I've recently discovered Cal Newport's Blog on student productivity. If you are a student, I beg you to take time out of chatting with people on facebook read even one of his posts. This guy really knows what he's talking about and provides easily understood tips for college students that are based on his experience as a student at MIT. For me, productivity is a constant battle and one that I seem to never win. I've read books and articles and subscribed to RSS feeds describing the newest hi and low tech tools for personal productivity and still I find myself writing to this blog and not working on the 2,000 word paper I have due next week. At this point, I feel like I could teach a seminar on productivity for the college student, if only I could be productive enough to actually do it.
Most of my stress (at least here at school) stems from procrastination. David Allen describes in his book Getting Things Done (which is required reading for everyone who has ever needed to do anything) that procrastination stems from two subconscious roadblocks. One, you don't see the ultimate value in completing the task at hand. Two, you doubt your ability to complete the task at hand with control and success. This is why gigantic papers often get pushed back until the night before they're due: I have no idea how to attack this paper and seriously doubt my ability to complete it with any semblance of quality. The solution? I cant write the paper because someone can't just sit down and write a paper just like someone can't sit down and paint a landscape. The paper is not a singular task, it is a project that is comprised of hundreds of little tasks that are much easier to comprehend, plan, and complete than simply sitting down and "writing a paper." Try this, think of the biggest "thing" in your life that is causing you the most amount of stress. This can be a letter of thanks you haven't written, a project you haven't started, treehouse you haven't built. Got it? Ok, now grab a piece of paper and write down the absolute first thing you need to do before any other part of that project can get done. Now write that down! Be as specific as possible. Now don't you feel a little better?
Today's track is called "Strange Answers" by Summerbirds in the Cellar off of their album With the Hands of the Hunter it All Becomes Dead. The title of the album, I'll admit, prepares you for a Thursday cover band like experience. Don't worry tho, Summerbirds is an amalgamation of Death Cab and Fisherspooner. But not the sad Death Cab, the good Death Cab. I'm temped to put up more that one of their songs because this is one of the most eclectic albums I've heard in quite a while. Enjoy!
3 comments:
Everyone reading Toph's blog should realize that he has spent his first 21 years living on the side of a mountain in Vermont. Except for a few very short trips to "the city" (Boston and New York) Toph has never spent any time in a city, never mind having witnessed the change of seasons while living in a city. Many people live in places (country or city) where there is no significant change in seasons, but here in Vermont these changes tend to set the entire rythym of our country lifestyle. Here, the season determines what type of shirt you wear, how many blankets you put on your bed, how wide you open the window, what you put on your feet, how long a walk you take, when you have your tires changed, when you start cutting wood, what type of plants you grow -- and when you plant them, when you start making soup, etc. Since winter temperatures often sink below minus 20 and summer temperatures often rise above 90, Vermont can hardly be compared to other places that can boast an average annual temperature of 55 degrees. Time will tell whether Toph will eventually settle in a city or in the country (even in a place with such extreme seasonal changes in color, smell, temperature, acitivities, lifestyle as we have here in Vermont) but I hope he will always appreciate how such an environment shapes the social climate and helps form the people who are born and grow up here -- even if they don't choose to stay.
You write wonderfully. I can almost see Bondi!
Toph, you really should have the 'farewell to summer' from rufio, as your song of the day.
GO DO YOUR PAPER but drink water and
get up to go use the bathroom when you need to. Otherwise just DO THE PAPER.
What happens when the first thing you need to do in order to begin the thing that is causing you the most stress is out of your hands. For example, what if, say, your advisor still hasn't finished reading the draft of your thesis you gave her, and you've done all the editing you can do on your own and you really just want to work on it and finish it but instead you're reading and responding to blogs because you can't do anything else until you get her comments back. Writing it down really doesn't help. I tried. I trust your advice so much that I actually tried it.
I miss you.
I miss Vermont.
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