Productive (adj)

RealSimple just posted an article called How to Be More Productive . These kind of articles pop up all over the place, especially over at Lifehacker ; this one drew my attention because the items on the list are so innocuous, even pleasant. Get more sunshine, do something mindless, be present when a compliment is given, get physical, and work in small increments all sound manageable, and in some cases enjoyable. I'd love to take a sunny walk and do some mindless activity, and who doesn't like getting compliments? The best tip is probably the one to break your projects into smaller, more manageable chunks; this is the mindset behind Getting Things Done and is also at work in the Pomodoro Technique . It's definitely motivating to cross smaller tasks off of a to-do list, especially when projects in graduate school easily growing to monstrous size in our imaginations. "Pass comps" or "write thesis" are impossible tasks to tackle in one go, but "re...

Apologies for this post being a little later than I'd have liked, but I've been under a cloud of "blegh" for the past week and it's been difficult to get anything done. Like having a lingering cold, except instead of sneezing you don't have the energy to do anything except watch season 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In this week's roundup over at The Bubble Chamber  I wrote about some new research exposing the potential pitfalls of sexual stereotyping, and linked to the disastrous EC's "Science: It's a Girl Thing" video (which was so offputting when released this past summer that it immediately went viral). Fortunately, the marketing for the EC's continued " Science: It's a Girl Thing " campaign seems to have overcome its initial pinkwashing and now features girl models doing more than strutting the catwalk: taking pictures, standing in front of blackboards, and daydreaming. Writing about "Science: ...

On Friday, January 25th, York University Science & Technology Studies graduate students from Katey Anderson ’s Science & Technology as Material Culture course (plus a few hangers-on, including yours truly) got a behind-the-scenes tour of the artifacts at the Canadian Science & Technology Museum , courtesy of David Pantalony . The grounds of the CSTM David Pantalony (right) and the muddy-footed tour group  We checked out the collections in storage, as well as the “artifacts in the wild” on display to the public. In addition to performing material analyses of artifacts, we explored storage warehouses, skulked around in backstage areas off-limits to the public, and toured the museum’s library. In this post I’ll describe our time at the CSTM, as well as David’s approach to artifacts, material culture, and his curatorial work. The storage warehouse An exciting... something. The CSTM is a little off the beaten track as far as Ottawa’s museums go. L...

My supervisor warned me recently about how small responsibilities can pile up. Her strategy is to take 3 straight days to work on a project (a paper, proposal, etc.) because by day 3, your focus is so concentrated that it's much more efficient than continuously returning to the same project for many days over a few weeks. But when things get busy, distractions eat away at your ability to focus. One of the worst, she said, was email: administrative, teaching, and miscellaneous emails pile up and erode productivity, meaning that she doesn't ever have 3 straight days to focus on one project. Things work a little differently for me. I like to move between projects, to tackle multiple things in a day. I enjoy the feeling of crossing things off my to-do list, and since email is the biggest part of my graduate assistantship, I like to read and respond to any that come my way ASAP so that they're not hanging over me (leaving small tasks undone for days, on the other hand, ...

Last week I gave a talk at the annual meeting of 4S, the Society for Social Studies of Science , in Copenhagen. It was a great excuse to visit a city I'd never been to before, and a nice change of scenery from an autumn devoted to reading for my comprehensive exam (and in York's STS program, is it ever comprehensive !) After giving myself permission to enjoy my trip and not feel guilty for not keeping up the reading pace, I ended up doing much more work than I expected; mainly writing notes on pdf files of papers in my Documentary Film list. I use GoodReader to read and annotate files on my iPad, which was much easier than lugging stacks of printed papers or books on a transatlantic flight. The difficulty is that I find the iPad sluggish when I try to type notes and work off the pdf file at the same time, so I just wrote in my moleskin notebook and typed them up later. The conference itself was vibrant and well-designed, much like Copenhagen. Based on the theme of "De...

This summer there are many balls in the air. I'm ostensibly on vacation in Maine, but there are some significant responsibilities to take care of before heading back to Canada in August. In decreasing order of importance, these are: 1) Wedding planning. People warn you about how many details need to be looked after, but I severely underestimated the amount of work it would be. And doing many things ourselves (especially of the craftier variety) reduces cost but increases time and effort. Even though we're holding a low-key, casual affair, the to-do list goes on and on. Fortunately, this kind of project is agreeable to work on, and Isaac and his family have been doing a tremendous amount. 2) Reading for comps. My exam has been scheduled for the beginning of December, and there are so many books to read! 150 in all, in 3 lists. I have a handful under my belt so far, but it never really feels as though I'm going fast enough. My problem might be that I'm a fast, retenti...

It's starting to be clear to me that I am no good at keeping this blog updated. My last post was from last November, and it wasn't a "real" post; instead it was advertising a conference I slightly helped to organize. It was a wonderful conference, mind you, but having recently heard all about the benefits of having online outlets for our thoughts and musings, academic and otherwise, for graduate students by the visiting postdoc at my department, Melinda Baldwin , I'm motivated to update more frequently. The last time I worked on my online presence, about 6 months ago, I maxed out my facebook privacy settings, started to tweet , and built an academia.edu page . The next step is probably to build my own academic website, and most universities offer their graduate students the resources to do just that. Some of my friends have blogs that integrate their professional lives (CV, publications, etc.) with some outside interests, and some run more research-nuggets type...