What’s the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning? —Scott Monty
Source: What’s the ROI of Putting Your Pants on in the Morning?, AdvertisingAge
[E]verything someone does for you has an opportunity cost. That means if someone takes time out of his or her day to attend to you, there’s something they haven’t done for themselves or for someone else. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking your request is small. But when someone is busy there are no small requests. They have to stop what they’re doing, focus on your request, and take the time to respond. With that in mind, there is never a time when you shouldn’t thank someone for doing something for you.
Source: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 by Tina Seelig
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Two of my favorite programs on the Mac are Papers and DEVONthink Pro Office. Papers provides a terrific interface for storing and organizing journal articles, and DEVONthink Pro Office offers powerful indexing and searching of PDF files.
Recently I was thrilled to find an easy way to use the two programs together. If Papers is configured to store your PDF files in its library (the default), DEVONthink can index these without duplicating them in its database. To configure:
If you have a large number of papers, it may take a while for DEVONthink to index them. Once indexing is complete, you’ll see a folder structure that mimics the structure of your Papers library. You can now search your PDF files in DEVONthink!
To update your DEVONthink index (e.g., after adding articles to your Papers library), click on the “Papers” folder in your DEVONthink database and choose “Synchronize” from the “File” menu.
Posted in Research, Tools | Tagged DEVONthink, indexing, journal articles, Papers, PDFs, searching | 1 Comment »
From The Onion, a bit of humor related to my previous post:
INDIANAPOLIS—The National Science Foundation’s annual symposium concluded Monday, with the 1,500 scientists in attendance reaching the consensus that science is hard.
“For centuries, we have embraced the pursuit of scientific knowledge as one of the noblest and worthiest of human endeavors, one leading to the enrichment of mankind both today and for future generations,” said keynote speaker and NSF chairman Louis Farian. “However, a breakthrough discovery is challenging our long-held perceptions about our discipline—the discovery that science is really, really hard.”
See National Science Foundation: Science Hard for the rest of the article.
Posted in Humor | Tagged National Science Foundation, NSF, science, The Onion | Leave a Comment »
I have a different approach. I look to see what things I enjoy doing and just try to figure out how to spend my time doing things that I enjoy. —Paul Buchheit
Source: 5 Startup Tips from the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed, Mashable
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In the academic world, texts and their authors are inseparable.
Source: Kamler, B. & Thomson, P. (2008). The failure of dissertation advice books: Toward alternative pedagogies for doctoral writing. Educational Researcher, 37, 507-514.
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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is a must-read for anyone charged with communicating ideas or influencing others. Chip Heath, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, and Dan Heath, co-founder of Thinkwell, distill the secrets of effective communication into six principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. To illustrate their framework, they employ numerous anecdotes and case studies. Well-written and fun to read, it’s no surprise this book is a New York Times bestseller.
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Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell surveys research on the unconscious mind in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Adeptly weaving research findings with anecdotes, Gladwell engages the reader in a fascinating exploration of the power of the unconscious. If you’re interested in how people think, you’ll likely enjoy this book. Also check out Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious and Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less.
Posted in Books | Tagged Malcom Gladwell, psychology, thinking, unconscious | Leave a Comment »