1. Daylight saving time (DST) - also summer time in several countries including in British English and European official terminology (see Terminology)—is the practice of temporarily advancing clocks during the summertime so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less.
2. Time management is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase efficiency or productivity. Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals complying with a due date.
3. Categorization of time management tools:
Stephen R. Covey has offered a categorization scheme for the hundreds of time management approaches that they reviewed:
- First generation: reminders based on clocks and watches, but with computer implementation possible; can be used to alert a person when a task is to be done.
- Second generation: planning and preparation based on calendar and appointment books; includes setting goals.
- Third generation: planning, prioritizing, controlling (using a personal organizer, other paper-based objects, or computer or PDA-based systems) activities on a daily basis. This approach implies spending some time in clarifying values and priorities.
- Fourth generation: being efficient and proactive using any of the above tools; places goals and roles as the controlling element of the system and favors importance over urgency.
4. Time management and related concepts:
- Project management. Time Management can be considered as a project management subset and is more commonly known as project planning and project scheduling. Time Management has also been identified as one of the core functions identified in project management.
- Attention management: Attention Management relates to the management of cognitive resources, and in particular the time that humans allocate their mind (and organizations the minds of their employees) to conduct some activities.
- Personal knowledge management. (Personal time management).
Serving to save time through an efficient method or a shorter route; expeditious. time  sav er n. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
6. According to Mining Co. Guide to Geography, DST is also observed in about 70 countries:
"Other parts of the world observe Daylight Saving Time as well. While European nations have been taking advantage of the time change for decades, in 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide "summertime period." The EU version of Daylight Saving Time runs from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. During the summer, Russia's clocks are two hours ahead of standard time. During the winter, all 11 of the Russian time zones are an hour ahead of standard time. During the summer months, Russian clocks are advanced another hour ahead. With their high latitude, the two hours of Daylight Saving Time really helps to save daylight. In the southern hemisphere where summer comes in December, Daylight Saving Time is observed from October to March. Equatorial and tropical countries (lower latitudes) don't observe Daylight Saving Time since the daylight hours are similar during every season, so there's no advantage to moving clocks forward during the summer."
7. In psychology, procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time. Some psychologists cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. Other psychologists indicate that anxiety is just as likely to get people to start working early as late and the focus should be impulsiveness. That is, anxiety will cause people to delay only if they are impulsive.
8. Schraw, Wadkins, and Olafson have proposed three criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. Similarly, Steel (2007) reviews all previous attempts to define procrastination, indicating it is "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay."
9. Procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity, as well as social disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or commitments. These feelings combined may promote further procrastination. While it is regarded as normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological disorder. Such procrastinators may have difficulty seeking support due to feelings of stigmatization resulting from their own belief and/or their perceiving (whether correctly or incorrectly) a societal belief that task-aversion is caused by laziness, low willpower, or low ambition.
10.The modern term comes from the Latin word procrastinatus, which is the past participle of procrastinare derived from pro- (forward) and crastinus (of tomorrow).[6] Though descriptions of procrastination appear in ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman texts, it first appears by name in the English language in 1548 according to the Oxford English Dictionary
11. Here are some easy ways to save time every day.
Use a planner. You may be used to making only mental notes for appointments and deadlines. MIT schedules become steadily more complex and your brain's short-term memory may overflow. Use your phone or iPod, a PDA, software on your computer, even a paper pocket calendar—whatever technology is easy for you to enter and retrieve information and receive reminders. Ironically, writing things down (or typing them in) actually helps your brain remember them.
Keep a daily to-do list. Also use your planner to list each task you hope to accomplish. Set the priority of each task and check off tasks as you accomplish them. Carry over to the next day those you did not complete. A To-Do List is a simple tool, but it saves you from wasting time worrying whether you've forgotten something.
Plan your study time. Each subject's syllabus gives you lots of clues as to when and how much you need to study each week. At the beginning of the term block out periods for psets, preparing for hour exams, and writing papers. Then you won't waste time each week figuring out what to do first. See Take Charge of Your Time for detailed help on this.
