Month: August 2009

Volunteer for the NUS

Don’t stay silent, get involved! The National Union of Students are looking for volunteers to give up 2-3 hours of their time each week to get involved in promoting the NUS and working in campaigns to help promote a new blueprint of proposals for funding higher education that doesn’t involve upfront tuition fees. I’m passionate about the blueprint and look forward to increasing discussion around the country.

Volunteers are needed in 10 towns for special ‘Town Takeovers‘ in Liverpool, Bristol, Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Reading, Newcastle, Cambridge, London and Birmingham. If you study in any of these towns, now is a great chance to get involved locally in an important national campaign. And while there’s a serious point to it, you know it’s bound to be fun too!

What are you waiting for? Check it out!

Building an opinion – 10 tips

I recently talked about ‘information overload‘. Today, I want to discuss the importance of getting enough information to build an opinion.

Opinions can end up as misguided when you don’t have the right amount of information at your disposal. It’s okay to misunderstand or make the odd mistake, but a regular lack of detail starts to cause a breakdown in communication.

photo by Marcio Cabral de Moura

This isn’t just about study. We’re constantly engaged in an ‘information gathering’ exercise. It may be about new music, sport, your mate’s haircut, the person you fancy down the corridor, anything at all. While you’re living and thinking, you’re learning about new things and developing opinions all the time. Therefore, it’s crucial to take a balanced overview, no matter how strong your opinion is. Once you have enough information to hand, you have every right to a strong opinion. But as with your coursework, make sure you can back it up! 😉

Here are ten tips to help guide you and allow the right flow of information in your life:

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Tumblelog EduLinks

Here is the first set of the best links from TheUniversityBlog Tumblelog. If you don’t read it or subscribe to its feed, now is the chance to see what I’ve been recommending. If you do read it, let me remind you… 🙂

Clearing 2009 – Helpful Links

Recent information to help with the upcoming clearing process. I’m sure there will be more articles popping up around the start of clearing later this month.

The Independent – Student Banking

Looking to pick a student bank account that’s best for you? This article in The Independent is a good starting point for some of the deals this year, including best overdrafts and freebies. It also warns about some of the problems you might face.

MoneySavingExpert – Top Graduate Accounts 2009/10

So graduates don’t feel left out, this banking article is for you. The always helpful MoneySavingExpert site gives you the lowdown on all you need to know.

Helping Graduates Into Work

Mayor of London site packed with advice, links and information for graduates. Suggesting what you can do with your degree, where to go when looking at a specific career, how to go about applying for jobs, what job boards to check out for London, which careers events are coming up, and what further studying opportunities are available. Quite simple to navigate and use.

Lifehacker – How to Highlight Text Like a Keyboard Ninja

Insanely helpful tips on highlighting text. Speeds up the process a lot of the time.

Scientific American – Why is it hard to “unlearn” an incorrect fact?

Discussing ‘proactive interference’ and how to retrain your brain.

New York Times – The Compliment Guy

Whatever the weather, Brett Westcott would go on campus at Purdue University and give free compliments to anyone passing by. He says:

“I have already experienced the life-changing truth that one person can change the culture for the better. Life does not get much more fulfilling than that.”

Fantastic.

Virtual Learning Suite (Intute)

Tutorials to help you get the most out of your degree subject. Full of good resources and links.

MakeUseOf – 6 Less Known Free Online Word Processors

…with links to the better known free online word processors too. Something for everyone here. For those who don’t want distraction while writing, looks like DarkCopy and Writer would probably help.

Intelligent Life – Is Google Killing General Knowledge

A fantastic article. I mentioned one quote on the Tumblelog, but the whole piece is worth reading:

“A Google search, once you have keyed the words in, takes a broadband user less than a second, and the process will only get quicker. As for those laborious keystrokes, voice-recognition technology will enable us to bypass them. And soon pretty well everybody, from schoolchildren to drinkers in pubs, will be online pretty well all of the time. In that context, perhaps there is no longer any point in keeping facts in our heads. If you want to know who wrote “Skellig”, or whether Norway is a member of the European Union, or what Cary Grant’s real name was, you ask your laptop or your phone.”

Information overload, or filter failure?

There is no such thing as information overload. If you’re overwhelmed by what you’ve got to read/consume, you have probably chosen to feel that pain.

The choice may not be intentional, but I doubt someone else is forcing you to consume too much information. Even the compulsory reads on your reading lists shouldn’t be too much, even if it seems that way at the time.

[Note: Speed reading could help. A quick search on Google brings loads of results. At time of writing, the most recent speed reading piece I’ve seen is from Tim Ferriss. To try getting a speed boost, give it a go.]

Imagine you see the Top 10 bestselling non-fiction books in a store. Have you read all of them? It’s unlikely. Do you intend to? I doubt it.

What you’ve done here is created a filter. You have chosen to miss out on some reading material. Even if you had the money, the chances of someone buying all the books and reading each of them are slim. I’m sure you’d probably take something useful away from many books you’ve not read, but you can’t read every last thing that’s ever been written. Even a fraction of one percent would be difficult to get through. There’s just too much out there!

photo by B Tal

Your life is full of choices. The data you wish to consume depends on how you choose to consume. Some people, even uni students, claim never to read books unless they are practically forced to for an essay or exam. Others can’t stop reading certain types of novels. Others spend all day reading Facebook updates and blog posts. It’s all a choice.

‘Information Overload’ occurs when you choose to consume too much. It also happens when there’s such a backlog of reading that it’s too difficult to catch up with. You then have to make another choice…do you give up something else in order to catch up, or do you discard some of the older material in order to lighten the load?

You’re likely to lose out if you take on too much. When the ‘Information Overload’ feels like it’s about to strike, the simple choice is to get rid of a portion of what’s bringing you down. Failing that, skim for the main points only and move on as quickly as possible.

It’s difficult to stop engaging with information that you’re used to reading. It’s difficult to stop reading/watching the news if you’re used to that. It’s difficult to stop consuming anything you have grown accustomed to. That is why filtering is not easy, but always possible. And not only is it a relief, it’s also surprising how little it matters once you’ve stopped.

One of my personal mottos is “Know when to stop”. I find it important to read a lot. It feels right in my personal circumstances and I use it to my advantage. Once I start to find things tough, I step back and discard what I can do without. As I say, not always easy, but definitely possible. The more I have practised this, the easier it has become to cut back and move on.

Sure, some of my choices may end up being mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. But it’s unusual to find a situation where you can’t rectify those mistakes and get back to the position you want to be.

Steve Pavlina has written about networking with busy people. It’s worth reading what he has to say in relation to information overload, because he could have crashed and burned with the amount of communication he was getting. As his site grew, so did the number of people contacting him. Rather than continue responding to every single person, Steve decided to filter differently in order to cope. He says, “I don’t have the capacity to accept deeper connections with everyone who wants to build a bridge with me, so I have to be selective”.

I’m sure he didn’t want to stop talking to each and every person, but there comes a time when it’s not possible to keep going. When no choice is made to change the filter, that’s when the choice is made for you and ‘information overload’ occurs.

While some people insist on swimming further out to sea until they’re helplessly swept away, I’ll make do with paddling. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll take a short swim in slightly deeper waters, but I want to be sure I can get back to safety pretty quickly.

I don’t see that as weak. I simply want to be able to make the choice myself. It’s important to be in control of those filters and use them wisely.

How easy do you find filtering your information in-tray? If you have any tips, I’d love to hear from you.