Category: Technology

ProfLife – Being Productive Out of the Office

/Personal, Psychology, Technology

One of the great things about being a professor is that we’re essentially trained to be project managers – people who are specialists in a given topic area but also trained through graduate school to be self-sufficient. It surprises many to learn that when I’m assigned a course to teach, I receive very few ‘mandated’ guidelines. Yes, periodically we have required sections in our syllabi on university policies, or perhaps my curriculum committee (of which I’m a member) requires certain courses to use the same book or have a common assignment. But otherwise, no one tells me what content I must teach, what assignments I must give, or how to evaluate my student’s work. The same is true in the realm of scholarship and service – I am expected to select my own projects, manage them to completion, and provide service to my institution and discipline. When it comes to my formal workday, I’m expected to be in the classroom to teach when assigned, to be available for 10 office hours a week, and to be available for meetings as needed. Beyond that, there is no 8-5 expectation on professors – we’re asked to fit our lives around specific class times, not a traditional workday (Which is also why, at my institution, we don’t get personal leave).

However this level of freedom can be challenging for some. Recently one of my colleagues posted on Twitter a request:

As someone who has worked from home a lot in my past (I lived 50 minutes away from my undergrad institution, 120 minutes away from my graduate institution, and a 2 hour commute away from my postdoc), I’ve picked up a few tips I’m happy to share.

1. Have The Essentials At Home

My Home Office Setup, an Apple 27” Cinema Display connected to a 2015 MacBook Pro, with full size keyboard, external trackpad. Wireless headphones and desk fan off to the right.

It is extremely important to have everything you need in your home workspace. In 2010 I bought a 27” Apple Cinema Display for work, and while pricey ($999) I fell in love with it at work. So when I had enough money, I bought a second one for my home office. There is absolutely no way I’d be able to do as much work at home if I didn’t have a large monitor on par with what I have at my office. The portability of a laptop, in my case a 2015 MacBook Pro, is key for a mobile professional – but you need to have a good place to park it at home where you can enjoy larger full-sized screens and peripherals. Also included in the setup is a full keyboard with number pad (essential for entering data), and an external trackpad so I don’t have to reach forward to touch the one on my Mac. Finally I have a set of wireless headphones (Beats Solo 3’s) that I can use to block out the world if need be.

However physical setup is only one part of the essentials – you also need to be able work on anything you need, anywhere you are. To do this, I leverage cloud storage extensively (OneDrive is my preferred storage provider these days, I purchase a home version of Office 365, which provides MS Office + 1 TB of space), as well as iCloud storage. I also install TeamViewer (Free for personal use) on my computer on campus so that I can securely connect up to it remotely in case I do happen to leave a file there. I also never use USB drives if I can avoid them – it’s horrible to have just 1 version of a file, and even worse if you lose the USB drive that the file is stored on, or if the USB drive fails!

2. Have a working To-Do Setup, With Start Dates

One thing I realized years ago was that I needed a To-Do list, and more importantly, I needed one that didn’t show me things I couldn’t do just yet. Having dozens of tasks ahead can be daunting, but it’s even worse when you see things that there is no way you can complete – perhaps you’re waiting on someone else, or they’ve told you “We’ll make a decision on that 3 months from now”. Leave the to-do on the list, and you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything. Take it off, and you never remember to put it back.

So years ago I started setting “start” dates on all of my tasks, so that I wouldn’t see them on my list until the first day I could do them. This helps me focus much more on what I need to do, versus what I will do down the line. It also means that I don’t fear putting a task on my list for the far future. I’ve actually had people remark to me “Wow, I can’t believe you remembered that” – it wasn’t memory, it was the item I put on my to-do list a year ago!

