Melanie’s Massive Compendium of Productivity Hacks

October 29, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

A table set up for productivity with a laptop, earphones, notebook, and planner — Photo by Matt Ragland on Unsplash

I’ll update this list as more things occur to me. Feel free to add your own productivity life hacks in the comments.

Headphones on, open these three tabs on your browser in order

H/T to Reddit user Tadallagash and their viral Reddit post Time to get classy

Alternatively, choose your own soundtrack that makes your brain focus, and use it EXCLUSIVELY for when you’re being productive. You can train your brain to associate these sounds with focusing on work.

Book recommendations

The Anti-Planner: How to Get Sh*t Done When You Don’t Feel Like It by Dani Donovan

$48 plus shipping

Yes I know it’s expensive for a planner (it’s not a planner, though), but there are 2 reasons it’s worth it. First, it has many features that make the book more effective as an interactive workbook that also make it more expensive to manufacture, such as being comb-bound to lie flat in use, thick pages so your sharpies won’t bleed through, tabs to organise the info, etc. Second, it works. It has saved my hide so many times because I was stuck, frozen, bogged down, unable to do what I needed to do, and this book got me going again. It is packed with hundreds of tips, strategies, and lifehacks for every situation. I highly recommend this book.

Learning Outside The Lines Two Ivy League Students With Learning Disabilities And Adhd Give You The Tools For Academic Success And Educational Revolution By Jonathan Mooney and Dave Cole

£7.99 for the ebook. Weirdly, also available as an audio CD for £38.87

Full of excellent and encouraging advice for ALL students, especially (but not only) neurodivergent students. This is the book I wish I had had when I was an undergraduate. However, it is long and in-depth. If you struggle to take in information from walls of text you will need some strategies for approaching this book

Atomic Habits by James Clear

£10, also available as audiobook

Clear combines his personal and professional experience advising people about building habits that serve them, with cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience. The result is an evidence-based system for reflecting on your life; the habits you have, the habits you want, and the effect your habits have on you. He sets out step-by-step processes (I love a step-by-step process!) for changing your habits. It’s oversimplified in some ways. For example, it neglects the effects of trauma and other psychological problems that might impede the step-by-step process from unfolding as he sets it out. But there’s a lot of applicable wisdom here for most people.

App Recommendations

Forest App

Currently £3.99 one-off purchase. No in-app purchases.

A productivity app for iOS and Android, as well as add-ons for Chrome and Firefox. Fundamentally it’s a timer (I usually set it for 25 minutes). A little tree will grow as long as you don’t interact with your phone while the timer runs down. Over time you can grow a little forest, representing how much time you have spent focusing. It doesn’t lock your phone – you can still use it, but the tree will die. Works well with the Pomodoro technique.

Epic Win

Free

Turn your to-do list into a fantasy roleplaying game. Gather experience points, gain levels, and boost your stats by completing user-defined quests (such as doing your laundry or booking a dentist appointment)

trello

Free for individual users

Web-based kanban-style organiser. Or you can make a physical kanban board (see below).

Other Life Hacks

Pomodoro Technique

Free

Get stuff done by focusing for 25 minutes at a time. You don’t have to buy anything or download anything. The website explains how to do it.

Bullet Journalling

Free (you just need any pen and any notebook)

Ignore what you see on Pinterest and Instagram. It’s not an art project. You don’t need a new fancy notebook, new fancy pen, stencils, stickers, or any art supplies. It’s a simple system for organising your time and your tasks. Use a pen and notebook you already have – you could use one of those notebooks you wrote in the first 4 pages of and then abandoned. Tear out the old pages, or just start on the next empty page. The website explains how to do it.

Kanban board

Free (you may wish to buy a whiteboard, or you can make do with things you already have)

A system for tracking your tasks that need doing, are in progress, waiting for something (eg an email reply) or done. There are numerous apps that do this electronically eg trello.com, or todoist.com. Or you can go old school with a whiteboard and post-it notes. Or you can use the back of a door or a big piece of paper. The system is what matters, not the tools.

Body doubling

Free, although paid options are available

A category of strategies in which the presence of another person helps you stay on task. Here are some variations.

