This is from Oliver Burkeman on Twitter:
Scheduling a Monday start date for some task, while beginning to work on it a few days earlier, really can make you feel more confident about your progress (even though you know that you engineered the situation to create this feeling). Monday arrives, and you’ll likely be able to check off the task and stay ahead of the schedule that you crafted to your advantage.
If you’re currently working or studying from home and aren’t used to it, it may be difficult to adjust and to keep your days from collapsing into an undifferentiated mass of goo.
Someone forwarded me this video from It’s a Southern Thing (a lighthearted YouTube channel on living in the American South), and I’m offering it as the first source of “work from home inspiration.”
At roughly 1:15, you’ll find The Planner, who sets up his desk and writes a schedule on a whiteboard. When that part comes up, pause the video and check out how he’s organized his day. It’s a decent template for a day’s schedule, though obviously you’ll need to adapt it to your own set of obligations.
He sets aside a specific block of time to work on a presentation. Maybe that’s his top work priority of the day, because it needs to get done soon. Usually, on any given day, you’ll have at least one thing that really needs attention more than others.
For other work, he’s set up a general work/catch-up category that may also wind up getting carved up into a few main tasks or maybe just serve as a flexible time to attend to whatever comes up. He also makes room for things like meals and exercise.
Consider how you’ll also take breaks within the times allotted for work tasks. For example, an hour of work can look like 25 minutes of work, a 10-minute break, then 25 more minutes. Even if you don’t get everything done within a certain time slot, at least you’ll have completed some of the work (as opposed to leaving it untouched and forgetting about it until the absolute last minute).
(Yes, this is supposed to just be a funny video, but I’m saying, you can get inspiration from anywhere. Also, I had a quick look through the channel, and found this other funny video portraying a southern fashion show that made me smile.)
The second source of scheduling inspiration I’m sharing with you comes from Khan Academy. Among their parental resources for kids learning at home, there are some schedule templates covering preK to 12th grade. These templates offer ideas for different activities throughout the day with time for play and rest too. You can adapt them for your kids or use them for ideas about how to structure your own day if you’re working and studying. (“Ideally run around and play outside. Have a snack” is potentially good advice for an adult, and may be useful if you have a yard or access to an uncrowded outdoor space.)
Synaptic Sunday is a weekly collection of thought-provoking links related by similar topics:
1. If we remember more, can we read deeper–and create better? Part I.
In the very process of memorizing, remembering—and faltering—we don’t just learn more about what we are reading. We also learn more about how we are reading, how we are reacting to the material—and, in a way (or, at least, after we’ve stopped to ponder our mistakes in the manner Cooke suggests we do) why we are reacting to it as we do.
Interesting discussion on memorization, and what the process can show us about our minds and how we analyze whatever it is we’re memorizing (the example in the article is literary work). Also starts off with an interesting description of a memorization technique using the body’s movements, which can serve as cues for later recall.
2. Another post on the unreliability and malleability of memory
Elizabeth Loftus has produced a body of work showing that our memories aren’t strictly accurate recordings of what we’ve taken in through the senses, but that we can unintentionally shape, elaborate on, and outright fabricate them, and are influenced by suggestive remarks made by others (her work has had an enormous impact on cognitive psychology and also the legal field – how witness testimony is solicited and handled). At the link you’ll find further links to an interview with Loftus, and also to an article from Time Magazine on the faultiness of memory.
3. Memory Training Unlikely to Help in Treating ADHD, Boosting IQ
Overall, working memory training improved performance on tasks related to the training itself but did not have an impact on more general cognitive performance such as verbal skills, attention, reading or arithmetic.
I’m not sure what the working memory training tasks are; I’ve never participated in such a program (one example of a training task is mentioned at the link). Different kinds of memory processes may be related to and interact with other cognitive processes, but there needs to be caution about the claims made by people selling these programs. If they’re telling you that an intensive program of memory tasks will boost your cognitive ability more broadly, you have to ask yourself if this is really the case. Can they give you proof, linking training in certain memory tasks or series of tasks with measurable improvements in other areas of cognition and in academic success?
Maybe their whole approach of “loading up the brain with training exercises” is the wrong one to take to begin with, if they really want to use these tasks as a means of strengthening cognitive abilities more generally and not only your performance on those specific memory tasks. Maybe the problem with the training exercises is that they’re dry, rote short-term memory tasks, which don’t call on other areas of cognition as much as other kinds of memory tasks would.
4. Memories are Crucial for Imagining the Future
The past and future may seem like different worlds, yet the two are intimately intertwined in our minds. In recent studies on mental time travel, neuroscientists found that we use many of the same regions of the brain to remember the past as we do to envision our future lives.
Fascinating article.
Bright Across the Lifespan 