우리가 종이 사용을 줄이는건 좋은 시작일지는 몰라도 숲을 보호하기에는 새발의 피 정도의 노력밖에 되지 않습니다.

'종이는 숲입니다'에 쓰인 통계는 1999년에 Worldwatch에서 인용했구요 산업용 목재의 42%가 종이 생산에 쓰인다고 하는데 문제는 산업용 목재 채벌은 열대우림 파괴에서 매우 중요한 위치를 차지하지 않는다는 겁니다.

UN의 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 통계에 따르면 열대 목재 수확은 예년에 비교해서 비슷하거나 줄어들고 있는 반면 늘어나야할 열대 우림 면적이 급속하게 줄어들고 있습니다. 결국 신고되는 열대 목재 수확이 적거나 목재 수확이 아닌 벌목을 하고있다는 소리죠.

아마존이나 인도네시아의 열대우림의 벌목은 펄프나 건축 자재를 채집하기 위해 이뤄지는것 보다는 다른 작물들을 심기 위한 불법 벌목들이 더욱 심한 상황입니다. 대다수는 정부에 신고하지도 않고 비밀스럽게 이뤄지는 경우가 허다하죠.

작년에 들었던 두개의 국제학 수업과 신입생때 들었던 기초 롸이팅 수업에서
열대 우림의 벌목의 실태에 대해 대강 알고있었지만
지난 학기 국제환경정치학 수업을 들으면서 더 자세히 알 수 있었습니다.

기말 논문을 위해서 한가지 국제 환경 협약의 성공 혹은 실패 사례에 대해 조사를 해야했는데
건축을 공부하는 학생으로서 목재 벌채에 관심을 갖고 있었기에
International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA)를 포커스 토픽으로 정했고
조사하는동안 열대 우림에 대해 많은걸 알게됐습니다.


유니레버와 같은 다국적 기업에 값싼 팜오일을 공급하기 위해
맥도날드에 공급할 치킨 너겟과 소고기 패디를 공급하는 농장에서 쓰이는 사료로 쓰일 곡물을 심기 위해...
우리 입으로 들어가는 값싼 바나나와 같은 열대 과일을 재배하기 위해...
공장을 세우고 연료로 태울 나무들을 심기 위해.

원래 자라고 있던 나무들을 베어내고
단 한 종의 팜 트리, 바나나 나무, 콩, 펄프를 생산하는 나무를 심어서 축구공 만한 숲들이 없어지는거란거.

 유니레버가 다년간 환경단체들로부터의 압박을 받은 후 2009년 12월경 정책을 바꾸기로 결정을 했지만
여전히 팜오일을 비롯한 여러 생산은 열대 우림ㅡ특히 인도네시아를 포함한 동남아 열대 우림ㅡ 파괴의 선두주자 입니다.

+ 이 수업 듣기 전에는 유니레버가 그렇게나 큰 회사인지 몰랐습니다.
유니레버의 제품들 더보기
더보기

그린피스에서 제작한 인도네시아 열대 우림과 팜오일 그리고 도브에 관련된 영상입니다.
이 영상만 보면 모든 열대 우림이 팜오일 생산 때문에 파괴된다는 잘못된 메세지를 전달받을 수 있지만
그렇진 않아요, 여러가지가 복합되서 그런거구 팜오일 생산이 대표적인거라는 거죠.
그리고 한가지 농작물을 심기 위해 큰 나무들은 채벌해서 팔고 작은 식물들은 불을 질러 태워버립니다.
그곳에서 살고 있는 동식물들과 함께요. 어떻게 보면 인간도 예외가 아닐듯..



++
햄버거가 어떤 영향을 끼치는지 더 알고 싶으신 분들은 이 두 포스팅 읽어보시면 이해가 가실듯.
EBS 에서 방영한 햄버거 커넥션이란 다큐에 관한 포스팅 http://blog.naver.com/alohao?Redirect=Log&logNo=70068308960
다국적 곡물 회사에 관한 포스팅 http://blog.naver.com/shawnart?Redirect=Log&logNo=110073741712



벌목은 인간과 자연이 더불어 살때 일어나는 자연스러운 현상입니다.

북미 지역이나 몇몇 유럽 지역의 목재 생산은 열대우림과 비교하면 별 차이가 안날정도로 엄청나지만 Forest Stewartship Council (FSC) 같은 관리 시스템이 잘 되어있어 현재의 삼림 면적에 커다란 영향을 끼치지 않습니다. 현재라는 단어를 궂이 쓰는 이유는 미국만 해도 원래 있던 나무들 다 베어내고 거대한 농장이나 도시로 개발한 후 최소한의 삼림을 유지하고 있기 때문이에요.. 200년 전 북미의 삼림 면적과 지금 삼림 면적을 비교하면 한숨이 나오지만요. 물론 북미 지역에서 생산되는 목재와 열대 우림에서 생산되는 목재는 다른 종류이긴 하지만 역시 목재 생산이 벌채의 가장 큰 목적이라면 북미도 열대우림과 같은 이유로 삼림이 없어지고 세계의 관심을 받고 있어야 하는게 마땅하지 않을까요?



그래서 말입니다,
우리 모두 벌목의 1차적인 목적인 목재나 펄프를 넘은 단계도 생각 해보셨으면 해요.

나무에서 무언가를 얻기도 하지만 열대 우림은 무엇이든 심으면 잘 자라기 때문에
나무보다는 땅 때문에 열대 우림이 없어진다고 보시면 되요.

공산품을 보면 먹거리나 로션 등등 보면 팜오일 들어간게 굉장히 많아요.
바나나는 양도 많은게 다른 과일보다 값도 저렴하구요.
전세계 인구를 먹여 살릴 수 있는 음식이 있지만 곡물들은
가축의 사료로 사용되어서 결국 고기를 소비하는 인구에게 음식 소비가 집중되어 고른 분배가 되지 못하는 거구요.
우리 주위를 둘러싸고 있는 모든것들에 왜그런지 한번 생각해 보셨으면 해요.

기후 문제나 환경 문제는 우리가 스위치를 내린다고 종이 한장 아낀다고 위젯을 달아놓는다고 해결되지 않아요. 누군가가 해결해주길 바라는것도 안되요. 다만 우리가 지금 하는건 시작일 뿐이죠. 다만 시작 했으면 앞으로 나아갔으면 해요. 여러 정부와 기업들이 얽히고 설킨 문제를 풀기 위해서 우리들이 똑똑해질 시간입니다. 바른 소비를 하고 목소리를 내서 우리가 정부와 기업들을 바꿔야 하는거죠.

가격이 싸다고 다 좋은건 아닙니다.
글로벌한게 다 좋은것도 아니구요.
그렇다고 무조건 구매를 주이는것도 좋지 않구요.

'종이는 숲입니다' 캠페인을 보면서 숲을 지키고자 하는 이들이 많다는걸 느꼈고 그분들이 조금 더 아셨으면 해서 몇자 적다보니 글이 길어졌네요. 글이 길어지다 보니 앞뒤도 잘 안맞고.. 정확한 통계나 정보를 갖고 제대로 쓴 글이 아니기 때문에 제 포스팅을 인용하지는 마셨으면 해요. 그냥 이 글을 읽으신 분께 세계를 보는 시각를 넓히시는데 도움이 되기를..

집에 왔다.
어느샌가 내가 지금 앉아있는 이 곳을 집이라고 부르기 시작했다. 6년동안 한국을 떠나 살면서 내 집이라고 부른 곳이 없었는데, 이곳은 9개월 밖에 살지 않았어도 집이라고 부른다. 아마도 호스트 패밀리와 기숙사는 내 방이 있더라도 어딘가에 속해 있다는 느낌이지만 이곳은 현관부터 내 방까지 부엌, 화장실, 욕조, 침대 다 내 것 이라서 그럴 것이다.

어딘가에 돌아갈 곳이 있다는건 참 좋은 느낌이다.
나는 복도 많다. 한국에도 미국에도 핀란드에도, 집이라고 부르며 돌아갈 곳들이 있으니까.
익숙한 곳에 머물 공간이 있다면 그게 바로 집이 아닐까 싶다.

유럽을 떠나기 며칠 전 부터 집에 간다고 매우 들떠있었다.
이렇게 오레곤으로 돌아오는게 좋기는 정말 처음인것 같았다.
항상 여름 끝자락에는 한국을 떠난다는 아쉬움과 학교가 다시 시작한다는 불안감에 마음이 편치 않았지만, 이번은 다르다. 집 이라고 부를 수 있는 곳이 나를 기다리고 있었으니까. 집에 오면 20시간을 연속으로 자야지! 하고 벼르고 있었는데, 역시나 매년 시차 적응 하기가 점점 힘겨워 지고 있다.