Break big tasks into smaller ones. Before you start on a large research project, a paper, or preparing for finals, divide it up into smaller tasks (for example, "Assemble lists of website to consult," "Get bibliography from TA," "Execute lab tests." This helps you focus on each task, eliminating time wasted worrying about how to get everything done. It also gives you a welcome sense of accomplishment as you check off each one. Try our Assignment Timeline as a framework for this process.
Organize your space, The old proverb, "A place for everything and everything in its place" says it all. Invest a little time in organizing now, and you'll save it many times over when you're in a last-minute rush and need your notebooks, soccer pads, water bottle, and snacks.
OHIO: Only Handle It Once. Sort postal mail into three piles, maybe using a desk organizer: items that need action (put them on your To-Do List), items to file for future reference, recycling. Handle your email and voicemail similarly; don't waste time saying, "Oh, I'll go back and read this more carefully some other time."
Stop the Time Thieves. Pick a quiet, comfortable study location where you are not likely be disturbed (see Where and When to Study), and tell your friends where you will be only if you can trust them not to interrupt you unnecessarily. Turn off your phone. If being online is too much of a temptation, turn off your computer's network connection. Concentrating on study now allows you to concentrate only on socializing later.
Make Waiting Productive. When you have just a few minutes between classes, on line, or on the T, review some note cards, touch up your lecture notes, continue with a reading assignment, or work on a problem set. Every minute counts
12. As sellers, we waste over 90% of our time.
- if we knew who would be a prospect on the first call, and get rid of those who will never buy, how much time would we save?
- if most gatekeepers would get us to the right person, how much time would we save?
- if we can connect with all of the folks who will ultimately be (or are already) on the Buying Decision Team, how many more sales would we close?
- if there are no more objections of any kind, how much time would we save and how much more money would we make?
- if buyers could make a buying decision in the time frame that we believe is possible (i.e. those buyers who call up and purchase quickly are good examples of what’s possible for every sale),
13. How much time or energy will I save if I use a time trial bike, as compared to my regular road bike? The TT course we use is mostly rolling hills and I am out of the saddle a good deal of the time when I climb. Wouldn’t my non-aero body position void the main advantages of a TT bike? If a TT bike alone gives a significant advantage, why don’t pro racers use aero bikes for regular Tour stages?
That’s a lot to answer, but you are in luck, because in the latest issue of RBA we just published the results of real-world and wind tunnel testing by Specialized, between their Transition TT bike and the traditional Tarmac S-Works. The bottom line is that the advantage of the TT bike alone saves thirteen watts at the enthusiast’s average speed of 20 miles an hour. That is like shifting one gear higher without additional suffering. Thirteen watts at such a moderate speed means that you will benefit from the bike’s slippery aerodynamics while you are climbing in any position. Thirteen watts is like having someone push you uphill with the pressure of two fingers. Testing also shows that a slightly heavier bike will not cost you a significant time penalty, because it is wind-drag, not weight that hurts you the most above 15 miles an hour.
14. This is actually a subject of considerable urban planning research, in the sense that cyclists must exert significantly more energy than drivers must when stopping at signals.
Adding a couple of stop signs to a straight-shot route of 20 blocks in the morning won't have much of an impact on a driver, but to a cyclist, it may require 50% more energy expenditure on his/her part (depending on placement, etc). Over the course of a longer commute, the additional energy required on the part of the cyclist is so significant that it may discourage this form of travel.
In any case, rather than simply looking at time saved (which is important), you might also consider looking at energy saved.
15. -The average working person spends less than 2 minutes per day in meaningful communication with their spouse or "significant other".
16. The average working person spends less than 30 seconds a day in meaningful communication with their children.
17. The average person uses 13 different methods to control and manage their time.
18. The average person gets 1 interruption every 8 minutes, or approximately 7 an hour, or 50-60 per day. The average interruption takes 5 minutes, totaling about 4 hours or 50% of the average workday. 80% of those interruptions are typically rated as "little value" or "no value" creating approximately 3 hours of wasted time per day.