Arrange informally with a friend to join a video call whilst you both focus on your own tasks.
Arrange informally with someone at your home or workplace to keep you on task. This is not a full-time commitment for them, it’s very low-level. For example, when my daughter sees me scrolling on my phone during work hours, she asks “What are you doing” in a neutral, non-judgemental tone. This may help me realise I’m doom-scrolling, and snap me out of the spell. Or I may explain that I’m researching apps for a blog article I’m writing.
Arrange informally to get together with someone in person. For example, you may arrange to go to a friend’s house because she really wants to declutter the kitchen cupboards but never gets round to it, and you really want to work on your assignment but keep getting distracted. On Thursday at 2pm you go to sit at her kitchen table with your laptop whilst she organises her cupboards. You’re both more likely to get your tasks done under this arrangement.
Simply going to a public space like a cafe or library may help you stay focused. I’d feel pretty odd sitting in a cafe playing The Sims or scrolling Facebook on a laptop, so I tend to remain focused on work.
Pay to join a video call with one or several other people. Sometimes I attend online or in-person Study Hubs. Being connected online with other people helps me focus better than I can when I am working alone. There’s a (US-centric) list of body-doubling apps here, but I haven’t tried them.

Frame it as a favour for someone else

I’ve got no link for this one. Some years ago I saw a thread on Reddit or Twitter or somewhere, in which a user asked people what tasks they were procrastinating right now. Then he reframed each one as asking the person to do that task as a favour for him. E.g., if one user said they were procrastinating posting a cheque to pay a bill, the original user would say “Hey, could you just do me a favour and post that cheque to the electricity company. I’ve been meaning to do it but I keep forgetting, and I’m worried they’re going to cut me off. You may have to buy a stamp first. Is that OK”? The users reported that this had enabled them to do tasks they had been unable to complete for themselves, by instead imagining they were doing a favour for someone who was depending on them. What was especially lovely was that the thread quickly became huge, with vast numbers of people sharing tasks they were stuck on. The original user couldn’t possibly reply to them all. So users began responding to each other with the same reframing. It was beautiful and powerful to see. But now I can’t find it again.

A variation of this is to do tasks as a favour for yourself in the future. If I wash the bedding now, future Melanie will have clean bedding tonight. I seem to more easily motivate myself to perform acts of service for others than to do tasks for myself. By thinking of future-Melanie as a different person, I can strip the bed and wash the bedding as a favour for her. I also remember to feel gratitude to past-Melanie when I get into the fresh-smelling bed at night.

What does critical thinking mean?

October 12, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Green ceramic statue of a man seated in a thoughtful pose — Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

While studying geography at school, I was taught how oxbow lakes were formed. We had to copy diagrams from the blackboard into our exercise books about the stages of oxbow lake formation. We were expected to understand and remember the information and regurgitate it from memory in an exam. We weren’t told how we know that’s how oxbow lakes are formed. We weren’t told who first proved how they are formed, or what evidence that person used to demonstrate it. We weren’t told how confident geographers are that this is really how they are formed, or whether there are any alternative theories. In other words, we weren’t expected to think critically about it. We were just expected to believe it and remember it.

It’s very different at degree level. You aren’t just told a set of facts. You aren’t expected to believe everything you are told without question. You’ll notice that you’re also told HOW we know the things we know; who did the research, what studies they did, what results they got, and whether there are any competing theories. You are expected to engage with all this information, not just skip to the “answer”. That’s what we mean by “critical thinking”.

Here is a list of statements that a student might write in an essay, arranged from “least critical thinking” to “most critical thinking”. See if you can identify the important changes between each statement:

Aggressive, competitive, driven people (known as Type A) are more likely to have a heart attack than laid-back, easy-going people (Type B).
Aggressive, competitive, driven people (known as Type A) are more likely to have a heart attack than laid-back, easy-going people (Type B) (Friedman and Rosenman, 1959).
Friedman and Rosenman (1959) compared rates of coronary heart disease among over 200 men, and found that those with an aggressive, competitive, driven personality (known as Type A) were seven times more likely to have coronary heart disease than men with a laid-back, easy-going personality (Type B).
Friedman and Rosenman (1959) compared rates of coronary heart disease among over 200 men, and found that those with an aggressive, competitive, driven personality (known as Type A) were seven times more likely to have coronary heart disease than men with a laid-back, easy-going personality (Type B). However, a systematic review of the evidence found that only a small proportion of studies replicated the finding, and far more studies found no evidence of a relationship between personality type and coronary heart disease (Petticrew, Lee, and McKee, 2012).

