EduLinks – Science, Philosophy and Garfield…

TheUniversityBlog is 6 months old today.  Woo!  Good times. 

birthday 

1. Garfield…but a zillion times funnier:

[They’re all winners.]

2. Wired Science – Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

 

3. Online Papers in Philosophy

 

[LOADS of philosophical linkage.  Will be useful to some of you…and it’s a keeper.]

 

4. Dosh Dosh – How to Use the Web to Build a Powerful Reputation in Any Industry

 

[If you want to build a brand, start a new project, or develop yourself as a specialist in something you have a passion in, Dosh Dosh provides clear and useful advice to help your endeavours.]

 

5. The wonder of web resources:

6. Guardian Education – What happened to the love?

 

[Higher Education as a springboard to employment, rather than a cocoon of academic wonder…your thoughts?]

 

7. Independent – On Top of the World

 

[Go out there and find a way to get what you want.  This person managed it in their gap year before uni.  If it’s out there, you’ve got the opportunity.]

Recover that childlike positive attitude

A lot of what I write is about concerns a positive mind and an attitude to do your best. But how often do we feel negative about a situation, a person, or life in general?

The answer is…Too much.

Kids don’t spend so much time on negative thoughts (even if it something feels like it!).

Children do these two things:

  1. When upset, a child can be uncontrollable. But it doesn’t take long before they usually calm down and forget all about the problem.
  2. When a child finds something interesting, they focus their entire attention on that one thing for a long, long time.

Adults do these two things:

  1. When upset, they focus their entire attention on that one thing for a long, long time.
  2. When an adult finds something interesting, they’re briefly happy. But usually, after very little time has passed, an adult will find twenty other things that need attending to and lose track of any initial interest.

For most uni goers, there’s a bit of the kid in us (woo!), but we’re adults too. It makes life pretty confusing at times.

No wonder we have our fair share of ups and downs.

So how do you achieve a positive attitude from a negative one? Here are some ideas:

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Your Perfectionism is Just Fancy Procrastination

Due to the nature of this blog, I tend to read many self-help books, study guides, productivity blogs, and so on.  While I may not agree with everything out there, I regularly find writing that I totally agree with; the advice is sound.

But I’m reading up for research purposes and to find quality links and pearls of wisdom that I hadn’t thought about myself.  Your reasons for reading study tips and advice should be rather different to this.

Are you happy with your overall techniques?  Do you mainly read advice and find yourself in agreement with it, or does it help you contemplate change?  Do you spend too much time reading up on self-help, rather than helping yourself?

I recently had a discussion with a friend about the meaning of ‘doing the right thing’.  While it was based on personal choices, rather than working techniques, the conclusion can work on either level.  We concluded that our personal positions are often based on our individual perceptions of what is right and wrong.  But in the general, overall sense, nothing is as certain as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.  Because this leaves room for doubt in our minds, we end up fuelling a relentless pursuit of perfection.

photo by yosmer

Doughnuts…so right or so wrong?

So today, I want to give you one piece of advice:

  • When you’re relatively in touch with your academic work and have a keen grasp on what matters and what suits you…STOP looking for more advice and START working.

You may read a lot of tips that tell you to “Just do it”, because starting is often the best way to find a voice and explore what’s on your mind.  But this isn’t the same thing.

The difference is that you have been looking to further yourself and, in turn, have positively developed.  The likelihood is that you already have started “just doing it”, but you can probably do it a lot faster now if you focused on that task alone.

With a quality set of techniques in the bag, now is the time to crack on.  If you insist upon perfection, you will end up wasting more time that the period before you had a focused set of study techniques.

Some near perfect outcomes can only occur through imperfection.  The reason being: there is no such thing as perfect.

The story of a professor who has just solved a 140-year-old mathematical puzzle has nothing to do with a ‘perfect’ working environment.  He was simply sitting in a lecture, letting his mind wander as he grew bored.  You can’t ask for something quite so perfect through such unlikely circumstances.

You have it in you to create your own eureka moments.  So if you’re pretty happy with the way you get on with your academic work, let the creative and practical juices flow and let it take you through glorious (im)perfection.

Brilliant Beginnings, Marvellous Middles, Excellent Endings

When a piece of work presents itself to you, what are your reactions throughout the creative process? Unless you’re a consistent master, at least one of these problems will have cropped up along the way:

  • You just can’t start on it. You just dwell on it and ignore it for days;
  • You begin enthusiastically, you reach your conclusions convincingly, yet the bulk in between those two posts feels like a drag;
  • You get the majority out of the work out the way, but never fully close the door on it. The end never comes.

Let’s take each point individually and go through five ways you can improve each section:

Finding a brilliant beginning

photo by Clearly Ambiguous

1. Stop worrying about it – The more you build up starting, the worse it’ll feel. In no time, you scare yourself into never wanting to look at another piece of work again. Your fears just get in the way of progress. The more you deal with getting the work started, the easier it will be to crack on with the rest of the project.

2. Just start! – No matter how little you’ve planned, and regardless of how little you think you know, just start writing. At this stage, you don’t need to be convincing and you don’t need to treat the work like a final draft. Even if you discard 90% of what you write later, that 10% you keep could be where all the drive and magic comes from.

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