19. By taking 1 hour per day for independent study, 7 hours per week, 365 hours in a year, one can learn at the rate of a full-time student. In 3-5 years, the average person can become an expert in the topic of their choice, by spending only one hour per day.
20. 20% of the average workday is spent on "crucial" and "important" things, while 80% of the average workday is spent on things that have "little value" or "no value".
21. In the last 20 years, working time has increased by 15% and leisure time has decreased by 33%.
22. A person who works with a "messy" or cluttered desk spends, on average, 1 1/2 hours per day looking for things or being distracted by things or approximately 7 1/2 per workweek. "Out of sight; out of mind." When it’s in sight, it’s in mind.
23. The average reading speed is approximately 200 words per minute. The average working person reads 2 hours per day. A Speed Reading course that will improve the reading rate to 400 words per minute will save an hour per day.
24. 78% of workers in America wish they had more time to "smell the roses".
25. Taking 5 minutes per day, 5 days per week to improve one’s job will create 1,200 little improvements to a job over a 5 year period.
26. The most powerful word in our Time Management vocabulary is "no".
27. 70% of business and professional people use a "to do" list on a regular basis to administer their "have to’s".
28. "If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person."
29. "A project tends to expand with the time allocated for it." If you give yourself one thing to do, it will take all day. If you give yourself two things to do, you get them both done. If you give yourself a dozen things to do, you may not get 12 done, but you’ll get 7 or 8 completed.
30. 1 hour of planning will save 10 hours of doing.
31. Hiring a college student to do routine tasks (grocery shopping, yard work, household chores, etc.) will free up as much as 20 hours per week for the average person to devote to more productive uses.
32. The "20/80 Rule" tells us we will typically accomplish 80% of our results through 20% of our effort. The other 20% of additional results comes from about 80% of additional effort.
33. We retain 10% of what we read. We retain 20% of what we hear. We retain 30% of what we see. We retain 50% of what we hear and see. We retain 70% of what we say. We retain 90% of what we do.
34. Time Management is not doing the wrong things quicker. That just gets us nowhere faster. Time Management is doing the right things.
35. Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day. Do them first. If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your MITs, you’ve still had a pretty productive day.
36. Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your todo list and delete or file the email. If it’s something you need for reference, file it. Empty your email inbox every day.
37. Wake up earlier: Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier — before everyone else starts imposing on your time.
38. Brainstorming: The act of generating dozens of ideas without editing or censoring yourself. Lots of people use mind maps for this: stick the thing you want to think about in the middle (a problem you need to solve, a theme you want to write about, etc.) and start writing whatever you think of. Build off of each of the sub-topics, and each of their sub-topics. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are any good or not — you don’t have to follow through on them, just get them out of your head. After a while, you’ll start surprising yourself with some really creative concepts.
39. 10+2*5: Work in short spurts of 10 minutes, interrupted by 2 minute breaks. Use a timer. Do this 5 times an hour to stay on target without over-taxing your physical and mental resources. Spend those 2 minutes getting a drink, going to the bathroom, or staring out a window.
40. 50-30-20: Spend 50% of your working day on tasks that advance your long-term, life goals, spend 30% on tasks that advance your middle-term (2-years or so) goals, and the remaining 20% on things that affect only the next 90 days or so.
