Image by gouldlibrary

1. Physically Disconnect from the Internet

The Internet is by far the most tempting distraction if you think about it. What I mean by PHYSICALLY disconnecting from it is really to unplug the LAN/WAN cable, or if you’re on Wi-Fi, there’s usually a physical switch somewhere, switch it off.

But sometimes this still doesn’t work, our mind is so good at overcoming obstacles, especially when the hurdle is so low that it’s just another door sill to cross.
My suggestion is that you may stick a warning sign over the switch or the plug so that you would at least think twice before you actually make that regretful move of reconnecting to the world of distractions. While it may sound trivial, this simple trick has saved me many times. Believe me, your mind is not THAT determined at wandering off!

2. Google Chrome Application Shortcut

Of course, sometimes we do have legitimate reasons for leaving the Internet connection on, either for checking up unfamiliar terms or just watching some educational online videos. This is however very risky. Somehow in the middle of seriousness, a notification would pop up to remind you of a new message in your inbox or maybe the Facebook bookmark would suddenly become very tempting (for no reason), and when you click it, and you’re doomed. Once you’re out, you’ll hardly come back. You know it.

By creating application shortcuts specifically for every site you need (e.g. Google Calendar, certain dictionary, Wikipedia, etc.), you can cut yourself off from the rest of the Internet.

3. The Pomodoro Technique

Some of you might have heard of The Pomodoro Technique. It sounds sophisticated, but to put it simple, follows these steps:

1. Get a kitchen timer. Make a to-do list.
2. Work for 25 minutes.
3. Take a 5 minutes break.
4. Resume work until you’ve done 4 rounds (4 Pomodoros).
5. Take a 15 minutes break.
6. Start all over again.

For more details about the technique, you may visit the official site. What I’d like to highlight here is that this technique works really well for me mainly because:

• The characteristic tic-tac sound of a kitchen timer would constantly remind you that you’re on a task and hence help you focus.
• This working pattern helps you “standardise” your distractions. You are allowed to get “distracted” during breaks: Check email, continue reading that Instapaper article, whatever you like.

Another tip is that you may download an iOS app (e.g. dPomodoro) so you can have a kitchen timer all to yourself even when you’re at the library.

Also, when time’s up, you’ll get a notification to stop you immediately after the break if you’re using another app. So really it’s safe to read Instapaper during breaks:)

© Theo for CampusByte, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us, Stumble It! Here

1. Khan Academy

This is probably the most established educational video site. It contains 1800+ videos mainly of maths and science topics. (There are also history and finance videos!) Khan’s videos are well presented and even sometimes humourous. He maintains a casual conversational tone which makes the videos highly engaging. (But don’t expect anything comedy-like, they are after all hardcore science :P)
I find this site particularly helpful when I need a quick grasp of certain mathematical concepts which would be too abstract to understand through plain text. The series on eigenvalues really helped me a lot in an introductory math course I took over the summer.

His choice of the colourful electronic blackboard is an added bonus.

2. Learn Lab techniques: Benchfly

Here you can find many “video protocols” of biology and chemistry. There are workthroughs from basic lab skills like using the light microscope and a Pipetman, to whatever I haven’t heard of.
Sometimes they also share little tips like how to label PCR tubes effectively and how to pronounce the dye Hoechst, which are often interesting to watch, provided you are a science student.

3. Watch Foreign Cartoons e.g. El Mundo de Bob Esponja

Well, I’m not referring solely to this site but any foreign cartoon sites out there. Watching cartoons in foreign language helps you immerse yourself in a foreign environment and can help you develop the natural sense of grammar and sentence structure which could be hard and boring to learn from books.
While you may find these cartoons rather silly now that you have grown up, don’t forget you are very much like the little children in another country learning their mother tongue. These cartoons are specially designed that you don’t have to understand 90% of the words before you can make sense out of them. The producers will even deliberately repeat certain common expressions again and again to help you memorise better.
Take Bob Esponja for an example, each episode is only about 10 minutes long. If you manage to watch an episode twice every day at lunch, you can soon get well ahead of your class. By watching each episode for a second time, you will be surprised how much more you can understand. Because after you’ve got the whole storyline, your brain will start to fit in the vocabs you’ve learnt previously in class into what you’re listening according to the context. For recurring words that you don’t know, jot it down and look up the dictionary afterwards, for there must be reasons why they keep repeating–they are often common and useful expressions.