이제 1주일 후면 다시 다른 곳으로 내 집 이라고 부르는 곳을 옮겨야 한다.
그 전까지는 은둔하며 짐이나 싸고 청소나 해야 할 것 같다.
또 다른 한 해를 차분히 시작하려니 기분이 좋다.


고 장진영씨 좋은 곳에 가셨길 바란다.

서핑하다가 우연히 찾은 글.

완전 좋다 >u<

Do It Now

http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm

When going to college many years ago, I decided to challenge myself by setting a goal to see if I could graduate in only three semesters, taking the same classes that people would normally take over a four-year period. This article explains in detail all the time management techniques I used to successfully pull this off.

In order to accomplish this goal, I determined I'd have to take 30-40 units per semester, when the average student took 12-15 units. It became immediately obvious that I'd have to manage my time extremely well if I wanted to pull this off. I began reading everything I could find on time management and putting what I learned into practice. I accomplished my goal by graduating with two Bachelor of Science degrees (computer science and mathematics) in just three semesters without attending summer school. I slept seven to eight hours a night, took care of my routine chores (shopping, cooking, etc), had a social life, and exercised for 30 minutes every morning. In my final semester, I even held a full time job (40 hours a week) as a game programmer and served as the Vice Chair of the local Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter while taking 37 units of mostly senior-level computer science and math courses. My classmates would add up all the hours they expected each task to take and concluded that my weeks must have consisted of about 250 hours. I graduated with a 3.9 GPA and also received a special award given to the top computer science student each year. One of my professors later told me that they had an easy time selecting the award recipient once it became clear to them what I was doing.

I wasn't considered a gifted child, and this was the first time I had ever done anything like this. I didn't have any personal mentors helping me, I didn't know of anyone who'd done anything like this before, and I can't recall a single person encouraging me to do it. In fact, most people were highly discouraging of the idea when I told them about it. This was simply something I decided to do for myself. If you want a better understanding of where I was at this time in my life and why I decided to attempt such a crazy thing, you might enjoy reading The Meaning of Life: Intro, which includes the full background story and more details about my motivation for doing this.

It took a lot of convincing to get the computer science department chair to approve my extra units every semester, and my classmates often assumed I was either cheating or that I had a twin or that I was just mentally unstable (I get accused of that last one pretty much every week, so maybe there's some truth to it). Most of the time I kept quiet about what I was doing, but if someone asked me how many units I was taking, I didn't deny it. I was perhaps the only student at the university with a two-page class schedule, so it was easy to prove I was telling the truth if anyone pressed me, but rarely did I ever do so.

I didn't tell you this story to impress you but rather to make you curious as to how I did it. I pulled this off by applying time management concepts that most people simply didn't know but that were readily available in books and audio programs at the time (1992-93). The time management habits I learned in college have served me very well in building my business, so I want to share them with you in the hopes that you'll find them equally valuable. They allowed me to shave years off my schooling while also giving me about $30,000 to start my business (all earned in my final semester as a game programmer, mostly from royalties). Without further ado, here's the best of what I've learned about mastering time management:

Clarity is key.

The first step is to know exactly what you want. In a Tae Kwon Do studio where I used to train, there's a huge sign on the wall that says, "Your goal is to become a black belt." This helps remind each student why s/he is going through such difficult training. When you work for yourself, it's easy to spend a whole day at your desk and accomplish nothing of value. This almost always happens when you aren't really clear about what it is you're trying to do. In the moments when you regain your awareness, ask yourself, "What exactly is it that I'm trying to accomplish here?" You must know your destination with as much clarity as possible. Make your goals specific, and put them in writing. Your goals must be so clear that it would be possible for a stranger to look at your situation objectively and give you an absolute "yes" or "no" response as to whether you've accomplished each goal or not. If you cannot define your destination precisely, how will you know when you've arrived?

The key period I've found useful for defining and working on specific goals is ninety days, or the length of one season. In that period of time, you can make dramatic and measurable changes if you set crystal clear goals. Take a moment to stop and write down a snapshot description of how you want your life to be ninety days from now. What will your monthly income be? How much will you weigh? Who will your friends be? Where will you be in your career? What will your relationship be like? What will your web site look like? Be specific. Absolute clarity will give you the edge that will keep you on course.

Just as an airplane on autopilot must make constant corrections to stay on course, you must periodically retarget your goals. Reconnect with your clear, written goals by re-reading them every morning. Post them on your walls, especially your financial goals. Years ago (during the mid-90s), I went around my apartment putting up signs in every room that said "$5,000 / month." That was my monthly business income goal at the time. Because I knew exactly what I wanted, I achieved that goal within a few weeks. I continued setting specific income goals, even amidst occasional setbacks, and I found this process very effective. It wasn't just that it helped me focus on what I wanted -- perhaps even more important is that it made it easy for me to disregard those things that weren't on the path to my goal. For example, if you set a goal to earn $10,000/month, this can help you stop doing those things that will only earn you $5000/month.

If you aren't yet at the point of clarity, then make that your first goal. It's a big waste of time to go through life being unclear about what you want. Most people wallow way too long in the state of "I don't know what to do." They wait for some external force to provide them with clarity, never realizing that clarity is self-created. The universe is waiting on you, not the other way around, and it's going to keep waiting until you finally make up your mind. Waiting for clarity is like being a sculptor staring at a piece of marble, waiting for the statue within to cast off the unneeded pieces. Do not wait for clarity to spontaneously materialize -- grab a chisel and get busy!

Be flexible.

There's a key difference between knowing your destination and knowing the path you will take to get there. A typical commercial airplane is off course 90% of the time, yet it almost always arrives at its destination because it knows exactly where it's going and makes constant corrections along the way. You cannot know the exact path to your goal in advance. I believe that the real purpose of planning is simply so that you remain convinced that a possible path exists. We've all heard the statistic that 80% of new businesses fail in their first five years, but a far more interesting statistic is that nearly all of the businesses that succeeded did not do so in the original way they had intended. If you look at successful businesses that started with business plans, you will commonly find that their original plans failed miserably and that they only succeeded by trying something else. It is said that no business plan survives contact with the marketplace. I like to generalize this to say that no plan survives contact with the real world.

Renowned author and business consultant Stephen Covey often uses the expression, "integrity in the moment of choice." What that means is that you should not follow your plans blindly without conscious awareness of your goals. For instance, let's say you're following your plans nicely -- so far so good -- and then an unforeseen opportunity arises. Do you stick to your original plan, thereby missing the opportunity, or do you stop and go after the opportunity, thereby throwing yourself off schedule? This is where you have to stop and reconnect with your goals to decide which is the better course. No plan should be followed blindly. As soon as you gain new knowledge that could invalidate the plan, you must exercise integrity in the moment of choice. Sometimes you can reach your goals faster by taking advantage of shortcuts that arise unexpectedly. Other times you should stick to your original plans and avoid minor distractions that would take you further from your goals. Be tight on your goals but flexible on your plans.

I believe that having a clear goal is far more important than having a clear plan. In school I was very clear about my end goal -- graduate college in only three semesters -- but my plans were in a constant state of flux. Every day I would be informed of new assignments, projects, or tests, and I had to adapt to this ever-changing sea of activity. If I tried to make a long-term plan for each semester, it would have been rendered useless within 24 hours.

Use single handling.

Instead of using some elaborate organizing system, I stuck with a very basic pen and paper to-do list. My only organizing tool was a notepad where I wrote down all my assignments and their deadlines. I didn't worry about doing any advance scheduling or prioritizing. I would simply scan the list to select the most pressing item which fit the time I had available. Then I'd complete it, and cross it off the list.

If I had a 10-hour term paper to write, I would do the whole thing at once instead of breaking it into smaller tasks. I'd usually do large projects on weekends. I'd go to the library in the morning, do the necessary research, and then go back to my dorm room and continue working until the final text was rolling off my printer. If I needed to take a break, I would take a break. It didn't matter how big the project was supposed to be or how many weeks the professor allowed for it. Once I began an assignment, I would stay with it until it was 100% complete and ready to be turned in.