The first statement presents a claim as though it is a simple, unarguable fact.

The second statement at least says where the claim comes from i.e. it contains a reference.

The third statement briefly describes the research evidence supporting the claim.

The fourth statement briefly describes the research and then identifies a more recent study that contradicts it. This is the only statement on the list that I would award marks for critical thinking in an undergraduate essay.

You won’t always be able to find a study that contradicts the one you need to write about. So how else can you demonstrate critical thinking?

a study that supports the one you’re writing about can also demonstrate critical thinking, especially if you can talk about how the second study adds extra information, insight, or nuance.
if someone else has criticised the study you’re writing about, including this information demonstrates critical thinking.
identifying any weaknesses or limitations in the study counts as critical thinking. For example, is the sample size very small, or unrepresentative? Were the measurements valid? Were they reliable? Were confounding variables accounted for? Can you think of an alternative explanation for the results? And so on.
developing a nuanced answer to the essay question, based on the evidence discussed in your essay, can demonstrate critical thinking. For example, if the question was “Is the relationship with the mother the most important in a child’s life”?, then “In conclusion, the mother is the most important relationship in a child’s life” is not a very nuanced answer. But the following is; “In conclusion, research evidence shows that although a child will have many important relationships in its life, the relationship with the primary caregiver is the most important. This is very often the mother, but any person who gives consistent care can fulfill this role, regardless of gender or biological relationship to the infant. Additionally, not all primary caregivers, including mothers, have a beneficial relationship. Sadly, some are neglectful, abusive, or expose their dependents to harm. In such cases, the relationship can still be categorised as the most important, but for ill rather than for good”. This is because it addresses such questions as “to what extent”? “Under what circumstances”? And “What do we mean by important”?

You can demonstrate critical thinking by discussing and analysing the research methods and evidence, not just the headline results of research.

References

Friedman, M. and Rosenman, R.H., 1959. Association of specific overt behavior pattern with blood and cardiovascular findings: blood cholesterol level, blood clotting time, incidence of arcus senilis, and clinical coronary artery disease. Journal of the American medical association, 169(12), pp.1286-1296.

Petticrew, M.P., Lee, K. and McKee, M., 2012. Type A behavior pattern and coronary heart disease: Philip Morris’s “crown jewel”. American journal of public health, 102(11), pp.2018-2025.

If this article didn’t answer your question, click here

Formatting paragraphs

September 30, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Photo of a psychology textbook, open to show the text laid out in paragraphs — Pages from Encountering Psychology in Context 1. Image by Melanie Rimmer CC BY-NC-SA

A paragraph is a series of sentences that are all about the same main point or idea. When you start a new main point or new idea, you should start a new paragraph. In a paragraph, the sentences all follow on from one another, separated by a full stop followed by a space. Don’t separate sentences in the same paragraph with a paragraph break, which makes the next paragraph start on a new line (you might know this as a return, enter, new line, or something else).

I’ve noticed some students starting to do something new with their paragraphs in essays.

They start every sentence on a new line.

To me, this looks like lots of very short, single-sentence paragraphs.

But I think the students intend for them all to be understood as the same paragraph.

Then, when the student wants to start a new paragraph, they put two paragraph breaks.

It probably has something to do with how people write on the internet, in direct messages, WhatsApp, or something like that. Perhaps this will become the new convention for setting out paragraphs in time. But right now, this is not the conventionally correct way to set out a paragraph. So please separate your sentences with a full stop followed by a space, and separate your paragraphs with a paragraph break.