3. Be Mobile

I didn’t have an office for the first half of my professional life. I lived completely out of a bag, setting up shop at coffee shops, fast food restaurants, libraries, and in my car. As a former Windows Mobile MVP, I learned a number of tricks for staying productive while away from a dedicated workspace. They include…

  • Having a dedicated set of mobile tools – power cables, chargers, mobile mouse, anything I could possibly need. I don’t take all of them everywhere everyday, but I do keep them in a special case at home, so I can easily pull out what I need for that day. Also makes traveling a breeze – everything is in one place, and I don’t have to tear apart my home every time I pack – my bedside charger stays where it is, for example.
  • Exploring all possible productivity applications to see if they’re worthwhile. Some are, some aren’t. For example, recently I’ve been using Siri Shortcuts on my iPhone and iPad to script my nightly journal entry, to quickly open up files that I use frequently (e.g., open this specific spreadsheet), and more. Lately the mobile Microsoft Office suite has really stepped up it’s game – I can pull up pretty much anything on my phone or iPad that I can bring up on my computer.
  • Upgrade your tools as needed and use them to your advantage. See this as an investment in yourself and your productivity. While it’s tempting to tell people “Look, I just use my phone to make phone calls”, you’re basically saying to them “Look, I use this thing for just a small fraction of what it can do.”

4. Stop saying “I don’t have time”

I’ve heard people say “I don’t have time to learn X” or “I don’t have time to work on Y”. To them, I say “You can’t afford NOT to learn X” or “work on Y”. XKCD comics has a good example of what I mean here – this one. Think of learning new skills as an investment – one that crosses over from work to personal life, office to home productivity.

5. Have a Clear Goal

Finally, when I’m working remotely, I realize I need a clear goal of what I need to do. When working at my office, this happens somewhat naturally – my mind natively thinks of things that I do at work. However when I’m out of my office, I need to remind myself (with the help of my to-do list) what needs to get done, when it needs to get done, and what today’s task builds on for the future. It helps me avoid distraction, because I know what needs to get done. I’m not wandering aimlessly at home thinking “Wouldn’t it be more fulfilling to watch TV right now” – I instead have the thought “It’s going to be great to get this done before I go to my office tomorrow morning”.

Working from home (or anywhere other than your office) is a freeing experience, and something that I definitely think is useful for an academic – part of our jobs is to be in tune with the world around us, lest we become antiquated. However it can be challenging, and ultimately everyone finds their own solution. Just keep plugging away at the problems you find in your own system until you have it up and running smoothly!

Download All The Music You Could Ever Want, Legally, for $29

/Technology

Just a quick post in case you’re old fashion and like downloading actual copies of what you listen to, instead of streaming. I’ve been using this solution for 2-3 years now, and have been pretty happy with it:

  1. Find the song you want on YouTube – Pretty much everything is there these days.
  2. Use a tool to download it – I prefer Wondershare AllMyTube – for $29 you can download videos or mp3’s from YouTube and a bunch of other sites. Great for educators to save videos you worry might disappear or if you have a flaky internet connection in your classroom.
  3. Use MusicBrainz Picard (free) to scan the files you download and add appropriate meta data to them.

That’s it. Now you have a shiny MP3 file that you can import into your music manager of choice, including iTunes.

Load Data From Your R Script Directly, No Files Needed

/Technology

Ran across this nice little trick a few months back. One of the things I miss about SAS was the ability to copy/paste data directly into a SAS script. While it’s nice to load from an external file, for small datasets it can be more useful to have everything in just one file. This is especially useful with students who have trouble understanding the concept of a working directory or file paths in a smartphone app dominated world.

Here’s what I found months ago (I believe on Stack Overflow):

Input = ("Student Pretest Posttest
A 25 27
B 23 23
C 21 22
D 23 29
E 23 24
F 21 19
"); 
Data = read.table(textConnection(Input),header=TRUE)
t.test(Data$Pretest,Data$Posttest,paired=T)

There are no line numbers on that snippet – you’ve simply got 5 variables with 5 lines of data. The data is then read through a textConnection function into a data table. You can now work with it as you would any other data set.

Much Ado About Inbox Zero

/Technology

I’ve always been an Inbox Zero kind of guy before Inbox Zero was even a thing. From the time I got my first email address in 1995 to today, I’ve felt that the inbox should be empty nearly 100% of the time (I’ll outline my own exceptions below). Recently I told a friend that my inbox was empty and he was astonished, envious, and perhaps a little annoyed. It got me thinking about the practice, and about the relative merits or consequences of such a rigorous approach.

