This happens to me a lot – it’s a real downer.

It can happen in a number of different ways. Firstly, it can affect your folder – you have sheets all over the place, secondly, it can affect your book – even if all the information is there it can really dishearten you to see how disorganised it is, finally, it can also affect your digital work – word documents, files, folders etc.

That last one has been getting to me quite a lot lately and has really annoyed me. The first thing is that some of my work I type up is organised into a report-like structure [neat]. It looks bloody awesome and when I return to it after a few days break it’s easy to see where I’ve got to and simple to continue writing. On the other hand, I sometimes don’t get round to organising the structure – this makes it really difficult to get back to work and often I will end up wasting a lesson getting it all into shape. By this point it’s too late, I’ve infuriated myself for the rest of the day and I’m now really depressed about that subject and don’t look forward to the next lesson.

That’s all very well but how much of a problem is that really? Not that much – but if you apply the same disorganisation to your work folders you’ll be in real trouble. I’ll explain what happened to me and hopefully you’ll see my point:

The way I transfer work between home and school is using a memory stick. All my folders at home are organised and all my folders in school are organised as well, but right between that is the memory stick – the weak link in the chain. The memory stick simply has one folder – work. I finished working on a report at home, about 3,000 words, and so I saved it onto the memory stick to be taken to school and printed off. There it was, saved as Task 2.doc. While I had it plugged into my computer I noticed that there was another document called Task 2.doc (an earlier version), naturally I deleted it. The next day I plugged the memory stick into the computer in school only to discover that I had lost about 2,500 words from my report – I had deleted the wrong document.

Sure, this is a lesson in backing up documents but would this have been a problem if my memory stick had been organised. If instead of having on folder with 30 files in it I had 10 folders with 3 folders in each would I have acted so quickly or would I have checked each of the revisions of the file.

Now for God’s sake, don’t make the same mistake I did.

I am very sorry I haven’t been updating the blog.  I haven’t been online at all recently to be honest due to a number of factors.

Excuse #1 - Regular visitors may recall that I have recently switched schools, well it finally caught up with me.  It wasn’t quite so easy as I thought and it has taken me a few weeks (or months rather) to get used to it, but I’m fine now.

Excuse #2 - My laptop completely died on me, the power supply completely screwed up so that left me out of action for a few more weeks.

Excuse #3 - I realy didn’t feel like blogging.  To be truthful I was a bit embarrassed about my blog.  I would visit it every day, see the design, read a bit of what I had written and quickly close the window.

Anyway, I have had a free afternoon and so I decided to stoke up the old fire again.  This time I’m starting over with a brand new design which I’ll hopefully be perfecting over the next few weeks and then it’s brand new content all the way!

Once again, I do apoligise.  Normal service will be resumed soon.

I haven’t been in school with girls for five years and coming back to a mixed-sex was a bit of a culture shock.  It’s amazing how much people (boys especially) relax when around the opposite sex.  In a single sex school you get over that quite quickly and since there’s nobody to impress you tend to just get on with work and mess about much less.  Another surprising thing to me is how easily male teachers can give in to good-looking girls.  They seem to be able to avoid tellings-off all the time; shame the female teachers aren’t as easily manipulated.

‘Sixth-form is a step towards adulthood’ reads my sixth-form prospectus.  I had read this many times and been told that I would be treated very differently by the teachers but I never expected it to be like this.  If truth be told it is a little too relaxing for me.  Firstly the teachers are much more relaxed about small things like talking quietly when they’re talking and being 5 minutes late.  This sounds great but it’s quite a shock and really tempts you to relax a bit and do the same.

It doesn’t help that there is no uniform either.  I apologise to readers from cultures where non-uniform is the

No more of this to be seen.

norm but in the UK it has always been compulsory and to see it go is actually quite sad.  I have been to seeing the same sea of navy blue jumpers for the last 10 years of my life; everyone has always looked the same.  But now to see everybody dressed up in the latest fashion is strange.  It causes you to feel much freer which is good but it will take a while to sink in.

