Search Results for: blog vacations and productivity

Vacations and Productivity

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the States and that means that a good percentage of the population has the day off of work. Specifically, most students and teachers are left to their own devices for today and probably (at least) the day before and after for travel. While family, food, and giving thanks are all extremely important students should not simply spend the time being lazy. I’ve got one simple tip that can help students spend their free time a little bit more intelligently than they might spend it otherwise. One of the simple facts about the temporal location of … Continue reading →

Time to Read

Things I used to take for granted as a student/parent number 1: time to read. For better or for worse reading is one of those activities you simply can’t do around children. Oh, I’m not talking about reading picture books or texts with simple words and basic sentence structures. No, no. I’m talking about reading reading (you know, that stuff you do as a student, for your classes, that requires lots of time and lots of focus). It is the joy of having kids while being a student. When I didn’t have kids it didn’t make sense. I thought it … Continue reading →

Two Dedicated Hours

Since I have a family and my desk, library, and reading area are all next to the loud speakers in the main room our son plays basketball in, it has proved quite difficult to get work done in my “office.” While this seems like a small concern it is an important one. One of the things I am tasked with as a profession is processing a lot of information in an expedient way and with great panache. One of the things that changes when children enter the picture is the concept of “free time.” Free time for me is anytime … Continue reading →

The Ready Pile

I’ve been having difficulty getting my work started. There are two things I need to be actively working on for the next week (and longer) but I haven’t been able to find the time. I finally realized that my problem was preparation. I am a far cry from the romantic ideal of writers who magically dip their quill into their pot of ink and begin to manically scribble brilliance onto their parchment paper for eternal noteriety. I tend to (like most people) need some amount of preparation, even if it is just entering a certain state of mind. Dissertations and … Continue reading →

Getting Ahead

I wrote about working ahead over holidays before but the holiday break we currently find ourselves in the middle of generally splits classes in half. Sometimes it even marks the end of a course and returning for the spring semester will mark the beginnings of new courses. “You’re not going to recommend we do school work over our vacations, are you?” The answer is “Yes… and no.” At any rate… it may not be what you’re thinking. Being in a PhD program has it’s benefits. One of the greatest benefits is that I am able to, in general, only take … Continue reading →

When Begging Doesn’t Help You

Do you remember when you were little and you had told a lie and your parents knew it? It was probably about something small: Did you eat the cookie? Did you leave the back door open? Did you duct tape your brother to the drywall? It was stupid to lie but when you’re little sitting in the corner really feels like a terrible punishment. All of this changes when you are an adult (and should actually act like one). I’ve written about taking responsibility before but today I’m going to write about what happens when you don’t take responsibility. I’m … Continue reading →

Self Reflection as Self Motivation

If I haven’t said so before: I’m a Ph.D. student. One of the things I study is playwriting (writing for the theatre). My instructor recently gave a wonderful final assignment. Our final paper was a guided self-assessment of our work in the field of playwriting over the past 4 months. While I’ve been accustomed to lengthy well documented and researched papers in graduate school I found this one of the most difficult, enjoyable, and learning filled papers I’ve ever written. Do you ever stop for long enough to actually assess what you’ve accomplished in a given set of time? Many … Continue reading →

Checking In At A Pod

Have you checked into a Westin Hotel lately? If you have then you may have noticed something a bit different in the lobby—gone are the traditional massive check-in counters. Out with the old and in with the new… check-in pods. What’s a pod? Hotels define them as smaller work areas that take less space and let employees provide more personable service. Basically, they look like circular stands equipped with state-of-the-art-razor-thin computer monitors. With cash transactions becoming almost obsolete hotels have designed these pods—or open desks–because security is no longer the concern it once was. Each pods is individually manned and … Continue reading →