Around the Internet
How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense and 6+ peer-review papers and finishes by 5:30. One of the best and worst things about being in a PhD program is that it is opened: it can take as long as you want it. Though being at a world class research university like MIT or Cornell is certainly a wonderful experience, I’m not at the point in the life where I want to spend more than a few years in one place. I want to do good work, do it in a focused manner without killing myself and hopefully have a life and get done in a reasonable amount of time.
Thrust, Drag and the 10x Effect Managing your time goes hand in hand with managing your energy and your activities. In the software world there’s a claim that the best engineers are often ten times as productive as mediocre ones. This article aims to give you some tools to help you on your way toward being ten times as productive.
Why Emacs? I make no secret of the fact that I think Emacs is the best text-editing environment on the planet. This post gives a very straightforward but informative introduction to the question of “Why Emacs?”
Video
Derek Sivers’ Speech to Berklee College of Music I have a tremendous amount of admiration for Derek Sivers. While this speech is geared towards music majors, most of his lessons and advice can be generalized to your profession and life in general. There’s a lot of wisdom packed into a few minutes.
Software
Readability is an awesome tool in the fight for a reading-focused, cleanly designed web experience. They started as a browser plugin that strips a page of unnecessary clutter and presents just the text in a clean, visually pleasing format. They’ve released upped their game with a payment model for publishers, a rich web application and a review-pending iOS app. If you read a lot on the web you probably want Readability in your toolbar.
