importance, often high-stress, main projects in your life. Say you are behind (If you’ve never felt this, you can stop reading this blog altogether, it is of no use to you. Also please email me.), and say you even have an exact deadline (e.g. a conference). What do you do? I’ll tell you what, make a timeline. If, say, the conference is in March and it’s now January, you can go month by month, then plan week by week for the current month. That’s it. And, again, the most important goal is thus achieved: quiet down the annoying unconstructive voice in your head making you worried about the impending conference you have to get ready for. 

Such is the usefulness I’ve found in making a timeline immediately upon receiving new tasks. Let me end by listing my top 5 reasons for endorsing immediate timelines. 

My List of Top 5 Benefits of the Immediate Timeline

1. It helps prevent procrastination by giving you smaller, more manageable deadlines. 

2. It lowers stress by reducing the unknown-ness of the work required to finish.

3. It helps prevent getting to work, not knowing what you are supposed to do that day, and checking email for an hour, which quickly turns into all morning.

4. It prevents the anxiety of last minute work.

5. It makes the quality of your work better.

Photo by: roger jones

There’s something dangerous about a bunch of small, un-intimidating next actions on a single list. The things you should be doing are generally uncomfortable, larger, more intimidating than the things that aren’t that important. The things you should be doing are generally much fewer in number than the things that aren’t that important. Unfortunately, the things you should be doing are, by definition, the things that will bring you closer to your long-term goals. That’s why you should be doing them.

I see this as a predicament. How is one supposed to glance at this list of automated productivity, and time and again pick the most important tasks, which are more often than not, the most pain-in-the-ass tasks, when there is an abundance of easier, less important tasks sitting right there on the same list? If there is no clear distinction between important tasks and less-important ones, we will continue to fall into the GTD trap of checking trivial items off of lists we’ve spent way too much time grooming, giving us the false feeling of productivity. What’s worse is that all the while, the large intimidating tasks continue to add grains of stress to the mountains already built up in our minds. 

Plan Your Day

This is why I find priority to still be the number one most important way to organize any list of todos in any form, whether they be in your head or on your computer.  But I’ve found that it’s beneficial to go one step further and do one simple thing every day: plan your day. You don’t need a productivity book or internet phenomenon to teach you that. People have been doing this for ages because it’s irreplaceable.

Here are some details about making a daily plan that I’ve found beneficial:

-       Plan to do the most important tasks that will bring you closer to your most important goals.

-       Know which tasks take a predictable amount of time and which ones don’t. And fit in a reasonable amount of tasks for a given day. Don’t be overzealous. Everyone should know this by now. Don’t make the rookie mistake of planning a million things for a single day. Pick a few, walk way, then come back and pick half from that list. Let big tasks take up the whole day. If you have one large experiment or a paper to write, be okay with that being the only thing on your agenda for the day. You don’t need even write this down, you just know that tomorrow you will get this done one way or another.

-       Plan to take breaks and take them; another fundamental move. Consult The Now Habit for more explanation.

-       Hide. Try to find good chunks of time when (or where) other people aren’t around to work through your plan. Other people have a way of changing your plans. Bosses and Ph.D. advisors are number one on this list of hoodlums.

What about tasks beyond the scope of one day?

Of course there maybe lists of tasks and other things to remember about all the projects in your life that you want to keep written down. That’s fine. Write them down and put them somewhere and refer to them when you need to. You don’t really need to be looking at all those tasks for all your projects multiple times every day do you? 

What about when you’re thrown off your plan?

The hardcore GTD supporters like to bring up the argument that any given workday can throw you off your plan at an instance and if you’re net well-equipped with a list of tasks for any context, you’ll be standing naked in the rain. They say that as a result of the frequency with which this happens, priority should be at the bottom of the list of factors to consider when organizing a task list. I find this argument unconvincing, especially so for students. Of course emergencies happen and unexpected things come up, but when that happens you’re almost never at a loss of what to do. All this time we spend planning and reading blogs about using time wisely are not made for days when we are “putting out fires”. Everyone knows what to do those days. It’s for the common day, when nothing urgent arises and you are left only to your desk that you need to be well equipped with a plan of attack, because the alternative, wasting hours, days, and years oscillating on what you should be doing while browsing the internet and checking email is too bleak an outlook to accept.

Photo by: midiman

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don’t really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, we will periodically provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Let me make something clear. Many productive people are not in the best of shape; they don’t have the time to spend running a machine that goes nowhere or moving metal weights around for no reason. So they simply don’t exercise, ever. 

Amateurs. They have yet to realize that poor health, hospitalization, or death are some of the largest impediments to productivity out there. But real productive people know this. They know they’re busier than everyone else at the gym, but they also know they have to go to the gym to prevent grave health issues that could prevent them from doing work in the future. This could seem a predicament to the mere mortal, but not to the productive. Here enter those little plastic things you can throw over the treadmill display.

Productive people bring work to the gym. You should try it too if you want to be productive. Not only will it help you catch up on that huge list of things you’re behind on, it will give you a nearly untouchable combo feeling of efficiency and superiority knowing that while all your peers are wasting their time listening to Kanye’s Stronger, you’re getting work done and getting exercise. At the same time. Snap.

There are endless possibilities of people and work that can be combined together at the gym to create productivity bliss. Here I list a few. Recognize that some of these are advanced productive maneuvers so the reader is encouraged to start slow, perhaps a single academic paper, or some class reading before moving on to more courageous moves. 

1. Undergrad social science or humanities major with this week’s reading printed out two pages per page to save paper. This is a good starting point. A slightly more advanced modification is to carry a highlighter with you. If you’re running, this could be hard since the print is really small and the whole treadmill is vibrating, so either pick it up off the plastic tray and bring it closer to your face, or get on a stationary bike. Also, any and all reading material in the weight room is appropriate since there’s built in down time between sets. Lastly, the reading need not stop during stretching. You can just put it on the floor next to your face and do stretches where you’re on your side or stomach and still read a few sentences at a time. 

2. The TA’s or professors with material to be graded. This is by definition more advanced since it requires the tell-tale red pen to be carried around. Since your markings need to be slightly legible, the treadmill is not much of an option for this. The weight room is best and the stationary bike a solid second choice. Between sets, casually walking around while you read the student’s work with red-pen in hand is a good way of displaying your productivity to others and hopefully inspiring them. 

3. The entrepreneurs or socialites with the phone calls to be made. Seriously, why waste so much time silently exercising, when you could be on the phone? I’m not talking about the skinny freshman dude getting calls in the weight room from his friends to whom he needs to explain that he’s in the weight room and he checked the basketball courts but didn’t seem them there. He’s doing biceps and chest today. Maybe some abs if he has time. No, I’m not talking about him. He doesn’t have a bluetooth or some other headset, which is absolutely necessary, he’s also not panting heavily, so the person on the other line can barely make out the words. You need to be talking about business issues or planning a dinner party to qualify in this category.

Warning: The next example is for extremely advanced productivites (yes that’s a word), and should not be tried by amateurs. It was also witnessed by the author. For real.

4. The tablet PC folded up and placed on the plastic tray on the treadmill. This is the ultimate productive move. Your possibilities for work are endless: Gmail, Facebook (for strategic contacts), NY Times, pdfs, heck even Excel spreadsheets. You name it, it’s possible. You have to run slowly or walk to make sure your PC doesn’t fall off, but if that’s taken care of, you’ve just ordained yourself as queen/king of the gym. Congratulations.