Tag: patrick rhone

“Something I Learned Today”

Patrick Rhone reminded me today that not only is it important to remember that learning happens everyday and occurs in a variety of ways, but that it is also important to capture that learning.

A practice I have been doing often for the past couple of years is to write down at least one new thing I learned every day… It is a great reminder that, no matter how old I get, there is always the capacity to learn and grow.

Sometimes, the one thing I learn comes from reading. Sometimes, it comes from observation. Sometimes, it comes from conversation. Sometimes, when I get to the end of the day and can’t think of anything new that I learned, I go to a random page on Wikipedia and learn something for the sake of learning.

This got me thinking about student blogging. I have been using blogs with students for some time now, but with a specific subject focus, e.g.: to capture the coursework process (see the archive and sidebar) in AS and A2 Media Studies. But what if students kept a blog (public or private) with the soul purpose of capturing ‘one new thing’ they learned each day? I personally think it would provide a powerful, personal statement for each student about their learning and progress across the year, free from the constraints of individual subjects and syllabi. So much gets lost in folders and books, relegated to cupboards and bins at the end of the year. A blog would provide a permanent digital record.

Absence, Priorities, Focus and Reflection

Some of you will have noticed that my presence online, both here and on Twitter, has been significantly sporadic since September last year. This extended absence (for want of a better word) has been a choice. One that was predicated by my need to prioritise specific jobs, projects and interests over others.

While I will not be naive and proclaim that I am back full time blogging and tweeting, it is my intention, over the next couple of months, for normal service to resume. In light of this I felt it pertinent to give an overview of how I have been spending my time and what you are likely to be reading about in future posts.

The main reason that I have not been blogging and tweeting regularly is that I have been putting a significant amount of my time, outside of the classroom, into the MA in Education that I am studying towards. I am currently editing my final Module Assignment on Independent Learning, and have begun in earnest the preparation for my dissertation.

The current modules I am working through will be familiar to any of you who have completed an MA in Education.

As I plan to write my dissertation publicly online, I have also opted to write the multiple assignments (related to each of the above modules) publicly as well. The documents at the moment are in very rough form with ideas, notes and links being gathered as I research and complete reading.

I am thoroughly enjoying my studies. I did believe that I was already a highly effective learner in terms of research, reflection and criticality however the academic process has opened up a number of new approaches to learning for both myself and by proxy for my students. The impact my studies have had on my students is something I definitely plan to write about in future posts.

Moreover, I am particularly excited about the prospects of completing my dissertation and the depth of academic study that it is going to involve. I have tentatively begun to work on drilling down my research question. Currently it is too broad but as some of you may be interested, here it is in its current form:

Are schools (as physical spaces) necessary to facilitate learning in the 21st century?

In addition to committing more time towards the MA, I also felt that I needed to focus on two specific areas of my teaching. I am both Leader for Media Studies and Key Stage 4 English. Balancing the two roles can be quite difficult. They both demand my time cut come with very different levels of pressure.

While our A2 Media Results were excellent again, they were not up to the standard that I have come to expect. Having completed closer analysis of the results I found that the exam module was the weakest area. I decided that I would take on the teaching of this year’s A2 group on my own, in order to re-develop both the content of the exam module and to re-evaluate the learning structure that we have had in place for A2 students for over five years now.

The most significant change has been the development of the new exam module. I decided to move away from ‘Media Regulation’ and tackle something a bit more theoretical in the shape of ‘Postmodern Media’. While it has been time consuming, it has been a throughly enjoyable process completing the necessary reading and research before piecing together a scheme of work and resources. You can get an insight into how this is going (as well as copies of various resources) at: Media @ CCC.

I also wanted to focus on the continued development of the new KS4 English curriculum. It has been a significant (and welcomed) change for the department. Not only due to new texts and the introduction of the much discussed ‘Spoken Language’ unit but also, due to some restructuring in terms of Controlled Assessment and the timing of exam modules. I now feel that we are coming out of the back of that process far wiser and ready to develop it further in the future.

Finally, I am an avid reader of Patrick Rhone’s writing:

As a Minimal Mac patron, I have been fortunate to get a direct insight into writing of his upcoming book: Enough. As part of the research process for the book, Patrick would spend time evaluating his use of various tools and services – sometimes by not using them at all. I wished to get some perspective not only on my blog but how I organised/used my online life and the impact it was having (positive and negative) on my day to day life. To do this it was helpful to stop/tinker with the various facets of my online self. I am still reflecting on this and drawing conclusions. Sufficed to say that this will be something I will be writing about in future posts. One thing I am certain of. Blogging (reflecting) as a process is very important to me and is something that I plan to continue to evaluate my use of in the immediate future.

The time away from blogging/tweeting has been useful and allowed me to re-align my time and energy with what I believe to be my priorities. With that I will close. If you questions about anything I have discussed above please don’t hesitate to comment below or get in touch via Twitter @jamesmichie.

