Just a few hints and ideas

Anybody who has ever looked for work knows that interviewing is a rather intimidating experience.  We think what we do is right, but according to WSJ we do not.  Here is the advice.

Change is painful.  Thus, lifehack.org makes suggestions to lazy (and not so lazy) people on self help and personal development.  Their advice includes

• Relax
• Take regular physical exercise
• Eat a balanced diet.
• Sleep well
• Socialize
• Keep a journal
• Help other people
• Keep close to nature
• Develop a spiritual life
• Laugh
• Watch less T.V.
• Listen
• De-clutter your life
• Get organized
• Think for yourself

For additional advice, see. 

Also, according to the US Surgeon General 1 in 5 in the US is mentally ill.  The surveys estimate that during a 1-year period, 22 to 23 percent of the U.S. adult population—or 44 million people—have diagnosable mental disorders, according to reliable, established criteria. In general, 19 percent of the adult U.S. population have a mental disorder alone (in 1 year); 3 percent have both mental and addictive disorders; and 6 percent have addictive disorders alone. Consequently, about 28 to 30 percent of the population have either a mental or addictive disorder. That’s only 90 million people.

I have just started using ZuluPad a notebook cum wiki.  So far, it has bveen quite useful to keep research notes and ideas.  More about the trial as the world turns.

Time management

Academic and professional success is greatly aided by time management. Time management is a disciplined use of the only finite resource each of us have: time. Before the semester hits us fully, I list a few sites that offer some insight to successful time management. Even if you have excellent time management skills, reading through their suggestions adds value.

• A good, but somewhat dated, introductory treatment of time management gives the bare basics.
• Steve Pavlina has a personal development blog. Steve has an interesting writing style. He focuses on personal development and brings up examples from his own life to underline the point. This open perspective helps in explaining his view on personal development: you can change. Yet his writings are lengthy and sometimes he takes time to arrive to the point we know he tries to make. Nevertheless, his personal development web-log is an entertaining read and he often deals with the three interrelated areas of time management, productivity and goal setting.
• Merlin Mann – 43 folders – offers low tech solutions to time management problems. He and D*I*Y planner have thrown out their PDAs, Treos, and other electronic time manager gimmicks. Now, they either use 43 folders or paper based time management systems, such as the hipsterPDA and Moleskines.
• Other time management tools and ideas come from two similar sounding websites lifehack.org and lifehacker. Both sites focus on life quality improvement using small improvements in the daily grind (argh). Insert your favorite pirate joke here, because there argh. Both sites have a high geek quota, so non-geeks beware.

Enjoy!

Productivity

There are a number of sites dedicated to productivity, GTD, and lifehacks. Over at 43folders, Merlin Mann has a good review of GTD and the approach to get into GTD. I like Merlin and lot of his reviews and ideas are very useful and creative. For those in the no-know, GTD stands for Getting Things Done, an approach that focuses on work ethic and professional discipline. While nobody really needs either of these two to succeed, there are certainly some suggestions there that anyone could benefit.

Gotta add a brief note about other GTD hacks that I have been reading about, including software and implementation ideas.

Moleskinistas unite!