Grad Hacker

Photo by: moriza

In life, sometimes no matter how hard you try to do good, there are those that try to undermine your efforts. Today’s culprit: The New York Times.

Since March 2008, when I originally advised people that walking fast would improve their efforts to act productive, I have been on a tireless mission to coach people on how to not only be productive, but how to also act productive. That is, put their productive habits on show so as to both inspire people and improve your perceived value.

But today, in a dirty-handed move to discourage people from such a basic display of productive multitasking, the New York Times has published a seemingly serious and scientific-study-filled article on how cell phones and walking don’t mix.  Those bastards. They put the “ir” in irresponsible; trying to prevent people from being productive with scare tactics like a shameless story of an innocent 16-year-old boy who “walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion.” Have a heart.

It doesn’t stop there, however, they also cite an innocent “68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cellphone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness” and even start the whole article off with a tale of a 25 year old Tiffany, who was walking while talking to her grandmother and ran into a truck, which the Times adds “was parked in a driveway.”

Perhaps what disturbs me the most about this article, though, is that they don’t just stop at little anecdotes. They try to add science. That hits too close to home. They cite work by a graduate student at Ohio State, which finds that “slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text.” Who is this grad student whose research is making people act less productive?! I need to give him a call, perhaps I’ll do it on my afternoon walk.

So what do you do when someone tries to compromise your life’s work? You fight propaganda with propaganda. So I am writing this post to encourage all of you to talk, text, play iPhone games, even set your home DVR with DirectTV all from your phone, while walking! Show people that you are too busy to walk and do nothing else at the same time!  Check your Gmail! Text your friends! Read papers with a smartphone pdf reader! Even read the New York Times itself! But walking and texting is such a basic productivity maneuver, I feel bad leaving it at that. Try more impressive productivity displays such as biking and talking, or better yet, biking and texting (If this is outlawed where you are reading, then do not do this. Grad Hacker is not responsible for you breaking the law. Breaking the law is not productive.). Whatever you do, don’t listen to the haters, and make sure you act productive.

Standard messaging and data rates may apply.

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

Recently, I read Michael Pollan’s new book “In Defense of Food”, which was #1 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list for six weeks. It’s about eating good things, things that keep you healthy, and things that are good for the earth. The most famous line from the entire book are its first seven words, which, he says, sums up his whole philosophy: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. He goes on for an entire book to elaborate, but does, in fact sum up his advice.

I liked this simple approach to a subject (eating food) so overdone it makes me want to vomit (the opposite of eating food). While repeating this catchy phrase over and over in my head one day, I thought: time managment is another totally overdone subject, wouldn’t it be great to have a similar credo to simplify all this hackneyed advice on to do lists, productivity, time management systems, and the like? Then, sent from the productivity heavens, it came to me:

Make lists. Not too much. Mostly do.

Let’s look at the three parts individually.

Make lists.

Let’s be honest, 99% of time managemenment techniques involve some sort of list making. From Alan Lakein’s ABC system back in the 80’s to GTD, everyone is telling you to write things down one way or another. Generally, in subjects with a lot of differing advice (e.g. time-management, fitness, diets, etc.), if you find a few recurring themes that everyone agrees on, it’s likely that they are solid principles to abide by. So in this case, it probably doesn’t matter whether you sort your lists with ranked A, B and C priority items, or by context in GTD, or keep a list of projects in your pocket like Cal Newport, or go through your list in a clever way like in Mark Forster’s Autofocus system. What matters is that you write stuff down and use that list. Otherwise you’ll forget stuff and not have something to fall back on when it’s not obvious what you should be doing right now. Certainly there are productive people that never make lists, but there are also people with great bodies that never workout. They’re lucky. You can hate them. But the bottom line is that writing stuff down in some form is a recurring piece of advice in differing productivity literature in the same way that regular excercise and avoiding junk food are a recurring themes in differing health and fitness advice. So make lists, but…

Not too much.

Don’t get obsessed with the list making and list sorting. It’s easy to get caught up with maintianing your list(s), tweaking your system, and trying to automate everything. Stop. Also, don’t worry about keeping too many different lists. If it makes sense, sure, make separate lists (e.g. home, work). Or if you start to lose focus or feel overwhelmed on a certain day, it can be useful to make impromptu lists of what projects are important right now, or what tasks you need to do for today only. Otherwise, lists that unnecessarily break up items waste your time. Instead, focus your energy elsewhere…

Mostly do.

Do whatever is necessary to do the (most important) items on your list. In that sense, my personal opinion is that simple pen and paper or low-tech lists are best because they don’t distract you with new techy features, you can flip through all items quickly, there is no tweaking of settings, and they don’t release new versions. Just write your stuff down and get moving. If you need the right setting to do things well, get in that setting. If you need quiet, or no distractions, move to a new place. If you are starting to get burned out, take a break, or ask yourself if you’re trying to work too much. If certain items seem to sit on your list undone for a long time, ask yourself if they really need to be done, and if so, then reword them, or break them up to do them more easily. Lastly, some days, it will be so obvious what you should do that you don’t need a list. That’s good. Consider those days a gift. Just do what’s obvious.

With these 7 words, you should be able to proceed through most days smoothly. This is not to say that particular systems aren’t appropriate for different people, they can be, but in the end you will have to do your tasks one way or another, and the simpler the way the better. Do obvious things you have to do first; focus on your most important tasks and projects first thing in the day, when you still have energy; and when nothing obviously is needs to be done now, look at your list, and do more. Then go home and relax.

Note: Thanks for the comments reminding me that the title has 7 words and not 8. What can I say?

…who’s there?

Me!

Looks like it’s time to break my hiatus. Excuse me for the long gap, I took a bit of a break. I did, however, advance to candidacy in the meantime. Yes. Good to be back!

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.