This simple practice saved me a significant amount of time. First, it allowed me to concentrate deeply on each assignment and to work very efficiently while I worked. A lot of time is lost in task switching because you have to re-load the context for each new task. Single handling minimizes time lost in task switching. In fact, when possible I would batch up my assignments within a certain subject area and then do them all at once before switching subjects. So I'd do all my math homework in a row until it was all done. Then I'd do all my programming assignments. Then I'd do my general education homework. In this manner I would put my brain into math-mode, programming-mode, writing-mode, or art-mode and remain in that single mode for as long as possible. Secondly, I believe this habit helped me remain relaxed and unstressed because my mind wasn't cluttered with so many to-do items. It was always just one thing at a time. I could forget about anything that was outside the current context.

Failure is your friend.

Most people seem to have an innate fear of failure, but failure is really your best friend. People who succeed also fail a great deal because they make a lot of attempts. The great baseball player Babe Ruth held the homerun record and the strikeout record at the same time. Those who have the most successes also have the most failures. There is nothing wrong or shameful in failing. The only regret lies in never making the attempt. So don't be afraid to experiment in your attempts to increase productivity. Sometimes the quickest way to find out if something will work is to jump right in and do it. You can always make adjustments along the way. It's the ready-fire-aim approach, and surprisingly, it works a lot better than the more common ready-aim-fire approach. The reason is that after you've "fired" once, you have some actual data with which to adjust your aim. Too many people get bogged down in planning and thinking and never get to the point of action. How many potentially great ideas have you passed up because you got stuck in the state of analysis paralysis (i.e. ready-aim-aim-aim-aim-aim...)?

During college I tried a lot of crazy ideas that I thought might save me time. I continued reading time management material and applying what I learned, but I also devised some original ideas. Most of my own ideas were flops, but some of them worked. I was willing to fail again and again for the off chance I might stumble upon something that gave me an extra boost.

Understand that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is an essential part of success. Once you succeed, no one will remember your failures anyway. Microsoft wasn't Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's first business venture. Who remembers that their original Traf-o-Data business was a flop? The actor Jim Carey was booed off many a stage while a young comedian. We have electric light bulbs because Thomas Edison refused to give up even after 10,000 failed experiments. If the word "failure" is anathema to you, then reframe it: You either succeed, or you have a learning experience.

Letting go of the fear of failure will serve you well. If you're excited about achieving a particular goal, but you're afraid you might not be able to pull it off, jump on it and do it anyway. Even if you fail in your attempt, you'll learn something valuable and can make a better attempt next time. If you look at people who are successful in business today, you will commonly see that many of them had a string of dismal failures before finally hitting on something that worked, myself included. And I think most of these people will agree that those early failure experiences were an essential contributing factor in their future successes. My advice to anyone starting a new business is to begin pumping out products or devising services and don't worry much about whether they'll be hits. They probably won't be. But you'll learn a lot more by doing than you ever will by thinking.

Do it now!

W. Clement Stone, who built an insurance empire worth hundreds of millions dollars, would make all his employees recite the phrase, "Do it now!" again and again at the start of each workday. Whenever you feel the tendency towards laziness taking over and you remember something you should be doing, stop and say out loud, "Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!" I often set this text as my screen saver. There is a tremendous cost in putting things off because you will mentally revisit them again and again, which can add up to an enormous amount of wasted time. Thinking and planning are important, but action is far more important. You don't get paid for your thoughts and plans -- you only get paid for your results. When in doubt, act boldly, as if it were impossible to fail. In essence, it is.

It is absolutely imperative that you develop the habit of making decisions as soon as possible. I use a 60-second rule for almost every decision I have to make, no matter how big or important. Once I have all the data to make a decision, I start a timer and give myself only 60 seconds to make a firm decision. I'll even flip a coin if I have to. When I was in college, I couldn't afford to waste time thinking about assignments or worrying about when to do them. I simply picked one and went to work on it. And today when I need to decide which article to write next, I just pick a topic and begin writing. I believe this is why I never experience writer's block. Writer's block means you're stuck in the state of thinking about what to write instead of actually writing. I don't waste time thinking about writing because I'm too busy writing. This is probably why I've been able to write hundreds of original articles very easily. Every article I write spawns ideas for at least two more, so my ideas list only increases over time. I cannot imagine ever running out of original content.

Too often people delay making decisions when there is no advantage to be found in that delay. Usually delaying a decision will only have negative consequences, so even if you're faced with ambiguity, just bite the bullet and make a decision. If it turns out to be the wrong one, you'll know it soon enough. Many people probably spend more than 60 seconds just deciding what they'll eat for dinner. If I can't decide what to eat, I just grab an apple or a couple bananas and start eating, and sometimes I'm full of fruit before I figure out what I really would like to eat. So my brain knows that if it wants something other than fruit, it had better decide quickly. If you can speed up the pace of making decisions, you can spend the rest of your time on action.

One study showed that the best managers in the world tend to have an extremely high tolerance for ambiguity. In other words, they are able to act boldly on partial and/or conflicting data. Many industries today have accelerated to such a rapid pace that by the time you have perfect data with which to make any decision, the opportunity is probably long gone. Where you have no data to fall back on, rely on your own personal experience and intuition. If a decision can be made right away, make the decision as soon as it comes up. If you can't make a decision right away, set aside a time where you will consider the options and make the decision. Pour the bulk of your time into action, not deciding. The state of indecision is a major time waster. Don't spend more than 60 seconds in that state if you can avoid it. Make a firm, immediate decision, and move from uncertainty to certainty to action. Let the world tell you when you're wrong, and you'll soon build enough experience to make accurate, intelligent decisions.

Triage ruthlessly.

Get rid of everything that wastes your time. Use the trash can liberally. Apply the rule, "When in doubt, throw it out." Cancel useless magazine subscriptions. If you have a magazine that is more than two months old and you still haven't read it, throw it away; it's probably not worth reading. Realize that nothing is free if it costs you time. Before you sign up for any new free service or subscription, ask how much it will cost you in terms of time. Every activity has an opportunity cost. Ask, "Is this activity worth what I am sacrificing for it?"

In college I was downright brutal when it came to triage. I once told a professor that I decided not to do one of his assigned computer science projects because I felt it wasn't a good use of my time. The project required about 10-20 hours of tedious gruntwork that wasn't going to teach me anything I didn't already know. Also, this project was only worth 10% of my grade in that class, and since I was previously acing the class anyway, the only real negative consequence would be that I'd end up with an A- in the course instead of an A. I told the professor I felt that was a fair trade-off and that I would accept the A-. I didn't try to negotiate with him for special treatment. So my official grade in the class was an A-, but I personally gave myself an A+ for putting those 10-20 hours to much better use.

Ask yourself this question: "Would I have ever gotten started with this project, relationship, career, etc. if I had to do it all over again, knowing what I now know?" If your answer is no, then get out as soon as possible. This is called zero-based thinking. I know a lot of people that have a limiting belief that says, "Always finish what you start." They spend years climbing ladders only to realize when they reach the top that the ladder was leaning against the wrong building. Remember that failure is your friend. So if a certain decision you've made in the past is no longer producing results that serve you, then be ruthless and dump it, so you can move onto something better. There is no honor in dedicating your life to the pursuit of a goal which no longer inspires you. This is another situation where you must practice integrity in the moment of choice. You must constantly re-assess your present situation to accurately decide what to do next. Whatever you've decided in the past is largely irrelevant if you would not renew that decision today.

Identify and recover wasted time.

Instead of watching a one-hour TV show, tape it and watch it in 45 minutes by fast-forwarding through the commercials. Don't spend a half hour typing a lengthy email when you could accomplish the same thing with a 10-minute phone call. Batch your errands together and do them all at once.

During the summer between my second and third semesters, I found an apartment across the street from campus that was slightly closer to the engineering building than my on-campus dorm room. So I moved out of the dorms and into that apartment, which saved me some walking/biking time every day. I was also moving from a two-bedroom dorm which I shared with two roommates into a smaller single-person studio apartment. This new apartment was much more efficient. For example, I could work on programming assignments while cooking dinner because my desk was only a few steps from the stove.

Trying to cut out time-wasting habits is a common starting point for people who desire to become more efficient, but I think this is a mistake. Optimizing your personal habits should only come later. Clarity of purpose must come first. If you don't have clarity, then your attempts to install more efficient habits and to break inefficient habits will only fizzle. You won't have a strong enough reason to put your time to good use, so it will be easy to quit when things get tough. You need a big, attractive goal to stay motivated. The reason to shave 15 minutes off a task is that you're overflowing with motivation to put that 15 minutes to better use.