Finally and most importantly is the attitude of the teachers which freaked me out the most.  Usually at the end of a class the teacher would repeat the homework instructions a number of times, making sure everyone had noted it down and was capable of completing it.  Not any more.  This time there was a sentance or two of verbal instruction before the teacher left the room in a hurry.  Teachers really aren’t there for you any more.  They are, but you have to seek them out yourself, otherwise you’ll start to lose out.  My parents always said to me that you are much more independant in college but it has taken me aback for sure.

You're on your own now, son.

I always looked forward to the start of a new school year as a younger kid. I’m not sure exactly what it is but there is something oh-so-irresistible about the blank canvas before you. It’s a chance to re-invent yourself to a certain extent and to make a positive impression on your teachers and peers. Inevitably, it all starts a week or so prior to the start of term when you go out and buy the best stationary, coat, shoes and lunchbox possible in an effort to make the best impression you can (dare I say it, on the opposite sex).

The new-found enthusiasm contiues when you get into class. You write as neatly as possible (with your new pencil, I might add), lay out tables with all the care and attention of a master craftsman, and colour in diagrams like a young van Goch.

Everything would go so well for about a fortnight and then you’d have a late night, feel a bit tired in the morning and standards would begin to drop; it was inevitable.

via flickr

A lot of things have changed since those days of primary school but for whatever reason I still haven’t been able to shake this terrible habit of mine.

To make sure I don’t fall back into the old ways I have devised the following routine to keep me in tip-top form for class.

1. Get into bed by 9:30 on most school nights. A very difficult decision for me as I have always been an evening person (writing this post at 8:45p.m.), but I think it’s possible to reverse this and I’m sure I will reap the rewards in the long term. This is doubly difficuilt as it may mean compromising my social interactions a little, which is why I am aiming only for most and not all nights.
2. Shower in the morning. This is another new thing to me as I have always showered in the evenings. Although it means getting up a bit earlier it will help to wake me up further (plus I think my hair looks better after a shower, which is a bonus).
3. Keep well nourished. A mistake I’ve been making for pretty much the past 5 years is not eating during the day. I did have lunch. But through the whole morning I was working on a near-empty stomach which distracted me and caused me to lack energy in classes. Breakfast is equally important and though I never skipped it, I normally only had time for a small bowl of cereal. With my new found love of strawberry jam and toast though I hope to get the day off to a much better and nutritious start.

Why bother with all this? If you’re feeling tired you can just catch up after the lesson.

This point of view is a common and foolish one. There’s always someone in class who is falling asleep or just doesn’t want to concentrate; they don’t think they need to because they have a textbook at home. This is such a waste of everybody time and resources. Firstly the student themself, who is wasting their own time, secondly the teacher, whose knowledge and expertise is being squandered, and thirdly the time and attention of participating students which is being wasted by unnecessary interruptions and breaks in teaching.

This goes to show, if just one student is not on form the entire lesson can be less productive for everyone concerned.

Imagine you failed to concentrate in one lesson every day for an hour. That’s five hours a week and more than 100 hours a year. Wouldn’t you like that time back before an exam?

So, I’ll give that a try and report back soon. What do you think, will it work?

Students are being given new assignments every day and they need somewhere to record them for future reference.  Believe it or not there is a science to this and Mr Mann has made a career from writing and exploring this branch of the broader science known as GTD.  But I don’t intend to delve into GTD now, what I’m going to talk about today is how you can create the perfect to-do list for you.

What is a to-do list for?

A to-do list can be as useful or as useless as you make it.  At it’s best it can guide you through your saturday night of work with ease and save you half an hour of work, at it’s worst it can help you squeeze out that final piece just in time.  However you use your to-do list it always helps you out as long as you remember one thing: keep it simple.

Is this the ideal to-do list?

The to-do list above is indeed ideal for it’s purpose.  As you can see it’s a checklist of all the things someone needs to remember for a holiday and it works well for a number of reasons.

• Simple labels
• Not too long
• Easy check boxes

The best to-do lists are simple (making them easy to read), short (making them easy to refer to and easier to work through) and easy to mark off.

How is this acheived?

I’ll give a ‘real-world’ example.  Let’s say that you work in a store and you are responsible for stocking the shelves of a particular section, you’ll need to make a list of exactly what you need, how much of it you need and how urgently you need it.  Sounds like a simple task but there is a way of doing this which’ll earn you an A+ from your boss.