41. The foundation: a productivity system
Let’s face it, without a solid foundation there is no way you can expect to build new skills and form new habits. My first tip therefore is to adopt a productivity system (like GTD). You need to develop the habit of consistent and effective note-taking, you need to have a clean, uncluttered desk to study at, you need a system for storing reference material and tracking your (learning) projects. I strongly suggest following this important tip, because it will make everything else (including learning) more efficient and effective. Speaking from my own experience: GTD by David Allen has provided this much needed foundation in my life.42. Speedreading
You probably need or want to read a lot of offline and online material as well. But you only have so much time to do it. This is where my second tip comes in. Practice speedreading to read smarter and faster, while improving your comprehension! I havewritten about speedreading extensively but it boils down to: get to “know” the material you’re about to read, decide which parts of it you are going to read, and when you are actually reading: keep your eyes moving at a steady, perhaps increasing, pace without stopping at every word and definitely without ever rereading a single phrase. These tricks alone should double your reading speed very soon.43. Think and work on paper
There is no question that pen and paper are the most underrated productivity and learning tools around. My advice is to always think and work on paper. It will get things off your mind and make room for more creative thinking. Use your own shorthand and notational system to highlight important facts and actions in the material you’re learning. Condense, memorize and review the material you’ve learned by creating mindmaps. Forget about trusting your mind or your computer, think and work on paper to learn better and effectively.44. Use multisensory techniques
This tip is all about discovering your preferred learning style and leveraging it to make learning more fun and more effective. You have to figure out for yourself if you are more of a visual learner, an auditory learner or a kinesthetic/tactile learner. Information will be absorbed by your brain much quicker and much more effective if you use your preferred learning style. To enhance your learning experience even further, combine your preferred learning style with the other ones. For instance, writing things down combines the visual and tactile learning styles. Reading things aloud to yourself combines the visual and auditory learning styles.45. Allow your brain to absorb new stuff
Everybody has a certain learning rhythm. Some learn best in the early hours of the morning, others learn best late at night. Figure out which rhythm and time frame suits you best and use this to maximize your learning ability. However, you must frequently give your brain time to absorb the new stuff that you are learning. The best way is to “sleep on it” and the second best way is to take frequent breaks and do something completely different.46. 1. You are late for meetings because you are on Facebook
If you ever late for a meeting or an appointment because you were checking your updates on Facebook or watching a related video on Youtube then you know you are addicted. This is classic addict behavior. It is time to get help.
47. You think about it when you are offline
I have several friends who struggle to get to sleep because they are thinking about the latest game or wondering how their website statistics are looking. If you do this then it could be a sign that you are heading towards a problem.
I have several friends who struggle to get to sleep because they are thinking about the latest game or wondering how their website statistics are looking. If you do this then it could be a sign that you are heading towards a problem.
48. Your friends and family comment on your excessive internet use
When other people around you start to notice that you have a problem it is generally a pretty accurate indicator that you are losing it. If your mates, coworkers or family members have made comments about how much you use the net then you need to read the rest of this post.
When other people around you start to notice that you have a problem it is generally a pretty accurate indicator that you are losing it. If your mates, coworkers or family members have made comments about how much you use the net then you need to read the rest of this post.
49. You check your accounts from your Blackberry
A Blackberry is designed as a business tool. It is supposed to allow you to check your important emails and work materials without having to be in the office. It is not for checking Facebook or Myspace updates while you are having dinner with me. That is just not on. If you use your Blackberry for monitoring your social media accounts then you need help.
A Blackberry is designed as a business tool. It is supposed to allow you to check your important emails and work materials without having to be in the office. It is not for checking Facebook or Myspace updates while you are having dinner with me. That is just not on. If you use your Blackberry for monitoring your social media accounts then you need help.
50. You get stressed when a Facebook “friend” doesn’t add you
Have you ever noticed yourself getting stressed over something that has happened on Facebook or Myspace? Do you ever feel like your online life is more real than your offline life? If you have been stressed about what rapper you turned out as or what magic egg someone sent you then it is time to open your eyes.
Have you ever noticed yourself getting stressed over something that has happened on Facebook or Myspace? Do you ever feel like your online life is more real than your offline life? If you have been stressed about what rapper you turned out as or what magic egg someone sent you then it is time to open your eyes.