For example, you might have a career you sort of like, but most likely it's not so compelling that you'll care enough about saving an extra 15 minutes here and there, even if your total savings might amount to a few hours each day. But if you've taken the time to develop a sense of purpose that reaches deep into your soul, you'll be automatically motivated to put your time to better use. If you get the highest level of your life in order (purpose, meaning, spiritual beliefs), the lower levels will tend to self-optimize (habits, practices, actions).

Apply the 80-20 rule.

Also known as the Pareto Principle, the 80-20 rule states that 20% of a task's effort accounts for 80% of the value of that task. This also means that 80% of a task only yields 20% of the value of that task. In college I was ruthless in my application of this principle. Some weeks I ditched as many as 40% of my classes because sitting through a lecture was often not the most effective way for me to learn. And I already noted that I would simply refuse to do an assignment if I determined it was not worth my time. There was one math class that I only showed up to twice because I could learn from the text book much more quickly than from the lectures. I only showed up for the midterm and final. I would pop my head in at the beginning of each class to drop off my homework and then again at the end of each class to write down the next assignment. I actually got the highest grade in that class, but the teacher probably had no idea who I was. The other students were playing by the rules, not realizing they were free to make their own rules. Find out what parts of your life belong in the crucial 20%, and focus your efforts there. Be absolutely ruthless in refusing to spend time where it simply cannot give you optimal results. Invest your time where it has the potential to pay off big.

Guard thy time.

To work effectively you need uninterrupted blocks of time in which you can complete meaningful work. When you know for certain that you won't be interrupted, your productivity is much, much higher. When you sit down to work on a particularly intense task, dedicate blocks of time to the task during which you will not do anything else. I've found that a minimum of 90 minutes is ideal for a single block.

You may need to negotiate with the other people in your life to create these uninterrupted blocks of time. If necessary, warn others in advance not to interrupt you for a certain period of time. Threaten them with acts of violence if you must. In school I would lock my bedroom door when I needed to work, so my roommates would know not to disturb me. While each individual bedroom in the two-bedroom dorm suites was designed for two people (four people per suite), I paid a bit extra to have a bedroom all to myself. This way I always had my own private room to work. When I had time to be social, I'd leave the door open, sometimes playing computer games with one of my roommates. If you happen to work in a high interruption environment that's negatively affecting your productivity, change that environment at all costs. Some people have told me that giving their boss a copy of this article helped convince him/her to take steps to reduce unnecessary interruptions.

While for some people it's helpful to block off a specific period of time for a task, I find that I work best with long, open-ended stretches of uninterrupted time. I'll often allocate a starting time for a task but usually not a specific finishing time. Whenever possible I just allow myself to stick with a task as long as I can, until I eventually succumb to hunger or other bodily needs. I will frequently work 6+ hours straight on a project without taking a break. While frequent breaks are often recommended to increase productivity, I feel that suggestion may be an artifact of industrial age research on poorly motivated workers and not as applicable to high-motivation, purpose-driven creative work. I find it's best for me to maintain momentum until I can barely continue instead of chopping a task into smaller chunks where there's a risk of succumbing to distractions along the way.

The state of flow, where you are totally absorbed in a task and lose all sense of time, takes about 15 minutes to enter. Every time you get interrupted, it can take you another 15 minutes to get back to that state. Once you enter the state of flow, guard it with your life. That is the state in which you will go through enormous amounts of work and experience total connection with the task. When I'm in this state, I have no sense of past or future. I simply feel like I'm one with my work.

While sometimes I suffer from the problem of the task expanding to fill the allotted time (aka Parkinson's Law), I often find that it's worth the risk. For example, when I do optimization work on my web site, I'll frequently think of new optimization ideas while I work, and I'll usually go ahead and implement those new ideas immediately. I find it more efficient to act on those ideas at the moment of conception instead of scheduling them to be done at a later time.

Work all the time you work.

During one of these sacred time blocks, do nothing but the activity that's right in front of you. Don't check email or online forums or do web surfing. If you have this temptation, then unplug your Internet connection while you work. Turn off your phone, or simply refuse to answer it. Go to the bathroom before you start, and make sure you won't get hungry for a while. Don't get out of your chair at all. Don't talk to anyone during this time.

Decide what it is you should be doing, and then do nothing but that. If you happen to manage others, periodically ask them what their #1 task is, and make sure they're doing nothing but that. If you see someone answering email, then it should be the most important thing for that person to be doing at that particular time. If not, then relatively speaking, that person is just wasting time.

If you need a break, then take a real break and do nothing else. Don't semi-work during a break if you feel you need rest and restoration. Checking email or web surfing is not a break. When you take a break, close your eyes and do some deep breathing, listen to relaxing music and zone out for a while, take a 20-minute nap, or eat some fresh fruit. Rest until you feel capable of doing productive work again. When you need rest, rest. When you should be working, work. Work with either 100% concentration, or don't work at all. It's perfectly fine to take as much down time as you want. Just don't allow your down time to creep into your work time.

Multitask.

The amount of new knowledge in certain fields is increasing so rapidly that everything you know about your line of work is probably becoming obsolete. The only solution is to keep absorbing new knowledge as rapidly as possible. Many of the skills I use in my business today didn't even exist five years ago. The best way I know to keep up is to multitask whenever possible by reading and listening to audio programs.

When watching TV, read a computer magazine during commercials. If you're a male, read while shaving. I use an electric shaver and read during the 2-3 minutes it takes me to shave each day. This allows me to get through about two extra articles a week -- that's 100 extra articles a year. This habit is really easy to start. Just grab a couple magazines, or print out some articles you wouldn't otherwise have time to read, and put them in your bathroom. Whenever you go out, carry at least one folded up article with you. If you ever have to wait in line, such as at the post office or the grocery store, pull out the article and read it. You will be amazed at how much extra knowledge you can absorb just by reading during other non-mental activities.

Listen to educational audio programs whenever you can. When you drive your car, always be listening to an audio program. One of the best ways to save time is to learn directly from people who already have the skills you want to master. Audio programs often contain more practical material than what you would learn by taking classes at a university. Whereas people with degrees in marketing or business have been taught by college professors, you can learn about these subjects from millionaires and billionaires who've learned what works in the real world.

Multitasking was perhaps the most important low-level skill that allowed me to go through college in three semesters. My average weekday involved about seven or eight hours of classes. But on Tuesdays during my final semester, I had classes back to back from 9am until 10pm. Because I was taking about a dozen classes each semester, I would have several tests and projects due just about every week. I had no time to study outside of class because most of that time was used for my job. So I simply had to learn everything the first time it came up. If a teacher wrote out something on the board, I would memorize it then and there; I couldn't afford to learn things later and risk falling behind. During my slower classes, I would do homework, work out algorithms for my programming job, or refine my schedule. You can probably find numerous opportunities for multitasking. Whenever you do something physical, such as driving, cooking, shopping, or walking, keep your mind going by listening to audio tapes or reading.

The idea of multitasking may seem to contradict the previous piece of advice to work all the time you work. But whereas the previous tip refers to high intensity work where you must concentrate all your mental resources in order to do the best job you can, this tip addresses low intensity work where you have plenty of capacity to do other things at the same time, like standing in line, cooking dinner, flying on a plane, or walking from point A to point B. Multitasking shouldn't be used where it will significantly degrade your performance on a crucial task, but it should be intelligently used to take advantage of excess capacity. Take real breaks when you need them, but don't waste time in a state of partial effort. It's more efficient to cycle between working flat out and then resting completely.

Multitasking allows you to take your productivity to a new level. You might think it would be draining, but many people find it has the opposite effect. For me it was tremendously energizing to be getting so much done. The harder you work, the greater your capacity for work, and the more restorative your rest will be.

Experiment.

Everyone is different, so what works for you may well be different than what works for everyone else. You may work best in the morning or late at night. Take advantage of your own strengths, and find ways to compensate for your weaknesses. Experiment with listening to music while you work. I use the free WinAMP player, which can stream commercial-free radio directly to my computer all day long with a variety of channels to choose from. I find that classical and new age music, especially Mozart, is terrific for web development work. But for most routine tasks, listening to fast-paced techno/trance music helps me work a lot faster. I don't exactly know why, but I'm twice as productive when listening to really fast music as compared to listening to no music. On the other hand, music with vocals is detrimental to my productivity because it's too distracting. And when I really need to focus deeply, I'll listen to no music at all. Try a simple experiment for yourself, and see if certain forms of music can increase your productivity. For me the difference was dramatic.

Whenever you come up with a wacky new idea for increasing your productivity, test it and see what effect it has. Don't dismiss any idea unless you've actually tried it. Partial successes are more common than complete failures, so each new experiment will help you refine your time management practices. Even the ongoing practice of conducting experiments will help condition you to be more productive.