Work from left to right, making a simple list (like the one above) and write a straight list of each item you need which looks something like this:

• Carrots
• Onions
• Bananas
• Green Grapes
• Large Oranges

That’s pretty simple but it won’t tell you how much and how urgently you need those things.  So for that you need to add some metadata.  This is simply data about data and will give you an extra bit of detail which will enable you to get exactly what you need.

So the first metadata we can add can be quantity:

• Carrots (1 box)
• Onions (1 sack)
• Bananas (2 boxes)
• Green Grapes (5 bunches)
• Large Oranges (1 box)

And the second can be urgency:

• Carrots (1 box)
• Onions (1 sack)
• Bananas (2 boxes)
• \\\ Green Grapes (5 bunches) ///
• \\\ Large Oranges (1 box)  ///

How necessary is that really?

Well it can make quite a difference.  If you use the first list you’re going to get carrots, onions, bananas and green grapes (who knows in what quantities) and then you’ll run out of room on the trolley by the time you get to large oranges which are an urgent item.  If you use list three however you’ll go straight to green grapes and large oranges because they are marked as urgent and so the most important products will be stacked up well.  Furthermore, because you only got 5 bunches of green grapes and not a whole box you now have enough room on the trolley for all the items on your list.

In this way of doing things the boss is happy, you’re happy and the customer is happy.  What could be better?

This is just one example of how to do things but there are many ways to customise your to-do list to get the most out of it.  Here’s an example of one which could be used at Christmas:

• Jake - iPod nano @ amazon
• Sophie - DVD player @ play.com /**
• Dad - Slippers + Chocolates @ ? ****

Here we can see three different levels of importance represented by stars and also destinations shown by the @.  Perhaps it was a bit confusing before I explained that but it highlights the fact that your to-do list if for you only.

it’s something for which you are the most appropriate person for the job

If you’re still uncertain, here’s how a student can use a to-do list:

First of all your to-do list will probably be ongoing.  You should be checking off and adding new items to it constantly and so perhaps a Moleskine or an iPhone app such as Dobot Todos is a better and more practical solution for your to-do list.  So you add an item when you’re given an assignement or when you remember anything else you need to do such as ask for an extension and you tick off an item when it’s completed.  It’s a good idea to keep it on your person when you’re in school/college and at your desk when at home so you can alter it immediately (iPhone is handy for this).

So get out there and customise your to-do list to the max!  But make sure you keep it simple, short and relavent to you.

Yes, of course: as long as you can stop yourself becoming too reliant on it.  This might sound like a big change to make, as though you’re going to undergo a big mentality shift but all it takes is 3 simple steps which, if continued, will help you increase your productivity and maybe help you even more.

1. Collect your information: a huge mistake many people make is to do their research and their work simultaneously.  This is such an easy mistake to make nowadays thanks to Google and Wikipedia and it seems like you’re saving a lot of time but be careful; this approach can lead you to misread your information and mis-copy it.  Furthermore your writing can also suffer as a result of losing concentration between research and writing.  Get all your research out of the way before you start.  If you’re not sure exactly what you need to find out knock up a draft of your piece and then fill in the gaps as you look up the answers.  Remember to re-write afterwards though.
2. Organise it: you now have all your information but most of the time it’ll be in a number of locations including web pages, textbooks and in your head.  It’s important to organise all this knowledge before you forget/lose it.  There are so many ways to do this and the only way to find out which works best for you is to test a few techniques out.  If you’re more comfortable working with a computer I would recommend Microsoft’s OneNote, this is a fantastic program which I use to gather information (particularly from the internet) every day.  A similar program for Mac OS X is EverNote which is part of a broader service including a web app and iPhone app, there is also a Windows version which is a good (but not quite equal) competitor to OneNote.  If however you prefer to work with paper a Moleskine is a great notebook to use [see my post on them], or just a plain piece of A4 for the ultimate in customizability.
3. Turn off the internet: the most important and theoretically simplest thing to do is very often the hardest.  Undoubtedly you’ll be tempted to trust yourself and leave it on but in most instances this fails and ends up wasting you even more time as you mess around on myspace.  Turn off your router and computer (unless using OneNote/Evernote or typing) and try your hardest not to think about it.

