Organizing Long-Term Projects

Previous: Exams

Image courtesy of interllectual

So you have this huge project that your professor has assigned, that will be due at the end of the semester. “Oh, that’s three months away,” you think. “I have plenty of time.”

The “project” that I’m referring to is anything that involves multiple steps, and is not due in the next two weeks or so. In college, this is typically a final, end-of-semester project. Whether your project is a research paper, a thesis, or a working model of the solar system, you should probably sit down and do some planning. Otherwise, three months from now, you could be sitting down at you computer thinking, “Ok, 12 hours til this thing is due. How much coffee does it take before I can move at the speed of light? Oh, right, 100 cups.” This line of thought will then lead to a desire to watch some Futurama before working on your project, which will lead to you repeating the conversation with yourself, although this time you’ll be jittery and the time will be 8 hours.

The big question, then, is:

How can I plan this project in advance, and prevent the otherwise inevitable all-nighter?

List Your Steps

First, sit down and write out all the steps that will be required to complete this project. Every single little thing that has to get done, has to be written down. If you need to pick a topic, that is a step. If you need to read a section of the text and then write a response to it, these are two separate steps. Writing a paper should be broken up into specific sections to write, and editing/revising should always be separate from writing. Try to make your steps as small and unintimidating as possible. This way, when you have to complete a step, it won’t be a big, scary one, and you will be less likely to put it off.

It’s sometimes helpful to write down what materials you will need for each step, so you know what to gather before beginning to work.

Pick Due Dates

Next, go find a monthly calendar, preferably one you actually use. Find the project due date, and count back two days. Write that day down as the due date for the project. (I find tricking yourself to be pretty effective. No better way to finish a project early than to think it’s due before it actually is.)

For each of your steps, figure out a reasonable amount of time that you will devote to it, and choose a due date based on that estimate. Write down a due date for each step. Don’t have two things due on the same day, and choose a process of completion that makes sense. Write down these self-created due dates in your planner, and on your monthly calendar.

Stick to Your Due Dates

The problem with these due dates is that there is no one else to enforce them. If you need someone to help with accountability, ask a friend to check up on your progress periodically.

Rather than finding ways to punish yourself for falling behind, think of incentives for doing well. Every time you complete a step, allow yourself some small reward. Take the time to enjoy something, without thinking about how you should be doing something else.

Because five minutes of relaxation is all you may get for weeks.

Next: Types of Note-Taking

Why I Hated Mind-Mapping, And How I Overcame My Bias

Different people call them different things – mind-maps, webs, concept maps – but they really all refer to the same concept. The point of mind-mapping is to get all the information about some topic onto a piece of paper, and to use lines to connect them. It’s a graphical (pictoral) way of representing information. Of course, this is a good idea in theory, because the brain needs to make these connections in order for it to retain information. However, I always felt that mind-mapping is  for people whose brains work graphically. And mine doesn’t.

I am a very linear person. I like lists and outlines. When I take notes, I make lists of points, often with indenting to show sub-points. If I can, I actually go so far as to outline. (You know, the one with the Roman numerals, and the letters, and the numbers, that all have a specific hierarchy and lots of indenting. I love that.) I always assumed that mind-mapping just doesn’t work for my way of thinking.

To be honest, part of my prejudice against mind-mapping is probably due more to the fact that I’ve never been taught how to do it, than to it actually not working for me. I’ve never really done it. When I teach it to students at the tutoring center I work for, I glance over their work to see if they got the major points, then declare it “good enough” because I don’t really know what I’m looking for.

One of my classes this semester is a small Philosophy class. The professor runs it in a discussion-oriented format. We are reading An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume, and we sit in a circle and talk about it. Now, how am I supposed to take notes on a discussion?

I tried lists of points, but the problem is that it’s impossible to know if I should leave room after a point to add more information, because of course I can’t tell if someone will say something useful later. One day, my notes were simply a list of disjointed points, that probably won’t help me at all when I go back to them to study for the midterm.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany. I realized that mind-mapping is probably the perfect way to record information in a discussion-formatted class. I flipped a piece of notebook paper over on its side and wrote the topic of the day in the middle. As the class progressed, I added relevant information on the sides and connected them to the parent topic with lines. My result has all the information regarding a (very short) section of the book on one page, which I can go back later an turn into an outline, if I want.

This is the final result. I have a random point floating around in the bottom there because I wasn’t sure what to link it to. It’s not really related to yesterday’s topic, but it was important to remember for the future.

I know there are many websites and programs designed to facilitate this, but I don’t take my computer to class anymore. For one thing, I find that putting pen on paper goes faster than finding the right button to click to tell the computer what you want it to do (although I do type faster than I write). Also, as a general rule, if I have my computer, I’m not taking notes or even paying the slightest bit of attention to the class. Facebook and Twitter – they call.

I learned some things yesterday. First, I learned that I can’t discount a note-taking technique just because I’m not familiar with it. Second, I learned that sometimes new ways of doing things can result in better note-taking and, in turn, better recall.

Finally, I learned that it’s easier to draw rectangles around my points than the traditional circles. And it looks nicer.