Cultivate your enthusiasm.

The word "enthusiasm" comes from the Greek entheos, which means literally, "the god within." I really like that definition. I doubt it's possible to master the art of time management if you aren't gushingly enthusiastic about what you're going to do with your time. Go after what really inspires you. Don't chase money. Chase your passion. If you aren't enthusiastic about your work, then you're wasting your life. Switch to something else. Consider a new career altogether. Don't beat yourself up if your current career has become stale. Remember that failure is your friend. Listen to that god within you, and switch to something that excites you once again. The worst waste of time is doing something that doesn't make you happy. Your work should serve your life, not the other way around.

If you're like most people, you can get yourself motivated every once in a while, but then you get caught up and sink back down to a lower level of productivity, and you find it hard to continue with a project. How easy is it to start a new project when your motivation level is high? And how difficult is it to continue once your enthusiasm fades? Since most people are negative to one degree or another, you'll naturally lose your positive charge over time unless you actively cultivate your enthusiasm as a resource. I don't believe in pushing myself to do something I really don't want to do. If I'm not motivated, then getting myself to sit down and work productively is nearly impossible, and the work is almost painful. When you're highly motivated though, work feels like play.

While in college I could not afford to let my enthusiasm fade, or I'd be dead. I quickly learned that I needed to make a conscious effort to reinforce my enthusiasm on a daily basis. I always had my Walkman cassette player with me (there were no portable MP3 players back then), and while walking from one class to the next, I would listen to time management and motivational tapes. I also listened to them while jogging every morning. I kept my motivation level high by reinforcing my enthusiasm almost hourly. Even though I was being told by others that I would surely fail, these tapes were the stronger influence because I never went more than a few hours without plugging back in.

If your enthusiasm level is high, you can work so much more productively and even enjoy the normally tedious parts of your work. I've always found that whenever I want to take my business to a new level, I must take my thoughts to a new level first. When your thinking changes, then your actions will change, and your results will follow. Unless you're a naturally hyper person, your enthusiasm is going to need daily reinforcement. I recommend either listening to motivational tapes or reading inspiring books or articles for at least fifteen minutes every day. Whenever I've stopped doing this, I've found that self-doubt always returns, and my productivity drops off. It's truly amazing how constantly feeding your mind with positive material can maintain your enthusiasm indefinitely. And if you multitask, you can get this benefit without investing any extra time into it.

Eat and exercise for optimal energy.

During the summer before my last semester in college (1993), I became a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and I noticed a decent boost in my energy and especially in my ability to concentrate. Four years later (1997) I became a complete vegan (no animal products at all), and this yielded an even bigger boost. For details on why I made this change, see the article Why Vegan?

What you eat can have a profound effect on your productivity. Animal products take significantly more time and energy to digest than plant foods, and when your body must divert extra energy to digestion, it means you have less energy available for productive mental work. Effectively your work will seem harder while you're digesting meals containing animal products, and you'll be more inclined to succumb to distractions. So if you find yourself having a hard time focusing on mentally intense work after lunch, your diet may very well be the culprit. Even Benjamin Franklin credited eating lightly at lunch time as being a significant factor in his productivity. While his colleagues were sluggish and sleepy in the afternoon, he could continue to work productively the rest of the day.

Regular exercise is also necessary to maintain high energy and mental clarity. In college I would go running for 30 minutes first thing every morning before breakfast. And of course I'd be listening to motivational and educational tapes at the same time. This daily renewal kept me in good physical condition and helped me maintain my ideal weight. Furthermore, my class schedule kept me zigzagging around campus each day to attend all my classes, and I'd usually have to carry a 20-30 pound backpack full of textbooks with me. So even though I spent most of my weekdays sitting in classrooms, I still got plenty of daily exercise.

If you want to master time management, it makes sense to hone your best time management tool of all -- your physical body. Through diet and exercise you can build your capacity for sustained concentrated effort, so even the most difficult work will seem easier.

If you currently find yourself overweight, take a trip to a local gym or a sporting goods store, and find a dumbbell (or two) that weighs as much as the excess fat you're carrying around. Pick it up and walk around with it for a while. Become aware that this is what you're carrying around with you every day. Imagine how much lighter and easier everything would be if you could permanently put that weight down. Carrying some extra weight for training purposes is one thing, but if that weight is in the form of body fat, then you're never able to put it down and enjoy the benefits of that training. Make a committed decision to shed those extra pounds, and enjoy the lifelong benefits of living in a more efficient physical vehicle.

Maintain balance.

I don't think it's easy to sustain long-term productivity, health, and happiness if your life is totally unbalanced. To excel in one area, you can't let other areas lag behind and pull you down. While in college I made an effort to take off a full day each week to have a personal life. I exercised, went to parties, attended club meetings, played computer games and pool, and even had time to vacation in Las Vegas during my final semester. The high turnover rates at the end of "death march" projects are caused by a lack of balance. To focus exclusively on your primary work at the expense of every other area of your life will only hurt you in the long run. Maintain balance by paying attention to every area of your life. As you grow in your career, be sure that your personal life grows as well.

Probably my biggest regret about going through college in three semesters is that I never had a girlfriend during this time. While I had plenty of good friends (both male and female), got involved in clubs, and enjoyed fun social activities every week, I didn't have enough time to pursue an intimate relationship on top of everything else. I remember one instance where a girl I knew was clearly interested in pursuing a relationship with me, and she started machinating to spend more time alone with me, but I couldn't take the bait because I just didn't have time for dating. I wouldn't have made a very good boyfriend at the time.

If I had to do it all over again, I think my college experience would have been even better if I'd stretched it to four or five semesters and allowed myself time for a girlfriend. It would have been great to have someone else to share my life with, not to mention all the other benefits of intimacy. At least I had plenty of time for dating after graduating. Within a few months I had a steady girlfriend, and four years later we were married. She and I actually went to the same college at the same time, but we never happened to meet while we were there, although it turned out we had a few mutual acquaintances.

I believe the main goal of time management is to give you the power to make your life as juicy as you want it to be. By getting clear about what you want and then developing a collection of habits that allow you to efficiently achieve your goals, you'll enjoy a much richer, more fulfilling life than you would otherwise. When I look back on my college days from more than a decade in the future, I feel a sense of gratitude for the whole experience. I set an enormous stretch goal and grew tremendously as a person in the pursuit of that goal. It was one of the best times of my life.

If you wish to become more productive, then do so with the intention of improving the totality of your life from top to bottom. The reason to master time management is to take your good life and transform it into an exceptional one. Time management is not about self-sacrifice, self-denial, and doing more of what you dislike. It's about embracing more of what you already love.

10 Tips for College Students

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/10-tips-for-college-students/

May 8th, 2006 by Steve Pavlina           Email this article to a friend

After writing the time management article “Do It Now,” which was based on my experience of graduating college in three semesters with two degrees, I received many follow-up questions from students asking for more advice.  Here are 10 tips to help you create a productive and memorable college experience… and most of all, to deeply enjoy this time in your life.

1. Answer the question, “Why am I going to college?”

Many college students really don’t have a clear reason for being there other than the fact that they don’t know what else to do yet.  They inherit goals from family and peers which aren’t truly their own.  That was how I started college.  Is this you as well?

As I’ve stated previously on this blog, the three-semester deal wasn’t my first time at college.  I had previously gone to college when I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be there.  In high school I was a straight-A honors student, President of the math club, and captain of the Academic Decathlon team.  That momentum carried me forward, and without really ever deciding if it was what I wanted, I found myself with four more years of school ahead of me.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but my heart just wasn’t in it.  Consequently, I sabotaged myself in a big way.  I blew off my classes and got an education in parties and alcohol.  Apparently some administrator was biased against students whose GPA starts with a decimal point, so I was soon expelled.

That experience sent me into a bit of a tailspin.  I was in a funk for about six months, mostly just playing video games.  Finally in an attempt to re-ground myself, I got a retail sales job and tried to stay under the radar while taking some time to “find myself.”  That was the time I began developing an interest in personal development, and boy did it pay off.  A year later I was ready to go back to college, and I started over as a freshman.  But this time I knew why I was there.  I wanted to be a programmer, and I wanted to earn my Computer Science degree (I later added the Math degree).  But it was more than that.  I knew I was capable of a lot more, and I wanted to push myself.  I wanted to create the richest experience I could.  For me that meant a really dense schedule.