51. Top 5 Time-Wasting Excuses (%)
52. Average hours American worker actually wastes – 2.09 hours per day
52. Average hours American worker actually wastes – 2.09 hours per day
53.Average hours American workers are expected to waste by HR – .94 hours per day
54. Difference between expected and actual time wasted – 1.15 hours per day, 299 hours per year
55. Total salary dollars wasted per employee – $5,720 per year56. Year of Birth Time Wasted Per Day:
57. Top 5 Time Wasting Industries (per day)
58. Top 5 Time Wasting States
State – Time Wasted (hours/day) – Salary Dollars Wasted (per year)
59. The average person spends 1/3 of their lifetime sleeping.
60. Early clocks only showed hours. How do you think you would feel if you only could tell time by hours and could not count the minutes
61. One of the best methods for determining something's age, especially for archeologists, is carbon dating. Carbon-14 is a substance that decays approximately 50 percent every 5570 years. Since Carbon-14 appears in almost every substance, archeologists use it to tell how old certain ancient artifacts or other buried treasures are.
62. The gnomon was actually an earlier version of the sundial and probably the first device used to tell time. This “device” was essentially a stick in the earth which cast a shadow on markings in the dirt. The Berlin Museum houses a fragment of one of the oldest gnomons known to man.
63. The Romans constructed their first sundial in 164 B.C.
64.It is said that Galileo discovered the properties of a pendulum while watching a lamp swing back and forth in the Cathedral of Pisa.
65. The Martinot family of clockmakers provided service to French rulers such as the famous and powerful Sun King, Louis XIV.
66.According to a man named Paul Couderc, only one one-thousandth of a second is gained in sixty years of traveling at the speed of sound
67. The ancient Greeks believed that the sun itself was actually a god named Helios. According to Greek mythology, Helios rode across the sky each day in a fiery chariot.
68.The Inuit people of North America used to light lamps to celebrate the return of the sun after a long and dark winter.
69.The Jewish New Year is called Rosh Hashanah. The New Year is ushered in by the blowing of a ram’s horn.
70. What makes a difference in seasons is not how close or far away from the sun the earth is in its orbit. What makes the difference between summer and winter is whether or not the earth is leaning towards the sun. If the North Pole leans away from the sun, the northern half of the globe is experiencing winter and the southern half is experiencing summer. If the North Pole leans toward the sun, the opposite is true.
71. Some places in the world have time zones that are offset in quarter-hour increments like Nepal (with UTC +5:45) and New Zealand's Chatham Island (with UTC +12:45).
72. Some Aztec stone calendars could be as large as 13 feet in diameter.
73.In Ecuador, every New Year’s Eve is celebrated by burning the old year in effigy on top of a bonfire.
74. The Hindu New Year is called Diwali, and falls in October or November.
75.The ancient Greeks lived by a ten-day week.
76.Early clocks only showed hours. How do you think you would feel if you only could tell time by hours and could not count the minutes?
77.A.M. stands for the Latin words ante meridiem. Antemeridian means that the sun has not yet passed the meridian and it is before noon. P.M. stands for the Latin words post meridiem. Postmeridian means that the sun has passed the meridian and it is afternoon.
78.The ancient Mayans lived by four different calendars: one that was lunar, one that was solar, one was based on festivals, and the last was based on the movements of Venus.
79.In one second, a photon of light travels about 300,000,000 meters. Would you challenge a photon of light to a race?
80.The age of the universe is believed to be about 12 to 13 billion years old.
81.According to an English system of time units, a “moment” is equal to one minute and thirty seconds. Take a moment and think about that.
82.A jiffy is a brief period of time lasting approximately 1/100 of a second.
83.A quinquennium is a period of time lasting 5 years.
84.A galactic year is a period of time lasting approximately 230 earth-years. It is the time it takes our sun to orbit the Milky Way galaxy.
85. If a person counted at the rate of 100 numbers per minute and kept counting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and never stopped, it would take him nearly 7 days to count to a million, just over 19 years to count to a billion, and over190 centuries to count to a trillion.
86.Time exists. Might as well get this common question out of the way. Of course time exists — otherwise how would we set our alarm clocks? Time organizes the universe into an ordered series of moments, and thank goodness; what a mess it would be if reality were complete different from moment to moment. The real question is whether or not time is fundamental, or perhaps emergent. We used to think that “temperature” was a basic category of nature, but now we know it emerges from the motion of atoms. When it comes to whether time is fundamental, the answer is: nobody knows. My bet is “yes,” but we’ll need to understand quantum gravity much better before we can say for sure.
