Photo: Moriza

I chose to live in downtown Vancouver instead of on campus for many reasons and I’m really happy with my decision. However, there is one big drawback to living off campus: the time spent commuting. I take the bus every day and my commute takes me about 1h30 (45 min each way). I use the bus for three main reasons:

1. At UBC, a bus pass is included with your tuition (you pay for it, but you can’t opt out). Therefore, commuting by bus is virtually free (no extra cost).
2. I don’t own a car. I just find it cheaper to rent one every time I need it. Car sharing services like Zipcar are very convenient for those in my situation.
3. My daily bus ride is a great time to be productive and get things done.

Indeed, there are many things you can get done while on the bus (or in the subway):

• Read: The most obvious and the one I do the most often. I try to bring on the bus reading material that isn’t to bulky, like magazines, academic papers, lecture notes or small books. My favorite bookmark is the post it note. With a sticky note, you can mark not only a page but also a line on the page. Since it is cheap and disposable, you can also use it to take notes or to keep a list of sections to read in a book.
• Listen to audiobooks: Some people don’t like to read on the bus, and that’s fine. Listening to audiobooks is one alternative to reading. There are a lot of books available for purchase from Audible and iTMS or you can make your own using text to speech software (some have a text to mp3 function). One of my favorite magazine, The Economist, offers an audio version for free to its subscribers.
• Clear your inbox: If you’re lucky enough to have a Blackberry or an iPhone (not yet available in Canda… one day maybe), your commute can be a good time to clear your inbox and respond to all your emails/facebook mails/other forms of electronic communications.
• Brainstorm: Let’s be realistic, you won’t get any real work done like writing a paper on the bus. However, with a pen and a small piece of paper, it can be a good place to start brainstorming or organizing your ideas.

One thing I consider a must-have if you want to do anything productive in public transportation are headphones (preferrably attached to something like an iPod). I personnaly use some cheap “noise cancelling” earbuds from Skullcandy, but with a bigger budget I would definitely go for the Bose ones.

Photo: al-fassam

This might seems counterintuitive, but quitting coffee is a way to increase your productivity. While coffee (or the caffeine in it) makes you more alert, too much of it can cause sleep disorders and attention disorder (like when you have difficulty focusing on the task at hand).

Quitting caffeine altogether is perhaps a drastic step, but you should consider it (or at least reducing your consumption) if your average caffeine intake is decreasing your productivity. The maximum recommended daily intake of caffeine is between 400mg and 500mg (depending on the sources), which is about three small coffees (8oz) or two medium (12oz). Since this is a maximum, you should aim at a number lower than that. Most coffee-drinking students I know have, like I did until last year, a caffeine consumption that exceeds this limit and therefore that can cause the adverse effects of caffeine. According to WebMD, caffeine withdrawal can cause the following symptoms:

• headache, fatigue or drowsiness
• depressed, irritable mood
• difficulty concentrating
• flu-like symptoms of nausea and/or vomiting
• muscle pain or stiffness

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve reduced my caffeine consumption from 500-600mg per day to less than 200mg per day (one double latté in the morning and one cup of tea after lunch). Last year, I had to fight sleep every class, now it doesn’t happen anymore. I also don’t get that caffeine crash anymore (you know, the sleepiness you feel when the effect of your last coffee wears off). If you want to go down the same path as I did (or even quit coffee completely), here are some tips for you:

• Don’t quit during your exams: This should be straightforward, but don’t quit coffee during your exams or during any period when you need to be at the top of your game. There is going to be some adaptation period before you reap the benefits (for me it was about two weeks).
• Stop gradually: You could quit caffeine completely today, but it will be easier if you stop gradually over the course of a week or two.
• Find substitutes: Replace that late-night caffeinated coffee with a decaf (while the cheap decaf coffees aren’t usually very good, the more expensive ones are hard to differentiate from the real stuff). Replace that afternoon coffee with a tea, or, even better, a non caffeinated herbal tea.
• Sleep more: Sleeping one hour or even only half an hour more every day can make you feel so much more energized that you won’t need your caffeine boost. You’ll get back the time spent sleeping in increased productivity (as long as you don’t oversleep). If you have trouble sleeping, get some tips from Lifehack.org.
• Exercise: It’s not the first time you hear this, but regular exercise is good for you. It will make you feel more energized and help you sleep at night.
• Cold shower: This probably isn’t for everyone, but starting your day with a cold shower can be as affective as coffee for waking you up. If you don’t feel like taking a 15 minutes cold shower, just one minute of cold water at the end should do the trick.

To help you get started, you can find a table summarizing the caffeine content of many drinks on Health Canada’s web site.

Photo: umjanedoan

TheUniversityBlog has a nice list of 20 Tips & 20 Links to Eleminate Procrastination.

To me, the obvious missing one is:

1. Just DO IT! Now!

Also, about number 12 (stay energized), you might want to be careful about how you stay energized. Just drinking more coffee might make you feel more energized, however it might also make you less focused. There’s no substitute to sleep and exercise (don’t worry, usually you recover that lost time in increased productivity.)

Read [theuniversityblog.co.uk]

Photo: gadl

Lifehack.org just published a (pretty impressive) Ultimate Student Resource List. There seemed to be some important stuff missing for the grad students, so here are some of those missing links:

Free Applications

To their list I would add:

• All the LaTeX tools I mentioned in Getting Started with LaTeX.
• A BibTeX reference manager:
  • BibDesk [Mac]
  • JabRef [Java, so all platforms]
• A good PDF reader:
  • Skim [Mac]
  • Foxit [Windows]

Online Tools

I only have one addition here, for those who are learning LaTeX (I should have included it in my previous post):

• MonkeyTeX : Online LaTeX editor (note: for serious work, I recommend always saving a copy to your computer).

Websites

Of course, I would add Productive Scholar ;-). I would also add those search websites that are a must for grad students:

• Google Scholar
• JSTOR
• Science Direct

If you have other ideas, please share in the comments.