Your goals for college will likely be different than mine.  What are they?  Why are you there?  If you don’t know — and I mean really know it in your gut — then you have no focal point for your experience.  You may as well not even be there.  What is it about your experience that resonates as true for you?  What are you there to learn?  What do you want to experience?

2. Imagine your ideal college experience.

Once you know why you’re going to college, imagine your ideal outcome.  Let it flow outward from the reason you’re there.  Whether you’ve already started college or not, stop and simply write down some attributes of your ideal experience.  Describe it in as much detail as you can.

Before I returned to school, I spent hours visualizing the kind of experience I wanted to have.  I saw myself being challenged but managing it easily and without stress.  I saw myself making new friends.  I saw myself having a really great time.  Most of all I imagined a very balanced experience — a blend of academics, activities, socialization, and fun.  The keyword I used was “richness.”

This was a really important step.  I didn’t understand the mechanism at the time, but I was pre-programming myself to succeed.  Whenever I encountered obstacles, my ideal vision was so much more compelling that I was always able to find a way to get what I wanted.  I became a co-creator of my experience instead of a passive victim of it.

Visualization allows you to make mistakes in advance.  If you can’t get a clear visualization, your experience is likely to be just as fuzzy.  Debug your visualization until it inspires you.

Real life will of course turn out differently than you visualize.  The point of visualization isn’t to predict the future or to restrict your freedom to decide later.  The point is to give you more clarity for making decisions right now.  Your ideal scene serves as a map that can guide you through the quagmire of options.

3. Take at least one extra class each semester.

Students are taught that 12-15 semester units (3-5 classes) is a “full” schedule.  But a schedule that light is hardly full.  A person with a full-time job will put in a good 40+ hours per week, and students enjoy every possible vacation day plus spring break, winter break, and summer vacation.  If you want to spend four or more years in college, add more degrees or get a job on the side.  Don’t feel you have to go at a snail’s pace just because everyone else does.

Now you might be thinking that 12-15 units are supposed to equate to a 40-hour week with all the outside homework and studying, but that’s only going to happen if you do things very inefficiently (which sadly is what most people do).  If you follow some of the time-saving tips later in this article, then 15 units should only require a few additional hours outside of class to complete assignments.  Obviously I couldn’t have taken 31-39 units per semester if it meant doing double those hours in outside homework.  I didn’t succeed by overworking myself.

If you’re an above average student, you can certainly handle an above average schedule.  Sometimes we don’t know what we can handle until we push ourselves a little.  If you think you can handle 15 units, take 18 or 21.  You can easily shave a year off your schedule.  Or you may be able to add a minor or a double major.

What about prerequisites?  For the most part I simply ignored them, and fortunately at my school they weren’t enforced too well.  I found that most of the time a prerequisite is listed, it’s geared towards below average students.  Don’t let pointless bureaucracy slow you down if you want to graduate sooner.  There’s always a way around it — it’s usually just a matter of getting some random form signed by someone who’s too bored to care either way.  A smile and a compliment go a long way.

By the law of forced efficiency, if you put more things on your plate, you’ll find a way to get them done with the time you have available.  So if you don’t challenge yourself a little, that extra time will slip through your fingers.

I think the real benefit to a dense schedule isn’t that you’ll graduate sooner.  The real benefit is that you’ll enjoy a richer experience.  Taking five classes instead of four means more learning, more achievement, and more friends.  And what employer wouldn’t be attracted to a student who graduated more quickly than his/her peers?  This sort of thing sure looks great on a resume.

4. Set clear goals for each class. 

Decide what you want out of each specific class.  Is this a subject you’re eager to learn?  Do you want to target this teacher for a letter of recommendation?  Is this a required class you must take but which doesn’t otherwise interest you?

My goals for each class determined how often I would show up, whether I’d sit in the front or the back, how actively I’d participate, and what kind of relationship I’d seek to establish with the teacher.

For some classes I wanted to master the material.  For others I just wanted an A grade.  And for others I wanted to set myself up for glowing letters of recommendations from enthusiastic teachers whose native language was English (so the letters would be highly readable and positive).

My mom has been a college math professor for decades.  At home she’d comment about students she barely knew who’d ask her for letters of recommendation.  Many times she had to turn them down because she just didn’t have anything positive to say in the letter.  On the other hand, she was happy to support those students who put in a serious effort.  Most teachers want to help you, but you have to let them see your strengths.  Even if you don’t get an A in a particular class, you can still give a teacher plenty of material for a great letter of recommendation if you participate actively and show respect toward the teacher.

This is not about manipulating your professors into lying on your behalf.  The simple truth is that the quality of a letter of recommendation ultimately comes down to how much a teacher respects you.  Don’t put yourself in the desperate situation of having to request a letter of recommendation from a teacher who doesn’t even remember you — or worse, one who thinks poorly of you.  Set yourself up for success in advance.

One of my professors learned about my packed academic schedule and expressed interest in learning how I was managing it.  We had a very nice conversation about time management techniques.  I had several programming classes with this professor and aced them all.  I happened to think he was an excellent teacher, I had great respect for him, and I quite enjoyed his classes.  When it came time to ask him for a letter of recommendation, he wrote one of the most glowing letters imaginable (”best student I’ve encountered in my career,” etc.).

On the other hand, I had certain teachers who were downright lousy.  I ditched their classes often and learned the material from the textbook.  Obviously I didn’t seek out their assistance down the road.

Sometimes you’ll achieve your goals; sometimes you won’t.  Even if you do your best, you may still fall short.  You may encounter teachers that are unfair, lazy, sexist, racist, or otherwise incompetent.  My wife had an overtly sexist professor who would never give a female student a grade higher than a B, no matter how well she did.  He would say things like, “If you’re a male, you’ll have to work hard in this class.  If you’re a female, just come by my office after hours.”  Eventually sexual harrassment charges were filed against him.  You’ll have to pick your battles.  Some are worth fighting; others are best ignored.  Having clear goals will help you decide which is which.

5. Triage ruthlessly.

You don’t need to put an equal amount of effort into every class.  Inject extra effort when it’s important to you, but feel free to back off a little from classes that are a low priority based on your specific goals.  For me this was an important way to conserve energy.  I couldn’t play full out in every class, or I’d burn out, so I invested my energy where it mattered most.

In every student’s schedule, some classes are critical while others are almost trivial.  In a typical week, I’d usually ditch around 40% of my classes because I just didn’t need to be there.  For some classes attendance was necessary, but for others it didn’t make much difference.  I could simply get the notes from another student if needed, or I could learn the material from the textbook.  If it wasn’t necessary for me to attend a particular class (based on my goals for that class), I usually ditched it.  That saved me a lot of time and kept me from having to sit in class all day long.  Sometimes I’d just grab some food with friends to give myself an extra break.

I would also triage individual assignments.  If I felt an assignment was lame, pointless, or unnecessarily tedious, and if it wouldn’t have too negative an impact on my grade, I would actually decline to do it.  One time I was assigned a tedious paper that represented 10% of my grade.  I really didn’t want to do it, and it required a lot more hours than I felt it was worth.  I was headed for an A in the class, and if I didn’t do this assignment, I’d drop to an A-.  So I respectfully told the professor I was declining the assignment and that I thought it was a fair trade to receive an A- in order to reinvest those hours elsewhere.  He already knew me and understood my reasons.  He gave me an A-, and I was fine with that.  It was indeed a fair trade.  In fact, looking back I wish I’d done this sort of thing more often.

Sometimes teachers get a little too homework happy and dole out assignments that really don’t justify the effort.  You’re in charge of your academic experience though, not your teachers.  Don’t feel you must do every assignment just because the teacher feels it’s a good idea.  You be the judge in accordance with your own reasons for being there.  Just be sure to consider the consequences of your decision.

By stealing time from low priority assignments, I was able to invest more time in the real gems.  Some creative assignments taught me a great deal.  I usually hated group projects with a passion, but there was one particular group project where the team really gelled.  I enjoyed it tremendously and learned a lot from it. 

A cool triage technique I used was timeboxing.  I would decide how much time an assignment warranted, and then I’d do the best job I could within the allotted time.  So if I had to write a 10-page research page on European history, I might devote 8 hours to it total.  I’d slice up the 8 hours into topic selection, planning, library research, outlining, writing, and editing, and then I’d do my best to stay within those times.  This was a great way to keep me from overengineering an assignment that didn’t need it.