Reading Productivity

Having spent more than a year improving my personal productivity, I can sum up what I’ve learned in a single sentence: “Pick one task and do it”. However, that would do a disservice to the journey and to the great people who helped me along the way through their writing on the subject. So, without wishing to encourage you to spend more time reading about productivity than being productive, here are three books that really helped me reach a place where I can stay focused on doing ‘the work’.

Focus – Leo Babauta

If I had to recommend one book this would be it. It has really made a difference in helping me become more productive. The books’ strength lies in its brevity and the fact the Leo doesn’t over do the GTD stuff. Instead, he focuses on the underlying issues that may be stopping you from doing ‘the work’. It reads well. Eloquent prose, set out in well-structured essays that challenge you to reflect deeply on the way that you prioritise and use your time. Particularly, useful was the focus on changing and replacing habits. By replacing bad habits with useful, more productive ones, I have seen a huge difference in my productivity.

Highlights include:

  • You don’t need to respond
  • Going with the flow
  • Single tasking and productivity

Keeping It Straight – Patrick Rhone

Patrick is one of my favourite writers on the web and his work translates really well to the structured, thematic nature of a book. Keeping it Straight is Patrick’s first book – a collected set of essays that deal with personal productivity, minimalism, mindfulness and motivation. Again, this is not a long read; perfect for the daily commute or for dipping into when the moment arises. This book is very personal, much of the content gleaned from Patrick’s journal, it adds a level of authenticity that I find is often missing from books of this ilk.

Highlights include:

  • Don’t Worry
  • Doing The Dishes
  • Email (And Other Things That Go “Ding”)

#uppingyourgame – Doug Belshaw

Doug is a friend who has been fantastically supportive, helping me on my blogging journey. He has also (although he may not have realised it) had a significant impact on my approach to personal productivity. His approach is a pragmatic one and as such he begins by getting to the heart of why we should care about being productive in the first place. This is refreshing, as many productivity related texts assume that the reader already has this figured out. Like the other two books, this is a well structured, well designed text, placing emphasis on the authors voice.

Highlights include:

  • What does productivity look like?
  • How to find your personal well of motivation
  • Productivity killers
———

As I mentioned above, it is easy to spend more time reading about productivity than actually getting on and being productive. However, while I’m on topic, I thought I would share some of the other material that has contributed to my journey. This is not an exclusive list, just a selection of the ones that come to mind as I sit writing this.

Manifesto: Inbox Zero

Idea: five.sentenc.es

Essay: Making the Clackity Noise

Essay: Cranking

Essay: The Noise

Essay: the beauty of the ellipses

Essay: Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT)

Essay: Do One Thing Well

Essay: How I Became an Early Riser

Essay: How to ‘chapter’ your life to make it more productive

Essay: The hidden power of a gift

Book: Mindfulness in Plain English

Video: Just This

Podcast: Enough: The Minimal Mac Podcast

Podcast: Back to Work

Enough

It is almost three months since I took delivery of a Refurbished 11″ MacBook Air and I can confidently state that it is the best laptop I have ever used – lightweight but robust, elegantly minimal, powerful and fast.

Taking inspiration from my favourite podcast, I’m going to discuss why the Air is more than enough Mac for me, focusing on how I’ve set it up; the apps I’ve installed; modifications I’ve made; and what it’s like using and writing on Apple’s smallest laptop.

Setting up

To begin with I took a leaf out of Patrick Rhone’s book and completed a fresh install, excluding the additional languages and the majority of iLife applications (only keeping iTunes to manage music and podcasts). This saved me almost 8GB’s of space on the SSD. My intention from the outset was to use the Air for a minimal set of purposes: writing, reading, browsing and communicating. As such, I have no need for a photo management application and certainly don’t need audio and video editing tools.

Third party apps and utilities

Listed below are the only applications that I have installed. The first eight were tools that I use regularly on my MacBook Pro and I knew that I would want them on the Air. The last five apps I’ve installed as I needed them or learned about them.

  • Skype – For those face-to-face conversations
  • Kindle – I have this on both my MacBooks and my Android phone, keeps my reading in sync
  • Pages – For typing up and formatting MA papers
  • DoublePane – A Menu Bar utility that allows you to split the screen between two apps
  • Reeder – Synced with Google Reader, I’ve only recently added this but I’m loving the minimal UI and range of built in services.

A little tweaking

As I’ve done with every Mac that I have owned, I made some modifications to some of the built in features.