If this article didn’t answer your question, click here

When to use secondary citations

April 18, 2024April 19, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Smiling young woman reading book at home on sofa and hugging cute pet dog — Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

In academic writing it is important to acknowledge where the ideas and information you are writing about comes from. That’s why we give citations. For example, if I wrote “Humankind’s central problem is the question of how to become fully human”, I’d need to acknowledge that this isn’t my original idea (although I have expressed it in my own words) by adding a citation showing where I got the idea from, like this:

“Humankind’s central problem is the question of how to become fully human (Friere, 1972)”

I’d include an entry with the full details of Friere’s book in my References section, so the reader could find the same source I used.

But what if I want to cite a scholar I’ve only read about in a textbook? For example, if I was reading about Piaget’s stage theory in a psychology textbook, should I cite Piaget, even if I haven’t read his work myself? Or should I cite the textbook author, even though it’s not her theory? In that situation, I need to give a secondary citation, like this:

(Piaget, 1954, cited in Gjersoe, 2020)

What this means is the idea I’m writing about is Piaget’s, but I read about it in a book chapter by Gjersoe. I would not include an entry in my References list for Piaget, but I would include an entry for Gjersoe’s chapter so the reader could find the same source I used.

References

Freire, P., (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, tr. Myra Bergman Ramos. Penguin Modern Classics.

Gjersoe, N., (2020). ‘Chapter 3: Representation in the early years’, in E219 Psychology of childhood and youth: A reader. The Open University, Milton Keynes

If this article didn’t answer your question, click here

Feedback is not a rebuke

March 27, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

I like the New York Times puzzle, Wordle. You have 6 attempts to guess a five-letter word. After each guess, you are given feedback about how well your guess matches the target word. If you have a correct letter in the wrong place, it is coloured yellow. A correct letter in the correct place gets coloured green. You use these clues to inform your next guess, until you guess the target word.

The goal of Wordle is not to guess the word correctly on the first try. If you ever did that, it wouldn’t be skill but sheer luck. The purpose of your first try is to get the feedback – the first set of clues that will shape your second guess. After that, it’s a repeating loop of guesses leading to more and more feedback until you can home in on the correct word.

Assignments are much the same. The goal is not to get 100% with no feedback. In fact, if that ever happened, the whole exercise would be pointless because you wouldn’t be able to learn anything from it. The feedback you get on your assignments is not a rebuke because you got something wrong. It’s literally just teaching. And the fact that you didn’t know something and needed to be taught it is not a failure. It’s literally your job. As a student, your job is to not know things, and to be in the process of learning them. That’s what “student” means. The cycle of essays (the word “essay” means “an attempt”) and feedback is how that process proceeds.

We’re on the same team

March 4, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

A hiker walking in woods — Photo by Jake Melara on Unsplash

Remember that you and your tutor are both on the same team. So you need never feel afraid about admitting that you’re finding something a challenge, or you’re falling behind, or anything like that. It’s understandable and admirable to think “I’ll try to sort this problem out on my own”. But if you can’t sort it out on your own quite quickly, it’s better to contact me and ask for help. I don’t mind. It’s literally my job, and I love my job. Most students tend to leave it much longer to ask for help than they should. They let problems build up, and with it their own stress, anxiety, and unhappiness. I’d prefer them to contact me sooner. I usually have the answers to the questions they are struggling with. I know about solutions and strategies they would never think of. I can help.

Think about me as a leader on a hike. All my students have joined this hike because they’re excited about being part of it, getting to the end, and seeing all the interesting things along the way. And I’m excited about taking them on the hike, making sure they all get to the end, see the interesting things, and have a good experience. If you get out of breath, or twist your ankle, or your bootlace snaps, I need to know so I can help you out. The last thing I want is to leave you behind and lose you. I’m not about judging people or punishing them or anything like that. That’s not what we’re here for. So there’s no need to hide anything from me that is affecting your ability to keep up with the hike/keep up with the module.

Who to ask for help?

February 6, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Photo of a person reaching out above the water — Photo by nikko macaspac on on Unsplash

Generally speaking, your Open University tutor can help you with:

Understanding the module content, explaining tricky concepts etc.
The TMA questions, explaining what the question means, answering questions about the TMA (but not reading drafts), giving extensions
Advice about study skills e.g. catching up if you fall behind with the reading (realistically, that’s WHEN you fall behind – practically everyone does, sooner or later), note taking, referencing, academic writing skills etc.