My inbox as I started typing this post up.
My inbox as I started typing this post up.

Inbox Zero has been widely discussed among productivity mavens and life hackers for the last few years, with many staunchly defending it’s usefulness, and others claiming it is a colossal waste of time and energy. Opinions on email seem to be in no short supply – some argue that push is the way to go, others take the opposite approach and pontificate that checking only once or twice per day will up your productivity to the stars.

If it isn’t blindingly obvious by now, the discussion boils down to what works best for the individual. For some, Inbox Zero will be the way to inner zen. For others, the inbox count is just a number, not one to be worried about or praised. In my experience over 20 years, I’ve found that I’m happiest when my inbox is nearly empty, so I keep up with that. If you’re experiencing email overload, you might find Inbox Zero satisfying as well (as soon as you dig out of your current overload!). For what it’s worth, I’ve tried ditching Inbox Zero and experience quite a bit of anxiety over it (which kinda scares me) – I’d like to be ‘cool’ with having stuff in there, but I suppose old habits die hard.

One final note – I mentioned that I do allow email to sit there in some circumstances. What are those?

  • Emails that serve a reminder function but aren’t important enough to get a real To Do item in my to do manager. So the student who says “I’ll be a bit late for class in 3 hours” may stick around until they arrive in class – the email then gets archived.
  • Emails that I don’t want to respond to right now! Yes, even though productivity mongers will tell you that you should respond as quickly as you can and not procrastinate, there are times I just don’t want to deal with that email yet.
  • Emails that I’m planning to show someone later on my mobile device – because once it’s in the black pit of the Archive folder, it can be hard to find it again.

This brings up the last bit of my email peculiarity: I archive everything, and never sort it. Gmail search (for my private email) and Exchange search (for my work email) tend to do things pretty well. I also backup my mailboxes every 6 months or so.

What They Aren’t Telling You: San Bernadino Shooter’s iPhone

/Technology

USA Today and others made headlines today reporting “Apple ordered to break into San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone”. The topic of government access to encrypted devices has gotten a lot of attention lately, and I’m not writing this post to take a stance on either side. My goal here is to inform some of my less tech-minded friends of a curious thing I noticed…

Fact: This iPhone was owned by San Bernadino county.
Fact: Deploying iPhones to your workers should only be done if they’re properly managed.
Fact: Apple’s management software, Profile Manager, allows you to clear passcodes.

Here’s the proof from my own Profile Manager installation – this is the list of options I get when I bring up my own iPhone from the management console:

In case you’re wondering, it’s also possible to prevent a user from wiping his/her iPhone using Profile Manager:

In case you’re wondering what “supervised only” means, it indicates that the phone has to be setup using the Apple Configurator software, which is free.

Obviously I don’t know what happened in this case, and won’t pretend to, but from an IT guy’s perspective, this problem seems like it would have been avoided if the devices were configured appropriately. In any event, I figured this would be useful information to my non-tech friends who noticed it was a government owned iPhone and wondered why the government couldn’t unlock it.

Actually Keep a Diary / Journal with Day One and Workflow

/Technology

For years I’ve tried to keep a daily diary / journal and have struggled with two problems: Remembering to write, and finding something to write. Lately I’ve tackled the second, and the first is easily solved when you think about it…

In this exercise, I’m using 2 apps on iOS: Day One, an excellent diary app, and Workflow, an excellent automation app. I’ve created a little Workflow module that does the following:

  • Downloads a daily motivational quote (although you could replace this with any RSS feed item)
  • Looks up my calendar for the day
  • Asks me 2 questions (In my example: What do I plan on doing, and how will I do good that day)
  • Rolls it all together and creates a new entry in Day One.

So with 1 tap of the Workflow shortcut, I have my phone prompting me to create my diary entry (and I can customize the workflow whenever I like). You can get my Morning Journal Workflow here if you’ve already got Workflow installed.

So get Workflow, Get Day One, and get journaling. Having problems with the first issue (i.e. remembering?). Well, just ask Siri to remind you or set a reminder to recur daily. Problems solved!