4. Vlogs on Youtube

For an ESL student, these videos hold more than random daily records. Ever since I’ve found vloggers with accents I love, and eventually got addicted to watching their videos, my spoken English has improved a lot, especially in intonation, which is often the weakest aspect for speakers of tonal languages. Furthermore, you can easily pick up the latest slangs. They keep your language base lively.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, watching these educational videos is also a great excuse for not working, a great way to procrastinate! Bonus, uh?

© Theo for CampusByte, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us, Stumble It! Here

Image from FirstToGo.com

Flashcards are nothing new. You remember carrying them around the campus when you were… fourteen? Then you decided that making flashcards just takes too much of your time, and the cards are just too nerdy to carry around.

gFlash+ is a practical, minimalist app that works on both iOS and Android. As suggested by the “G” in its name, gFlash+ download data from your Google Spreadsheet: A two-column spreadsheet will be converted to a stack of Q&A flashcards, while a five-column one will become a custom-made multiple-choices challenge. It can also track your performance and give you an overall score for your reference.

Language Learning

I found these features particularly useful to someone who is studying a foreign language (in my case, it’s Español):

• After the first round you shuffle the cards, more focus will be put on those you’ve got wrong in the previous round. It does facilitate learning and can avoid the unnecessary boredom caused by recurring easy questions.
• You can reverse the Q&A, just like how you flip over a real stack of cards. After you can understand the new words, and you’ll also want to spell them, right?
  
• If you have no time to assign confusing choices for your MC quiz, it can also randomly generate choices from the same card stack. (brilliant!)

The Bonus — Image Challenge

This is what your old card set can’t do. Adding images as prompts is just super easy with gFlash+. You just fill the cell with the image URL, and poof! That’s it. I am not sure where else you will find this useful, but it works just well for my butterfly identification test!

Yet Another Bonus — Slip of Touch

I’m not sure about Android, but on the iOS version, if you swipe right to left, you can choose to change your last score–useful when regret faking that you knew the previous question. (Admit it, that’s what we all do…)

Setting Tips

The default setting is a bit tricky here. Again, I’m not sure about Android, but on the iOS, you change the defaults under the system settings, not within the app itself.

So have fun with gFlash+ and be sure to make good use of it next semester:)

© Theo for CampusByte, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us, Stumble It! Here

I decided to order them. To make a long story short, Zappos.com has the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. After this positive experience, I decided to research Zappos and who was running this company.

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, which was recently acquired by Amazon.com for 1.2 billion dollars. Hearing this, I immediately wanted to know everything about this company.

The Book

To my surprise, Tony had written a book that was to be released June 7th. Being a blogger, I found out I could get an advanced copy of the book, and I’m glad I did.

If you are interested in business, Startups, Entrepreneurship, or how to run a company with an amazing company culture, then you need to read Tony Hsieh’s new book, Delivering Happiness.

I don’t what to ruin the book for you, but to give you a little taste, Tony starts the book with a detailed look at his childhood and the trials and tribulations he went through to get where he is today. The book walks you all the way through every aspect of both Link Exchange (Tony’s first company) and Zappos.

Your Turn

If you’ve read the book, or plan to read it, let me know in the comments below. I look forward to seeing who else is now a huge fan of Tony Hsieh. Go get this book, it’s available now though amazon.com.

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If you have trouble studying or battle with procrastination, check out this quick video.

Photo Credit

The Pomodoro Technique:
http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

The Pomodoro iPhone App:
http://www.freshapps.com/pomodoro-technique/

Music: Kevin Macleod
http://www.incompetech.com

© CampusByte for CampusByte, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us, Stumble It! Here

However, not all energy drinks are created equal. In fact, the new drink I stumbled upon isn’t even considered an “energy drink”. It’s an energy beverage. Before I reveal my new favorite study drink, I wanted to see what other students use.

I asked the readers of CampusByte for their input on what kind of things they used while studying. I was actually surprised by some of the answers.

Photo Credit

The readers of CampusByte must be a rowdy bunch – here are some of the answers I received when I asked the question:

“I’m writing a new post for CampusByte on Wednesday. I need some feedback. What are your favorite study drugs/ drinks/ foods?”