In a way this was my own method of academic load balancing.  Some of your assignments will be unbalanced in the sense that they seem to require an unreasonable amount of effort compared to how much of your grade they represent or how much you expect to benefit from completing them.  Sometimes I would decide that the effort to write an A-paper just wasn’t warranted.  Maybe I’d estimate it would take me 20 hours to do an A job but only 10 hours to do a B job.  And if the assignment was only 10% of my grade, perhaps I could accept a B there.  I often thought in this Machiavellian fashion back then, and often to my surprise I found that my B-quality papers would come back with As anyway.

6. Get an early start to each day. 

I’ve written previously about the benefits of becoming an early riser.  I wasn’t getting up at 5am when I was in college, but I’d usually get up around 6-7am.  I found that getting an early start each day helped me get a lot more done, not just in the morning but throughout the day.  I began each day with a 25-minute run followed by a shower and breakfast.  This simple morning routine got me out the door feeling alert and energized.

I’d be lying if I said I got up early because I wanted to.  It was really out of necessity.  I had many morning classes, including 7:30am classes one semester.  But I’m glad I did that because if I didn’t have those morning classes, I just would have slept more than I needed to.  Even if you hate morning classes, you may find as I did that you’re a lot more productive if you schedule them anyway.

7. Reclaim wasted time during your classes.

Let’s face it.  Not every class is going to require your utmost concentration.  Sometimes teachers babble.  Sometimes they reiterate what you already know.  What percentage of class time requires your complete, focused attention?  For some classes it’s 90%.  For others it’s 20%.  If you aren’t actively learning during class, you’re wasting time.  If a class is really challenging, sit in the front and soak up every word.  But if a class isn’t challenging you, then sit in the back, do homework for other classes, and pop your head up every once in a while to see if there’s anything worth jotting down.  Always have a book open, so when your hippie professor goes off on yet another nostalgia trip about the 60s, you’ll have something productive to do.

This was a surprisingly great cure for boredom.  If the professor was droning on and putting everyone to sleep, I’d be working on programming assignments.  I used to write them out on paper and then go to the computer lab between classes and type them up.  That way I didn’t have to spend much time outside class in the lab, sometimes just 10-15 minutes if my program worked the first time.

You’ll be amazed at how much time you can free up using this method.  I was able to complete the bulk of my assignments in class (but usually not in the classes in which the tasks were assigned).  If you’re in school right now, I challenge you to see how much extra homework you can complete during your normal class time today.  Then estimate how many hours you’ll save every week from this practice.  It really adds up.

You can’t concentrate at peak efficiency continuously, so be sure to take breaks.  When you need a break though, take a real break.  I used to meditate or nap on the grass between classes in order to recharge myself.  I’d use my wristwatch alarm to signal when it was time to get up and go again.  Those breaks were very restorative, and I could go to the next class and work full out once again.  I never worked flat out all day long.  I worked in waves between total concentration and total relaxation, cycling many times per day.

8. Learn material the very first time it’s presented.

One of the biggest time wasters in school is having to relearn something you didn’t learn properly the first time.  When students say they’re studying, most of the time they’re making up for a previous failure to learn the material.

In software development it’s well known that bugs should be fixed as soon as possible after they’re introduced.  Waiting to fix a bug near the end of a project can take 50x as much effort as it would take to fix the bug the first time it was noticed.  Failing to learn what you’re supposedly taught each day is a serious bug.  Don’t try to pile new material on top of an unstable foundation, since it will take even more time to rebuild it later.

If you don’t understand something you were taught in class today, treat it as a bug that must be fixed ASAP.  Do not put it off.  Do not pile new material on top of it.  If you don’t understand a word, a concept, or a lesson, then drop everything and do whatever it takes to learn it before you continue on.  Ask questions in class, get a fellow student to explain it to you, read and re-read the textbook, and/or visit the professor during office hours, but learn it no matter what.

I was normally an ace in math, perhaps because my mother is a college math professor who was taking calculus classes while I was in the womb.  Plus my father was an aerospace engineer, so I’ve certainly got the genes for it.  But there were a couple topics I found incomprehensible when they were first introduced:  eigenvalues and eigenvectors.  I’m a highly visual learner, which is normally a strength academically, but I found these abstract concepts difficult to visualize.  Many of my classmates found them confusing too.  I invested the extra effort required to grasp these concepts and earned an A in the class because I treated my confusion as a bug that had to be fixed immediately.  Those students who allowed their confusion to linger found themselves becoming more and more lost as the course progressed, and cramming at the end couldn’t bestow complete comprehension.  Just like programming bugs, confusion multiplies if left untreated, so stamp it out as early as possible.  If you’re confused about anything you’re being taught, you’ve got a bug that needs fixing.  Don’t move on until you can honestly say to yourself, “Yes, I understand that… what’s next?”

Ideally there should be no need to study outside of class, at least in the sense of relearning material you didn’t learn the first time.  You can review old material to refresh your memory, but you shouldn’t have to devote a minute of your time to learning something that was taught a month or two earlier.

During finals I was probably the least-stressed student of all.  I didn’t have to study because by the time the final exam came up, in my mind the course was already over.  The test was just a formality.  While everyone else was cramming, I’d be at the arcade playing video games.  I’d already learned the material and completed all the assignments (at least the ones I was going to complete).  At most I’d just spend some time reviewing my notes to refresh the material the night before the test.  Isn’t this how academic learning is supposed to work?  Otherwise what’s the point of showing up to class for an entire semester?

During each semester ask yourself this question:  Am I ready to be tested right now on everything that has been taught up to this point?  If your answer is ever “no,” then you know you’re falling behind, and you need to catch up immediately.  Ideally you should be able to answer “yes” to this question at least once a week for every subject.

Falling behind even a little is an enormous stressor and time waster.  First, you have to go back and re-learn the old material when the rest of the class has already moved on.  Secondly, you may not learn the new material as well if it builds on the old material because you lack a solid foundation, so you just end up falling further and further behind.  Then when you come to the end of the semester, you end up having to re-learn everything you were supposed to learn.  But because you cram at the last minute, after finals you forget everything anyway.  What’s the point of that silliness?  It’s like overspending on a credit card that charges you 25% interest.  Eventually you’ll have to pay up, and it will cost you a lot more time in the long run.

Put in the effort to learn your material well enough to get As in all your classes.  It will pay off.  Much of the material you learn will build on earlier material.  If you get As in your freshman courses, you’ll be well prepared to pile on new material in your sophomore year.  But if you get Cs that first year, you’re already going into your second year with an unstable foundation, making it that much harder to bring your grades up and really master the material.  Make straight As your goal every semester.  In the long run, it’s much easier.  I found that C students tended to work a lot harder than I did, especially in their junior and senior years, because they were always playing catch up.  Despite my packed schedule, it wasn’t stressful for me because I kept on top of every subject.  Consequently, I had plenty of time for fun while other students experienced lots of stress because they constantly felt unprepared.

9. Master advanced memory techniques.

One of the keys to learning material the first time it’s taught is to train yourself in advanced memory techniques.  I used them often in classes that required rote memorization of certain facts, including names, dates, and mathematical formulas.  If a teacher wrote something on the board that had to be memorized verbatim for an upcoming exam, I’d memorize it then and there.  Then I wouldn’t have to go back and study it later.

I’m sure you’ve encountered simple mnemonic techniques such as using the phrase “Every good boy does fine” to memorize the musical notes E, G, B, D, and F.  Those kinds of tricks work well in certain situations, but they’re so grammar school.  There are far more efficient visual techniques.  The two I relied on most in school were chaining and pegging.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain these techniques in detail, but you can simply visit this site to learn all about them.  Or you can pick up a book on memory improvement, such as The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne.  I recommend learning from a book because then you’ll build a solid foundation step by step.

These techniques will allow you to memorize information very rapidly.  For example, with pegging I could usually memorize a list of 20 items in about 90 seconds with perfect recall even weeks later.  Experts at this are faster.  Anyone can do it — it’s just a matter of training yourself.

I still use these techniques today.  Chaining allows me to memorize my speeches visually.  When I give a speech, my imagination runs through the visual movie I’ve created while I select words on the fly to fit the images.  It’s like narrating a movie.  My speech isn’t memorized word for word, so it sounds natural and spontaneous and can be adapted on the fly to fit the situation.  Memorizing visually is much faster and more robust than trying to memorize words.  If you memorize a speech word for word and forget a line, it can really throw you off.  But with a series of images, it’s easier to jump ahead to the next frame if you make a mistake.  Our brains are better suited to visualize memorization than phonetic memorization.