Microfiber Cloth To The Rescue – The Best Palm Rejection

/Technology

One of the biggest challenges I’ve had when using a stylus on my iPad is the problem of palm rejection. It seems that no software tweak known can keep my palm from screwing up what I’m writing on the iPad. But today I had a revelation – a microfiber cloth (that I carry with me anyway) make the best “wrist rest”. My writing speed immediately amped up, and I’m much happier with the results as well. Give it a try next time you’re writing on a screen – the added bonus is it also cleans the screen rather than smudges it while you move your wrist around!

Hiding your Apple Watch in Plain Sight

/Technology

So, you’ve got a fancy Apple Watch, but sometimes don’t want to show it off. Maybe you’re going to a part of town where your watch might make you a target for crime, or maybe you want to customize your watch without permanently changing it, or maybe you just like to throw people off. Well have no fear – I have the answer.

This is my Apple Watch, it’s pretty normal in all regards. I purchased it the night it was available for order, with the black sport band. Since then I’ve upgraded the band (well, honestly I’ve bought a few bands…) and wear it daily. I’m happy with it.

42mm Apple Watch with Link Bracelet

Anyone who knows about the Apple Watch knows that they aren’t exactly cheap. Unfortunately criminals know about this too, and without something like Activation Lock (Which is coming, but not here yet), wearing this particular watch could make you a pretty appealing target. But from a distance, it looks a lot less expensive dressed up like this…

Jony Ive’s nightmares look like this…

What have I done to my beautiful Apple Watch?!? Well, actually nothing that can’t be undone. First, I picked up a set of bumper cases off Amazon for about $14. They included 5 colors, and are easy to slip on and off as needed

Next I bought what I can only classify as the world’s cheapest “leather” band from eBay. I think I paid around $14 again, and it came with the adapter I’d need to attach it to the Apple Watch (A handy thing to have if you have other watch bands of higher quality you might want to use). So for $30 or so, I had my Apple Watch’s disguise.

Why would you take a $1,000 investment and make it look like some goofy oversized toy with a questionable leather band? Well as I noted, camouflage is one reason. Also the bumper cases by themselves can add some protection if you’re going to be doing something that might cause damage to the watch case. Moving boxes around tight doorways comes to mind. They’re also nice for accessorizing – Delta State’s colors are Green and Black, so I’ll put the green bumper on for “Go Green” Fridays (With a nicer black band). In the end, maybe you just want to mess with people (or avoid having people ask to play with your watch). Whatever the reason, you too can hide your Apple Watch in plain sight!

 

The Immortal Royal Organizer

/Technology

Gather round for this history lesson, youngsters, as I tell you about this bad boy – the Royal DM2070 Organizer

(That’s right, it had a flip cover)

As best as I can remember, I bought this thing sometime in 1999 for around $30. This was a time long before smartphones, when the best PDAs around were still quite expensive. I was a broke high school kid who had data to store, and this bad boy fit the bill.

What did I have to store? Funny you should ask. In 1999 Karey & I started dating, and we ran into a weird problem that also seems prehistoric today: the prohibitivly high cost of voice contact. While we could chat through our dialup internet connections, no good voice solution existed – especially at the speeds we both had. So I spent a lot of money on pre-paid phone cards to avoid the anger of my dad (upon reviewing the phone bill). I also found places online to get pre-paid cards via email, and at the end of the day had a list of PIN codes that would give me 10-30 minutes of talk time.

As you can probably guess, teenagers talk a lot more than 30 minutes at a time, so I had a lot of codes to keep track of – which ones I’d used, which ones I hadn’t. I printed them out briefly, but began to weary of all the paper I had lying around. So I bought this thing and used it’s “memo” feature to put in the lists of codes (which was easy given the numeric keypad). I did this for a few months until I found a flat-rate long distance service in 2000 that let me pay only $80 a month for unlimited long distance. Ah the expense of romance before Skype and Broadband!

I found the Royal organizer yesterday while cleaning, and decided to see if it still powered on. And yes, after 16 years, it not only powered on, but it had the correct date! Time was off a bit, but the date was spot on. Goes to show – just because you’re old, doesn’t mean you’re out of the game!