A Bit Eclectic

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (Kindle) plays a large role in my life. I use his system to keep track of all my commitments and get things out of my head. The book has had a large impact on my life and is partially responsible for the increase in my grades.

A lot of people can benefit from Getting Things Done (GTD) practices but may not want to read through the book. Lifehacker has put together a watered down overview of GTD specifically targeted at students. It is definitely worth a look and may lead you to dive in deeper and pick up the book.

Getting Things Done Explained for Students – Lifehacker:

GTD is basically a “workflow for life,” so if all you want to do is get papers in by their deadlines, it’s overkill. Luckily, some of the GTD precepts work for the student workflow—so that’s what I’ll share here.

If you find yourself juggling many commitments, missing deadlines, or feel overwhelmed by tasks then GTD may have the tools you need.

I love being a geek. It keeps me entertained for hours as I fiddle with endless gadgets, software, and websites. My geeky nature also gives me the urge to fix things that are broken, even if I don’t know anything about it. I will fiddle for hours trying to learn about and fix new things. Although my geekiness is great most of the time, there is a downside. This is what I call the curse of the geek.

The constant fiddling is great most of the time.  That is until I have a lackluster yet important task to accomplish. I have no problem accomplishing the task and am perfectly capable, but my fiddling nature can quickly derail me. The other day I had to start writing a paper for one of my classes. It wasn’t a large and unbearable task, just less interesting than some other things. I had allocated more than enough time to accomplish the task and write an amazing paper. I had a full day of writing and then a couple of spare hours to revise. All was on track, until the curse.

I was knee deep in the research aspect of my assignment when I took a break for some food. I decided to take this extra time to check on my blog and maybe polish up some posts. Then it happened, my site was having problems. I logged into my blogs admin panel and tried to load up the main dashboard. It would start loading, then stop a quarter of the way. Worse than that, it would take down the rest of the site.  I would get error after error that the server wasn’t available.  If I waited a few minutes, I could regain access to other parts that weren’t the main dashboard (like plug-ins, posts, or comments.) If I went back to the dashboard, it all went down again.

As you can imagine, I just had to try and get this working again.  I couldn’t leave my precious blog struggling to stay alive.  The thing is, I am pretty new to hosting my own blog.  Up until a month ago I have used wordpress.com or Blogger.  So when things went bad, I wasn’t exactly sure how to fix it.  After messing around for awhile to make sure it was a consistent problem I contacted support.  Things got more difficult because they couldn’t recreate the problem.  It seemed really odd that it only happened when I went to one specific page.  After 12 hours, they had given up and told me that I needed to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server because I was using too much of my servers resources.  That is ridiculous considering I get 16 or 17 visitors on a good day.

Eventually I ended up reinstalling wordpress and restoring my database from an old backup.  The site worked fine for about 10 minutes and then the problems happened again.  Cutting to the end, I finally isolated the problem to my theme.  After disabling a feature of the theme, everything is working fine for the most part.

The point of this long drawn out story is that my fiddling can get the worst of me.  I did end up writing my paper, but that was after 8 hours were wasted trying to revive my blog.  The paper turned out to be great, but I had to make sacrifices.  I didn’t get as much sleep and I had to postpone other projects.  Overall it just wasn’t a good thing.  This is what I call the curse of the geek.  It is the ability to get distracted and derailed from more important tasks by something that requires fiddling and has to deal with technology.

One of the most important upgrades I made to my computing setup was a second monitor. The extra screen real estate has greatly increased my productivity and allowed me to work more efficiently. The benefits aren’t really multi-tasking, it is really improved single tasking. I have seen my productivity increase in school assignments and photo processing, among other things.

School Assignments

One of the most noticeable areas is in my school work. When working on assignments, I have my word processor open on one screen and research on another. This allows me to keep my report open along with articles and my outline. These are all lined up side by side and are visible at all times. As I type, if I need any of the other information all it takes is a glance over. I can continue to type while verifying facts from articles. Another aspect that gains is my spreadsheet work. It is easier to copy data when it is directly to the left/right of the workbook. I can also follow directions just by a quick glance. I no longer have to shuffle around windows when doing assignments.

Photo Processing

I have also seen benefits when dealing with images. I use Aperture to manage all of my photos. Aperture allows me to have my browser on one screen and the selected images on the other. I browse through images while having a preview blown up on the other 20″ monitor. I can then apply adjustments to my image while maintaining the ability to switch to other photos or select multiple to compare. You could do all this on one monitor, but everything will be more limited. You can’t see as many thumbnails in the browser and the preview will be smaller. Additionally, you have all your tools scrunched up in one space.

These are just two examples of the benefits of dual monitors. Overall usage will be easier and more productive. You gain extra space to arrange your applications which makes it easier to switch tasks. You can easily switch from email to blogging just by shifting your view, you don’t have to minimize any windows. One of the simplest productivity upgrades for your computer is an extra monitor.

Edit: Here is an old photo of my setup.

Robert Scoble wrote a post about professors banning Google and Wikipedia as sources for research papers. He compared these professors to those who banned “newfangled Macintoshes” back in his day.

I completely disagree with this comparison. He is comparing the use of tools to sources of information. I fully support the professors who ban the use of Wikipedia and Google as sources for college research papers.

Wikipedia is a great place to get some quick, general, and shallow knowledge about a topic that has no bearing on their professional career. For example, one could look up the history of Nintendo for their own personal interest but should not use Wikipedia when writing a paper on Nintendo’s affect on the US television market.

The problem occurs when you are writing a research paper for college. Wikipedia does not give you enough depth of information or have any authority behind it. You have no idea who edited it or their bias. Wikipedia does have a decent amount of the facts cited, but then a student should read that website/book/article and cite accordingly. This would provide them with a broader and deeper view of the topic, and the professor would not know that they used Wikipedia. The problem is that they are getting the article in Wikipedia and then the research stops there. That does not give them an extensive enough view on the topic. If they do use Wikipedia, they should take the extra steps and follow the citation links at the bottom of the articles. Some of the time, this will lead them to more credible sources with more information. It is their duty as the researcher to determine if these articles are coming from a credible source.

Additionally, many colleges and universities offer a wide array of databases to their students*. Many college students pay for the use of these databases, yet choose Wikipedia. They should instead go to their library and ask for some assistance with these databases and in finding and determining credible sources.

I was actually shocked that Robert said that Google was a good source for research. Recently, he posted some videos describing that Google is doomed because it is spammed by SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO creates the same theoretical problem when a student searches for credible sources through Google. The first three results may be very relevant but not unbiased. They will be able to obtain good articles and research, they just have to wade through most of the optimized sites and those that have a financial investment in the topic. Many college students don’t understand this and believe that the top three results are the most credible. They will then use articles from WebsiteX.com instead of a professors article on Profsite.edu. If they do choose to do an internet search, they might want to try Google scholar and search scholarly articles that have been published and reviewed. While they are at it, they should just use the many databases that are offered by their library*.

Overall, I believe that students are using Wikipedia and Google as a crutch when doing research papers. Those are both places to easily obtain information, but by themselves are by no means sufficient. By banning the use of these websites for research papers, professors are helping their students to research credible sources.

[Original Article and Scoble's Post]

* I do know that some students may be at a disadvantage because their University does not offer these sources.