87. The past and future are equally real. This isn’t completely accepted, but it should be. Intuitively we think that the “now” is real, while the past is fixed and in the books, and the future hasn’t yet occurred. But physics teaches us something remarkable: every event in the past and future is implicit in the current moment. This is hard to see in our everyday lives, since we’re nowhere close to knowing everything about the universe at any moment, nor will we ever be — but the equations don’t lie. As Einstein put it, “It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.”
88. Everyone experiences time differently. This is true at the level of both physics and biology. Within physics, we used to have Sir Isaac Newton’s view of time, which was universal and shared by everyone. But then Einstein came along and explained that how much time elapses for a person depends on how they travel through space (especially near the speed of light) as well as the gravitational field (especially if its near a black hole). From a biological or psychological perspective, the time measured by atomic clocks isn’t as important as the time measured by our internal rhythms and the accumulation of memories. That happens differently depending on who we are and what we are experiencing; there’s a real sense in which time moves more quickly when we’re older.
89. You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that’s mysterious — clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the “now.” Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds. (Via conference participant David Eagleman.)
90. Your memory isn’t as good as you think. When you remember an event in the past, your brain uses a very similar technique to imagining the future. The process is less like “replaying a video” than “putting on a play from a script.” If the script is wrong for whatever reason, you can have a false memory that is just as vivid as a true one. Eyewitness testimony, it turns out, is one of the least reliable forms of evidence allowed into courtrooms. (Via conference participantsKathleen McDermott and Henry Roediger.)
91. Consciousness depends on manipulating time. Many cognitive abilities are important for consciousness, and we don’t yet have a complete picture. But it’s clear that the ability to manipulate time and possibility is a crucial feature. In contrast to aquatic life, land-based animals, whose vision-based sensory field extends for hundreds of meters, have time to contemplate a variety of actions and pick the best one. The origin of grammar allowed us to talk about such hypothetical futures with each other. Consciousness wouldn’t be possible without the ability to imagine other times. (Via conference participant Malcolm MacIver.)
92. Disorder increases as time passes. At the heart of every difference between the past and future — memory, aging, causality, free will — is the fact that the universe is evolving from order to disorder. Entropy is increasing, as we physicists say. There are more ways to be disorderly (high entropy) than orderly (low entropy), so the increase of entropy seems natural. But to explain the lower entropy of past times we need to go all the way back to the Big Bang. We still haven’t answered the hard questions: why was entropy low near the Big Bang, and how does increasing entropy account for memory and causality and all the rest? (We heard great talks by David Albertand David Wallace, among others.)
93. Complexity comes and goes. Other than creationists, most people have no trouble appreciating the difference between “orderly” (low entropy) and “complex.” Entropy increases, but complexity is ephemeral; it increases and decreases in complex ways, unsurprisingly enough. Part of the “job” of complex structures is to increase entropy, e.g. in the origin of life. But we’re far from having a complete understanding of this crucial phenomenon. (Talks by Mike Russell, Richard Lenski, Raissa D’Souza.)
94. Aging can be reversed. We all grow old, part of the general trend toward growing disorder. But it’s only the universe as a whole that must increase in entropy, not every individual piece of it. (Otherwise it would be impossible to build a refrigerator.) Reversing the arrow of time for living organisms is a technological challenge, not a physical impossibility. And we’re making progress on a few fronts: stem cells, yeast, and even (with caveats) mice and human muscle tissue. As one biologist told me: “You and I won’t live forever. But as for our grandkids, I’m not placing any bets.”