I don’t recommend memorizing by repetition because it’s way too slow.  Pegging and chaining do not require repetition — they allow you to imbed strong memories on a single pass, usually in seconds.  The downside is that pegging and chaining require a lot of up-front practice to master, but once you learn them, these are valuable skills you’ll have for life.  I also found that learning these techniques seemed to improve my memory as a whole, even when I’m not actively trying to memorize.  I think this practice trained my subconscious to store and recall information more effectively.

It’s a shame these techniques aren’t normally taught in school.  They would save students an enormous amount of time.  Do yourself a favor and learn them while you’re young.  They have a lot of practical applications, including remembering people’s names.

10. Have some serious fun!

Challenge yourself academically, but give yourself plenty of time for fun as well.  Don’t squander your leisure time hanging around doing nothing.  Go out and do something active that will blow off steam and increase your energy.

One of my favorite college leisure activities was frisbee golf (also called disc golf).  I used to play for hours at night with a couple friends, sometimes until my fingers became blistered… or until campus security gave us the boot for hitting one too many non-player students. 

While playing frisbee golf, we would often have to scavenge through bushes, wade through fountains, and climb over various hazards trying to recover errant frisbees.  It was always lots of fun, and we’d usually “play through” these obstacles.  Several hours of frisbee golf served as a delightful reward at the end of a challenging week.  I still remember an incredible “hole in one” shot I made from a second-story balcony to hit a light post at the edge of a soccer field.

My biggest regret about college is that I didn’t have a girlfriend during that time.  If I had it to do all over again, I probably would have added an extra semester and taken fewer classes to make time for that someone special.  I had the opportunity, but I had to pass it up because my schedule was too packed.  Girlfriends can be a lot of fun, but most aren’t very efficient. 

This article’s advice centers on making your college experience as rich and memorable as possible.  Get your school work done quickly and efficiently, so you have plenty of time for the variety of activities college can offer.  Join clubs.  Play frisbee golf.  Get a boyfriend or girlfriend.  The worst thing you can do is spend your time falling behind academically due to poor habits, feeling stressed and unprepared all the time, and then playing catch up.  Squeeze as much juice out of college as you can, and let it serve as a springboard to a lifetime of fulfillment.

People often assume my aggressive schedule must have been stressful and exhausting, but the irony is that it was just the opposite.  I seemed to have an easier, more enjoyable experience than my peers.  Students with lighter schedules slacked off and fell behind because they convinced themselves they could make up for it later.  But I couldn’t afford to do that because it would have been impossible for me to catch up on a dozen different classes… and way too stressful to even think about it.  If I fell even a week behind, I’d be in serious trouble.  So I was compelled to develop good habits that kept me perpetually relaxed, focused, and energized.  Many of the habits discussed above were simply the result of setting the goal to graduate in three semesters.  That goal dictated the process.  I’m very grateful for the experience because it showed me just how much more effective we can be when we push ourselves beyond our comfort zones.  It taught me to keep setting goals beyond what I feel certain I can accomplish.  Many times what we assume to be impossible just isn’t.  We only think it is.

http://www.safeway.com/IFL/Grocery/Smart-Savings-Tips

요즘 요리 하는 맛에 사는데 식재료비가 많이 들어서 힘들다;;
시간도 많이 없고.
그래서 찾은 팁들!

자자, 해석은 나중에 ^ㅡ^;;


Tip #1
Spend an hour planning a week's worth of meals with the weekly specials flyer in hand, make a list and stick to it - you'll save money by avoiding impulse buys. And with a good plan for every night of the week, you're less likely to impulsively order take-out because you don't have a plan for dinner.

Tip #2
Preparing family favorites in bulk is a great way to save both time and money. Double your best freezer-friendly recipes (think casseroles, soups and sauces) and stash them for a night in the future when you're too tired to cook. Make some single-serve packages, too, so you can take them for lunch.

Tip #3
When meat goes on sale, buy family packs and repackage them into meal-sized portions and freeze for the future. Be sure to wrap meats tightly to prevent freezer-burn. A full freezer also uses less energy than a half-empty one, so it pays to keep it full.

Tip #4
Use filling, low-cost substitutes for meat in favorite recipes - replace half the ground beef in chili with beans, for example, or bulk up sloppy Joes with brown rice. Instead of making meat the main event, use it more sparingly - try a baked potato bar for dinner, topping them with steamed vegetables, grated cheese and a small amount of cubed deli ham or crumbled bacon. Tofu and eggs are excellent sources of protein and cost far less than meat or fish. Try using tofu in stir-fries, salads and soups or pureed into a creamy salad dressing. Move eggs beyond breakfast by trying a vegetable-filled frittata or quiche for dinner.

Tip #5
Cut down on breakfast cereal - boxes of name-brand cereal and milk are expensive. Instead, prepare oatmeal ahead of time and package it in individual microwave-safe containers, then heat them up each morning and top with brown sugar. As an added bonus, oatmeal is filling and high in fiber.

Tip #6
When planning a week of meals, consider what you already have in the freezer and pantry, and base your menu decisions around those items. You'll be less likely to buy duplicates or to throw away forgotten, expired items.

Tip #7
Buy fruits and vegetables in season when they're less expensive and then preserve them for future use. Stone fruits and berries can be sliced and frozen for pies or smoothies, and vegetables such as corn and green beans also take to freezing. Learn to can tomatoes and make pickles, and spend an afternoon stocking your pantry. Not only will you save money, but you'll also get to sample the fruits of your labor all year long.

Tip #8
Turkey is a great value around the holidays, especially when compared to beef, pork, chicken or seafood. When whole turkeys are on sale, consider buying one to cook immediately, and several more to stash in the freezer. If you have the room, buy larger birds rather than smaller. The price per pound is typically lower. As you defrost and cook the other birds throughout the year, leftovers can stretch your budget even further.

Tip #9
You can easily stretch a pound of ground beef into multiple meals, without eating the same meal night after night. The first night, mix up some flavorful Sloppy Joes. The second night, use the leftovers to pump up a jarred pasta sauce. The third night, use the leftover sauce to top a ready-made pizza crust. You'll save money, and your family will never know it's the same pound of beef.

Tip #10
Get creative with leftovers. Transform uneaten boneless pork chops into "pulled" pork sandwiches for lunch. Or, add tomato sauce and seasonings and serve over rice for a quick entree. A baked whole chicken can become a flavorful broth and base for a fantastic homemade soup. You're only limited by your imagination - not your budget!

Tip #11
The tried and true soup-and-sandwich combination isn't just for lunch. With a few additions and a little creativity, you can create a hearty, inexpensive dinner. Turn a basic canned tomato soup into a flavorful stew with the addition of leftover pasta or rice, frozen vegetables, and cooked Italian sausage or leftover cooked ground beef. Bring a basic sandwich up a notch by grilling it, panini-style.

Tip #12
Not a lot of leftovers after your family meals? Save them up! Keep remaining pieces of chicken or beef in the freezer until you have enough to make a casserole, potpie, or stroganoff.

Tip #13
Make lunch and dinner at almost the same time! Boil shredded chicken or ground beef, then remove the meat to leave a wonderful stock. Serve the meat over rice or noodles for dinner, and refrigerate the stock to make soup for the next day's lunch or light dinner. When chilled, the fat in the stock will float to the top and solidify, making it easy to remove. Just reheat and add vegetables, beans, pasta, or anything else you have on hand. Serve with a quick salad or sandwich for a filling, healthy lunch in almost no time.

Tip #14
Dust off your crock-pot and make large portions of soups and stews that last several days. Be sure to include nutritious, inexpensive ingredients like lentils and beans.

Tip #15
Make your own chicken stock quickly and easily. Save bones from roasted chicken in the freezer. Once you have a substantial amount, put them in a dutch oven or pressure cooker, cover with water and simmer. (Add any herbs, onions, or other veggies you like.) Strain, pour the stock into muffin tins, and freeze. Pop out the frozen stock and store in a freezer bag. You'll have inexpensive, low-sodium chicken stock available whenever you need it.

Tip #16
Cut down on wasted food by keeping more in the refrigerator. Bread, hamburger buns, bagels, and more will last longer in the "fridge" than on the countertop.

Tip #17
Make your own burgers and meatballs, rather than purchasing them pre-made in the store. Just add a few seasonings, shape, and cook.

Tip #18
Don't let "aging" bananas go to waste. Store them in the freezer to be transformed into banana bread at a later date.

Tip #19
Skip the prepared meats, and save. Make your own ground beef in your food processor fro less-expensive cuts of meat like brisket. Rather than pay premium prices for boneless, skinless chicken, remove the bones and skin yourself.