You can also talk to your tutor about how disability, chronic illness, or life circumstances are affecting your studies, and they’ll make reasonable adjustments and give you advice and understanding in how you can study on a more level playing field with other students who aren’t facing the same challenges you are.

The SST (student support team) can help you with everything else, such as:

Technical problems. Tutors are not employed for their IT know-how, and anyway the way the online systems look to tutors are often different than how they look to students. So even questions like “How do I join the tutorial”? can be tricky because I know how I do it as a tutor, but that’s probably not the same as how you would do it.
Qualifications and module selection. Tutors probably just don’t have that knowledge. Students are always saying to me things like “I’ve studied E197 and H1230. I’m thinking of taking KHT1087 next – what do you recommend?” and I simply haven’t heard of any of those and don’t have a clue what they are.
Fees
Transferring, withdrawing, deferring etc.
Delivery of module materials, textbooks, booklets etc. – Tutors simply don’t have access to any of the systems that control all those things, but the SST does.

You’ll find the contact information for the SST on your StudentHome page.

I don’t mind students asking me questions outside my expertise. I understand that I’m the friendly face of the OU for my students and part of my job is to signpost students to the right place when they don’t know who to ask. I also know that for some students, eg. students with anxiety, it might be much easier to ask their tutor who they know than to send an email to a stranger or anonymous email address. So you can keep emailing me and I won’t be mad about it. But if you are able to go direct to the people who can help you, that will save you some time.

If this article didn’t answer your question, click here

Quick Answers: Why did my tutor make a comment on my essay but not my friend’s, when they did the exact same thing?

January 11, 2024 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Tutors don’t point out every single mistake, or weakness, or area for improvement in your essay, because we don’t want you to feel overwhelmed and discouraged. We pick out two or three things you can work on for next time. These might be the most important things, or they might be the easiest to fix. Your feedback is tailored to you. That’s why it’s different than your friend’s feedback.

How to layout an Open University TMA – free download

December 27, 2023 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Hand-drawn sketches of layouts for perhaps a webpage, infographic, or something like that — Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

I have created a TMA (tutor-marked assignment) template you can download for free and use for your own TMAs. It should be useful for Open University social science students. It may also be useful for other subjects and universities, but you should check with your own tutor or lecturer how they expect you to layout your assignments.

Using this template isn’t plagiarism because there is no content here; no answers to essay questions or text that would be marked. You’ll replace all the text in it with your name, module number, essay question, essay, and so on. It’s just to remove some of the guesswork about how to layout your assignment.

If you have already submitted assignments with different layouts than this, they’re not necessarily wrong and it doesn’t mean you’ve lost marks. Certainly the nitty gritty details don’t matter e.g. whether to bold or centre justify the essay title, whether or not to put the word count in brackets, etc. The most important points are to make it clear what question you are answering, where your answer begins and ends, dividing essays into paragraphs properly, and including a References section where appropriate.

tma-layout-template Download

If this article didn’t answer your question, click here

Leave out unnecessary information

December 13, 2023 Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Here you can see the crispy, wonderful smelling Franziskaner-loaf and rye whole-grain tin loaf all baked by Franziskaner bakery in Bozen (Italy) — Photo by Wesual Click on Unsplash

My sister tells stories like this: I’ll ask her “Why is your leg in a cast? How did you break it?” and she’ll say “Well, I was in Asda and I needed some bread. But they didn’t have the bread I usually get, Hovis Tasty Wholemeal, so I got some Allinson’s granary bread instead. And then I remembered my husband doesn’t like granary bread because the bits get stuck in his fillings….”. The story goes on for hours and eventually I find out she was rear-ended by a bin wagon driving back home, and all the information about Asda and bread and my brother-in-law’s fillings was completely irrelevant to why her leg is in a cast. Drives me mad. I love her, though.

When you are writing essays, only include the information you need to answer the question. Just because the question was about attachment, that doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate to describe Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test protocol in great detail. Not every question about Piaget requires you to list all his developmental stages. Ask yourself “Would my essay make just as much sense if I left this part out? Would it still answer the question?”

If this article didn’t answer your question, click here