95. A lifespan is a billion heartbeats. Complex organisms die. Sad though it is in individual cases, it’s a necessary part of the bigger picture; life pushes out the old to make way for the new. Remarkably, there exist simple scaling laws relating animal metabolism to body mass. Larger animals live longer; but they also metabolize slower, as manifested in slower heart rates. These effects cancel out, so that animals from shrews to blue whales have lifespans with just about equal number of heartbeats — about one and a half billion, if you simply must be precise. In that very real sense, all animal species experience “the same amount of time.” At least, until we master #9 and become immortal. (Amazing talk by Geoffrey West.)
96. The foundation: a productivity system
Let’s face it, without a solid foundation there is no way you can expect to build new skills and form new habits. My first tip therefore is to adopt a productivity system (like GTD). You need to develop the habit of consistent and effective note-taking, you need to have a clean, uncluttered desk to study at, you need a system for storing reference material and tracking your (learning) projects. I strongly suggest following this important tip, because it will make everything else (including learning) more efficient and effective. Speaking from my own experience: GTD by David Allen has provided this much needed foundation in my life. Read more here: 10 Simple Tips to Start Getting Things Done.
97. Speedreading
You probably need or want to read a lot of offline and online material as well. But you only have so much time to do it. This is where my second tip comes in. Practice speedreading to read smarter and faster, while improving your comprehension! I havewritten about speedreading extensively but it boils down to: get to “know” the material you’re about to read, decide which parts of it you are going to read, and when you are actually reading: keep your eyes moving at a steady, perhaps increasing, pace without stopping at every word and definitely without ever rereading a single phrase. These tricks alone should double your reading speed very soon.
You probably need or want to read a lot of offline and online material as well. But you only have so much time to do it. This is where my second tip comes in. Practice speedreading to read smarter and faster, while improving your comprehension! I havewritten about speedreading extensively but it boils down to: get to “know” the material you’re about to read, decide which parts of it you are going to read, and when you are actually reading: keep your eyes moving at a steady, perhaps increasing, pace without stopping at every word and definitely without ever rereading a single phrase. These tricks alone should double your reading speed very soon.
98. Think and work on paper
There is no question that pen and paper are the most underrated productivity and learning tools around. My advice is to always think and work on paper. It will get things off your mind and make room for more creative thinking. Use your own shorthand and notational system to highlight important facts and actions in the material you’re learning. Condense, memorize and review the material you’ve learned by creating mindmaps. Forget about trusting your mind or your computer, think and work on paper to learn better and effectively.
There is no question that pen and paper are the most underrated productivity and learning tools around. My advice is to always think and work on paper. It will get things off your mind and make room for more creative thinking. Use your own shorthand and notational system to highlight important facts and actions in the material you’re learning. Condense, memorize and review the material you’ve learned by creating mindmaps. Forget about trusting your mind or your computer, think and work on paper to learn better and effectively.
99. Use multisensory techniques
This tip is all about discovering your preferred learning style and leveraging it to make learning more fun and more effective. You have to figure out for yourself if you are more of a visual learner, an auditory learner or a kinesthetic/tactile learner. Information will be absorbed by your brain much quicker and much more effective if you use your preferred learning style. To enhance your learning experience even further, combine your preferred learning style with the other ones. For instance, writing things down combines the visual and tactile learning styles. Reading things aloud to yourself combines the visual and auditory learning styles.
This tip is all about discovering your preferred learning style and leveraging it to make learning more fun and more effective. You have to figure out for yourself if you are more of a visual learner, an auditory learner or a kinesthetic/tactile learner. Information will be absorbed by your brain much quicker and much more effective if you use your preferred learning style. To enhance your learning experience even further, combine your preferred learning style with the other ones. For instance, writing things down combines the visual and tactile learning styles. Reading things aloud to yourself combines the visual and auditory learning styles.
100. Allow your brain to absorb new stuff
Everybody has a certain learning rhythm. Some learn best in the early hours of the morning, others learn best late at night. Figure out which rhythm and time frame suits you best and use this to maximize your learning ability. However, you must frequently give your brain time to absorb the new stuff that you are learning. The best way is to “sleep on it” and the second best way is to take frequent breaks and do something completely different.
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