  • Caps Lock – I turn caps lock off on my Macs, I never use it, and it’s more than a little annoying if you catch it by accident.
  • Expose and Spaces – Both turned off as I never use them, I’m a one app at a time guy.
  • Dashboard – Turned off, it’s a huge drain on CPU/RAM and again I never use it, here’s how I did it:
    • In terminal type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • This will have turned off dashboard entirely, if you try to hit F12 to start the dashboard nothing will happen.
  • Dock – Hiding is turned on, positioned on the left and pinned to the bottom, here’s how:
    • First position the dock on the left. Then open terminal and type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • The dock will now be pinned to the bottom left of the screen.
  • I also restyle the dock removing the 3D glass effect. I prefer the classic 2D version, here’s how I did it:
    • In terminal type the following command and hit return: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
    • Then type the following and return: killall Dock
    • You should now see a classic 2D dock.

Desktop and Dock

  • Menu Bar – I remove any icons that I feel are not necessary, here’s what my Menu Bar looks like:

Menu Bar

  • Trash – Set to delete without confirmation.

What is it like living with 2GB RAM, 128GB HardDrive and an 11″ Screen?

A breeze! The Air cold boots in 12 seconds flat and apps open so quickly, if you blink you’ll miss them loading altogether. While I don’t do it very often, having multiple apps open has little impact on performance and switching between apps is instant. Because of my one app at a time approach the battery last as long as it says on the tin, regularly giving me four to five hours. What’s more the instant on/off feature ensures that…

In terms of storage, the one additional purchase I made when I got the MBA was a G-Drive Mini (500GB) external hard drive, this is where my iTunes Music folder is hosted as well as storage for Time Machine back-ups. As such the 128GB hard drive has barely been hit, as of writing this I still have 108.35GB available. I’m starting to think, based on my setup, that the 64GB model would have been enough.

The one feature that seems to have caused issues for some Mac users is the small screen size. However, I find the 11″ screen to be more than ample for my needs. As I use several apps (including nvALT) in full screen mode, the 11″ screen has little impact on the what I’m doing. It’s barely a compromise when considering the speed and portability that the Air offers.

And what about the writing?

The primary reason for purchasing the MacBook Air was to have a dedicated writing/blogging machine. I have been more than pleased with the way that the Air has served this purpose. Since taking delivery of it, I’ve written every blog post and my last MA paper on it. With a full size keyboard included I haven’t seen a single difference between typing on the Air and the MBP. The keys sit slightly lower but they make the same wonderful ‘clickity clack’ that I’ve come to love. Other MacBooks that I’ve owned have simply not been comfortable to use when rested on my lap but the Air is so light I can literally sit anywhere (sans-desk) and write comfortably. Combine that, the portability, and the focus that nvALT (in full screen mode) offers and it’s no surprise that I’m getting the writing done with far less friction.

The final word

The MacBook Air is light, minimal, perfect for writing, browsing, and communicating. It’s definitely more than enough!

Here’s a little eye candy… the bag is a Knomo MacBook Air Envelope.

Mac 1

Mac 2

Mac 3

Mac 4

Thinking Space

Where is your ‘thinking space’? The place where you order your thoughts; think things through; where the creative juices flow?

If you don’t have such a space, I recommend that you find one. Whatever it is that you do, it’s important to take the time to pause and reflect. This process can result in improved focus, increased productivity and greater creativity. Finding the space in which you do this best is therefore worth doing.

As well as becoming an early riser I have also learned to be more mindful. My interpretation of what this means is skewed, influenced by the interpretation of others, including: Patrick Rhone and Merlin Mann. However, what I have taken on board so far has really helped me to be a more focussed and creative person.

Being mindful (for me) is about removing distractions, whatever they may be, and taking the time to be at one with your thoughts; allowing ideas to percolate.

What has this got do with finding your ‘thinking space’? As I began to understand what it meant to be mindful, I began to realise that there were certain times and places in which I was able to better focus on the myriad of thoughts swirling around my mind. The first time and place where I realised this was in the shower. Free of distractions, completing a relatively mindless activity, I can sift through my tasks for the day; think through a lesson I’m going to deliver; even write (in my head) an entire blog post. The latter, resulting in a rather rushed drying of one’s body in order to get to my laptop and write it down.

Having found one space to be at one with my thoughts, I then started to actively look for others. As such I don’t have one ‘thinking space’ but rather a number of times and places where I choose to be mindful. These include:

  • Making a cup of tea: As demonstrated by Dave Caolo, the time it takes to brew and enjoy a good cup of tea is perfect for sitting and reflecting.
  • Doing the dishes: An activity I previously did not enjoy, I now actually value the thinking time that it offers.
  • Waiting in line: Rather than playing with my mobile phone I now observe my surroundings, taking in the place, the people…
  • Taking a walk: As many will attest to, taking a walk remains one of the best ways to clear your mind, clarifying things.

As with becoming an early riser, it took time for me to develop habits. Resisting the urge to check Twitter, Email, Google Reader while standing in lines or during a train journey was particularly hard. However, it has certainly been worth it, improving my focus, productivity and creativity.

Do you already have a ‘thinking space’? If so, please share it by commenting below.