School Year Resolutions: Part 1

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this next school year. Due to a combination of not choosing a major til my second year of college, not taking as many credit hours each semester as I should have, and key courses not being available, my next two semesters are going to be the busiest ones of my life. In the fall, I will be taking 15 credit hours at the university, as well as 4 at the local community college, because I just need one more semester of Spanish to have all my Gen-Eds done. In the spring, I am expecting to be enrolled for another 15, not including the internship that I need. One of the classes each semester is notorious among music students for being the hardest in the entire major. I will be responsible for massive amounts of homework, as well as knowing long, involved classical pieces inside and out. Also, I still have a part-time job teaching. So like I said, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I’m going to prevent myself from losing my mind this year.

Better yet, I made a list.

11 resolutions for surviving my school year

Part 1 – The academic resolutions.

Coming Soon…

…my last year of undergraduate education. (Hopefully.) I always qualify that, because I know that with the way things tend to work at the University of Arizona, something could very well go wrong that requires me to take one or two more classes just when I thought I should be done. I’ve spent a lot of time agonizing over reviewing the requirements for graduation in my major, and a little bit of time getting my advisor to check and make sure I’m right, so hopefully, everything will be fine, and I will obtain my BA in Music in May 2009.

I’ll stop with the self-congratulating now.

Unfortunately, before I get to graduate, I will have to endure what should be the two hardest semesters of my life so far. (Note that I’m leaving room for grad school in there.) Since my typical method of organization could be accurately described as non-existent a month into the semester, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for how I’m going to survive this school year.

Over the next few days, I will post these plans as a two-part series. The first part is going to be related to the academic aspect – keeping my life organized – and the second part is going to deal with my health, both physical and mental.

I’m also going to be blogging about my success, or lack thereof, as incentive to keep up the good work. I will post something once a week, indicating my progress with my stated goals. Public exposure is an excellent motivating factor, after all.

Print Your Index Cards

I have been using a combination of Google Calendar and Remember the Milk to keep track of my daily schedule and tasks lately. I recently took Doug Ireton’s advice on the RTM blog on how to set up RTM as a GTD system, and all of my lists and tasks are now GTD-ready. (For more information on Getting Things Done, click here or here.) One of my favorite things about both RTM and gCal is the ability to text your tasks to the service. With gCal, you set up your phone and text GVENT with your event, and with RTM you direct message on Twitter. If it weren’t for this, I’d forget most of the things I have to do before I get anywhere near a computer. I very highly recommend checking out both of these services if you haven’t already done so. But I digress.

I’ve also been using PocketMod as a way to carry all my weekly tasks around with me in paper form. I decided, however, that I have no use for all 8 pages that PocketMod will give you, as I was only using about 2 on a regular basis, and that I really like 3×5 index cards better. (I don’t do a full-on Hipster PDA, however. As a female, I’m forced to wear clothes that don’t have pockets designed to carry ANYTHING, so I carry a purse instead. Actually I hate “purses”, so I really carry a small backpack. But again, I digress.)

I only need a few index cards, one for this week’s schedule and one for next week, and one for my Next Actions list in RTM. Rather than handwriting these each week, I decided to see if I could get them to print to 3×5 index cards. Now, to warn you, I use a MacBook, and on Macs, printing preferences are very easily customized. I’m sure it can be done on a Windows machine, with the right printer, but I’m not sure how easy it would be.

On 43Folders, I managed to find a tip for printing the week from Google Calendar to a 3×5 card, which was very helpful. After doing this, I realized I’d want a To Do list as well, and figured my Next Actions list from RTM will be perfect.

For the record, I’m doing this in Safari, and printing on an HP Photosmart C3100-series printer.

The process for printing from gCal is a little more complicated than RTM, so I’m going to do the easy one first. In RTM, select the list you want to print. Click the “Print” icon in the info pane to the right of the list. It will open up a new window (or tab, if you’re running Firefox and have that preference selected) with the list header at the top of the page, and the list with neat little check-boxes. It also lists due dates for the tasks, what list the task came from (because my NA list is a composite of all my lists) and the priority, pictured by little bullet points. Select Print from the File menu, and in the Paper Size drop-down menu, choose Index Card 3×5. Deselect the checkbox next to “Print headers and footers” so you have more space. Now change the scale to the desired size. This will change depending on how many items you have on your list, and how big you want it. I try to scale it down so it’s all on one card, but as big as it can be. Make sure you put the index card in the printer tray, and click Print. See, that wasn’t so hard.

Now for the fun.

To print from gCal, first choose Week view, then select only the calendars you want to print. Click the “Print” icon at the top of the page, right next to the view tabs. This will open Google’s version of a print window. In this window, change the font size to “Biggest” in the drop-down menu. Trust me, your eyes will thank you. (Although, honestly, it could be even bigger.) DO NOT click Print. This window does not allow you to change the size of the paper, so instead, click Save As. This will cause the browser to download your calendar as a PDF file. Open this file, and open the Print dialog. Now change the paper size to Index Card 3×5. In Preview, I had to tell it to automatically scale the image to fit the paper size. Once this radio button was selected, however, it sized and scaled the image perfectly. Again, make sure you put the index card in the printer tray, and click Print. Also not too hard, but there is an extra step or two.

If the Hipster PDA isn’t quite right for you, but you want to carry index cards rather than a planner, and you’re too busy (or lazy) to handwrite your cards, hopefully this will give you some insight on how to print them. Let the computer do the thinking for you. Or at least the writing, since this does involve some thinking on your part.