• Stevie wrote: “Adderall/redbull/sex”
• Joyce wrote: “Chocolate Milk”
• David wrote: “Mountain Dew mixed with Red Bull with a drop shot of 5 Hour Energy”
• @CollegeThrive wrote: “Green Tea”
• @astroneat wrote: “sun salutations and cold showers”
• @btw_mj wrote “Slurpees”

To be honest, I rarely use energy drinks when I study now because most are just short energy spikes to get you though an assignment. Afterwards you always crash and end up feeling horrible. However, I recently stumbled upon an energy beverage invented by a pre med college student in his dorm room. The name of this drink is “NERD Energy Beverage“.

(No, I am not getting paid to write this. I actually found this product on my own and felt like sharing it because I honestly feel this beverage is going to be extremely popular on college campuses very soon)

What is it?

Get this, the CEO and creator was very busy with school, work and studying for the MCAT, so naturally, he was a Red Bull drinker. That’s when he came up with this idea. He approached his Organic Chemistry professor and asked him to order some very powerful focus and memory enhancers. He basically took the energy mix from red bull and added a memory and focus formula. Boom – genius.

I personally researched the main ingredients, which can be found here on their website, and found that these natural ingredients are proven to be linked to brain function -however, the only way to tell if it works or not was to try it out.

My experience

I had a marketing project I was working on last week so I decided to try out NERD.

The only thing that matters to me when it comes to study drinks is their effectiveness. I could care less how it tastes or what the can looks like, all I want to know is how well it works.

With that being said… it works. It works really well actually. The drink has the same amount of caffeine as a Starbucks coffee, so it definitely keeps you awake. That was obvious, but what surprised me was how well it allowed me to focus.

I finished my entire project in 45 minutes. It’s like I was immune to distractions. The words flowed directly from my brain to Microsoft Word and 45 minutes later I had written a 5 page marketing report.

This is unheard of for me. I usually get distracted and take hours to complete large assignments like this one.

The best part of the experience was no crash. Because the drink has only the amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, I didn’t notice a crash.

The only downside for me was the sugar content. As a health conscious individual, I try to decrease the amount of sugar I take in. An energy beverage like this one contains a good amount of sugar, but I just found out they offer a zero calorie version that contains a natural sweetener. Problem solved.

I’m interested to see if anyone has tried this drink. I know they carry it at my University but I’m not quite sure how far it’s spread yet. I know it’s growing rapidly, so keep an eye out for it. If you can’t find it in stores, you can order it on their website.

© CampusByte for CampusByte, 2010. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us, Stumble It! Here

Because of its simplicity, most students assume it can’t help them. They assume the technique is for younger kids because of how easy it is to learn. The truth is, many successful entrepreneurs use this method.

I’ve been using a modified version of timetables since I was in high school and my productivity has always been very high. If you take a second to learn this method I guarantee you will be able to complete your tasks more effectively, which will allow more time to enjoy life.

Photo Credit

Timetable Example

To give you an idea of how to set up a timetable, here is what I wrote today:

You can get as detailed as you like, just make sure you stick to the times.

Allocating Time

If you give yourself too long to complete a task, you will be wasting time. Always give yourself just enough time. It’s better to give yourself less time than too much, here is why.

If you don’t finish a task, stop working on it and move on to the next assignment. Come back to this task once you finish the other on your list. This will prevent you from spending all day working on one task then realizing you still have other things to do.

Also, by giving yourself just enough time to work on something, you will be cutting out all of the distractions and little things that lead to procrastination.

Rules

I’ve been using this method for a long time so I’ve come up with some rules that I like to follow. Keeping to these allows this method to work. If you don’t use these rules, you’re not going to be able to keep to your schedule.

• Paper – Everyday. Create a new timetable everyday on paper. I recommend using paper to start with because it will allow you to physically feel the weight of the assignments you must complete. Carry the table around with you at all times. After some time, you can upgrade to using your cell phone but until you’ve mastered this technique, use paper.
• Do Not Extend Times. If you do this, this technique will NOT work. You will be able to come back to projects when you are finished with the rest of the tasks. That’s what the Free Time is for.
• Never Plan a Whole Day. Life is unpredictable. Planning an entire day will not give you leeway when something comes up. I plan out entire days only when I know for sure what I’m doing for the rest of the day, like going to the gym and then eating.
• Plan Free Time. Make sure to plan free time into your schedule, but do not allow this to be a buffer. Only use free time for projects when you run out of time. Also, I always leave my weekends wide open. I might plan to work on a group project or write a paper, but for the most part I like to just relax and have fun on the weekends. College is supposed to be fun, remember.

Do you use timetables? Maybe you use a modified version. Let me know how you stay productive in the comments below.