Sound easy?  It’s probably more difficult than you think.  Just try this once and you’ll notice that your writing improves and that you remember a lot more of what you’ve just worked on.

Here are a few of my favourite moleskine links:

• Eston Bond’s Moleskine Hack - My first Moleskine guide
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/152626650/ - The same layout I use
• The Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips, Tricks and Hacks - The Ultimate guide to Moleskinerie.

Try one out.  This is the one I have

More to follow on Moleskines.

What do you think of the font, the sidebar, the ad and the hover effects?  Please give me your feedback.

Here is the plan for the next stage:

1. Over the next week I will finalise the design and set-up of the blog.  (Feel free to advise me via comments during this period).
2. The Following week I will begin to concentrate on posting.
3. The week after I go on holiday for a week, (great timing)

In the mean time, the best way to get in touch is to reply to me on the twitter.  Pop in @xeonfunk before you tweet.

To keep up with the latest news at themodernstudent.com you can subscribe to the NEWS FEED.

A routine provides comfort and certainty in our day-to-day lives and enables us to focus ourselves on particular tasks at certain times of the day, but can sticking to your routine too closely hinder you in your studying.

via flickr

In short, yes it can.  You see by committing yourself to a routine in such a strict way you lose the flexibility to start tasks early and finish them later and often you spend less time on these tasks, leaving their quality to suffer.  But it doesn’t have to be like this…

In order to complete tasks to the absolute best of your ability you need to dedicate time to them and you’d be surprised how much time you actually have.

Let’s say for example that you tend to do your tasks in the evening.  During that day you may have missed an hour of two’s worth of opportunity to get started, at lunch time for example.  And don’t think you need a quiet room with a deskto get started, just twenty minutes on the bus home or relaxing in the library is enough to get you thinking ahead and mentally preparing your work.  Just getting some ideas flowing around your head can really focus you when you get down to the business of actually doing the thing.

This is something I have recently realised that I actually do a lot, I think I always have done.  I’ve always been pretty focused in school (ever since starting) and thank goodness because without this ability to concentrate I would have done a lot worse at school.  I sense that school has always been lurking at the back of my mind (it does kind of take over your life as a kid) and even when I was playing football after school I could let my mind wander and ponder my work.

This may not suit you that as well as it suits me, I am sort of a workaholic and I can cope with an overlap in my work and home lives.

If you have been at all confused by the message of this post, here it is: Don’t be afraid to loosen your routine if it allows you to commit more fully to an assignment. Good luck!

‘Sort out your life’ seems like a bit of an over-reaction right?  Of course it is, but by applying such a dramatic title it really boosts you into action.

So here’s where I am at the moment: (my to-do list)

• Tidy my room
• Sort out my wardrobe
• Throw out all my old junk

3 simple tasks, but 3 time consuming tasks.  For me, the real killer, the real factor that causes me to lack motivation is thinking about how much time this is going to take.  Why on earth would I want to spend 4 hours tidying my room and sorting out my wardrobe when I could be out with my friends or shopping or playing soccer.  It kills me to miss out on things (maybe it’s because I’m a teenager) but deep within my head I know these things have to be done.

So…here’s how it’s done:

Take the day off: plan to do nothing.  This is such a depressing thing to do and I do feel so stupid writing it down but this really has to be done.  By giving yourself a free day you know that nothing can give you an excuse not to do whatever it is you need to do.  When the day comes: have a lie-in.  Don’t get up until about 10 and pretty much just lounge about the house all morning.  Then have lunch.  Fill yourself right up so that you have a lot of energy to keep you going all afternoon.

OK, that’s the preparation out the way, now to get stuck in!  However you approach the task make sure that you don’t rush yourself.  In fact you should take your time if you’re going to be spending a good couple of hours over this.  Put on some music and then get to work.

I always tend to sort my life out on a Sunday when there are less distractions.  I turn off my phone, though there tends to be less socialising on Sundays anyway, put on some music or even the radio if I want to listen to the Grand Prix.  I work right through the afternoon from about 2 until 6 or 7 in the evening.  Then I watch a bit of TV and get to bed early to recharge my batteries so that I can start my newly-organised life with a bang.

Anyway, off to sort out my life now, speak to you soon.

[Do you have a similar routine to mine, does it work? does mine?  Leave a comment below.