This is nerdy…. but worthwhile. Never underestimate how important backups are. Most people never really realize this until it’s too late. I lost six years worth of notebooks and diaries when my little brother accidentally dropped my laptop six years ago. Gone. Forever. I felt like I’d lost part of my soul. Ever since I’ve backed up my important files. At first I backed up onto an external hard-drive. This works, but it’s a bit of a pain in the ass, needing to plug the drive in and manually transfer files.
About two years ago I discovered Mozy, a free downloadable program which automatically backs up your PC/Mac. Now if your Hard Drive dies, your Macbook gets stolen or you get drunk and stupidly delete all your files you don’t need to worry. Using Mozy you can easily restore all your documents and pick up where you left off.
Mozy offers 2GB of free space to store your files online. Use this wisely: there is no point in backing up downloaded movies and music. You can download this stuff again easily and you are better off putting these space intensive files on an external hard drive where 500GB only costs £50.
Instead you should use your free Mozy account to backup mission critical files. I use Mozy to backup my computer code, my documents not yet on Google Docs, my finals notes (back when I was in college) and my Mac settings and passwords. Once you install Mozy you select what you want it to backup and that’s it – you’re done. From that point on Mozy will automatically run every day (without distracting you in any way) and backup all your files.
The beauty of Mozy is that it stores your files online. That way you can access the files anywhere – and should there be a fire in your house destroying your external harddrive, you will still have a backup of your important files available online. Now that’s conscientiousness!
Team members need to be updated with a project’s status frequently. Updates keep everyone motivated knowing things are on track at full speed on your end, and so feel compelled to match your drive, or possibly even beat it. Updates show your team the extend of your work, an important point since often this information is invisible to them, particularly when working in the cloud. Seeing the extent of your work helps them appreciate your input: no one wants to work like a dog and be thought a lazy bum.
At the same time people are busy. Besides your project they may have others they are working on. They may have full time jobs or degrees. They may have, god forbid, real social lives – friends who don’t speak in status updates or tweets; maybe even a love life; or a family. These people actually exist -I’ve even met a few in my travels. They don’t have the time to read lots of detailed emails about your project, so a balance must be found.
I decided on a solution: Inbox Texts – quick emails with the entire message in the subject title. Tiny status updates. Quick to-dos. Readable from IPhone or Blackberry – even if you’re out and about and don’t have time for the cloud.
Take some examples examples from my Bolivian Express project, where I am working with a team of three to set up an English language publication in Bolivian and set up a program whereby people can travel to Bolivia on a short term basis and work with the publication whilst there:
UPDATE: Internet explorer bug fixed (was HUGE)+ Backup system in place + Destroy links “destroyed” + Fixed problem with “edit” page
TO-DO AMARU: Digg our site and walk around the library FORCING people to do it with Facebook connect
UPDATE: Modified site to say program, modified pdf file to say program, cut 10% of basics sheet to fit on one page
Before you say it, no, I shouldn’t have written this entire blog post in the title. This is a blog. Not a project management system. HA.
When I was in college I learned that the most effective way to learn a topic was to summarize it onto a single A4 page. The point of doing so is to reduce the topic down to it’s absolute essentials, recording on the page only the minimal facts necessary to memory. The sheets usually end up crammed with tiny writing and dense definitions but this kind of condensed notes are exactly what you need when revising for an exam – 12 meaty pages is far more manageable than 60 or 70 pages of regular notes when you’ve got an exam the night before.
As a law student turned web professional I’ve got a lot of learning to do: HTML, CSS, SQL, Scripting, Linux, DNS – every day there seems to be more and more buzzwords and languages I need to pick up. Luckily the web programming community has come to the same conclusion about the benefits of cheat sheets. Web professionals frequently make and distribute their own cheat sheets to the world and websites like Devcheatsheet and Cheat-sheets.org aggregate all these cheat sheets from across the web and present them all together in one handy portal.
If you’re serious making it online, I’d recommend you print off a folder worth of these badboys and stuff them into every corner of your life where you might find a spare minute or two. After a few weeks of sneaky cheat sheeting you’ll be amazed by how much you learned and by how much coffee you’ve drank.
Excited? Then take your first step and download a set of html cheat sheets to start seeing how the web around you is constructed.
Forty years ago an authority in applied linguistics, Dr. Paul Pimsleur carried out research in the psychology of language learning. The conclusion of his review of the psychological and linguistic literature, and his own experiments, was the Pimsleur Language Acquisition system, regarded my many (including myself), as the best way to pick up a foreign language. According to the company’s website, the FBI and the CIA feature amongst the company’s many clients.
So how does a Pimsleur course work?
The student listens to a recording on which native speakers speak phrases in both the foreign language and the language used for teaching (usually English). At varying intervals, the student is prompted to repeat a phrase after the speaker finishes it. The student is then introduced to a new phrase and the meaning is explained. After repeating several times, the student is asked to repeat a previous phrase, along with integrating vocabulary from the new one. More new phrases are introduced, while old phrases are prompted at random, so as to aid long term memory.
From the Wikipedia entry on the Pimsleur Method
Pimsleur language learning courses are carefully engineered to make learning a language as easy as possible using five principles Dr. Pimsleur articulated.
1. Pimsleur courses are completely aural.
Pimsleur courses have no written texts supplied as the purpose is to learn to speak and understand conversation within the language rather than reading (which, realistically speaking, is what most of us want anyway). A typical course contains 30 half hour lessons, and each language typically has 3 different courses available, thus totaling a whopping 90 lessons of language learning fun.
2. The Pimselur method doesn’t teach Grammar explicitly
Instead the student is left to infer the grammar from finding common patterns in phrases and constructions repeated over and over. Pimsleur said this inductive method is precisely how native speakers learn grammar when they are children and that it only in schools is it “taught” on the blackboard.
3. Language is taught using review at increasingly long intervals.
Pimsleur’s research indicated that vocabulary was most likely to move into long term memory if it was reviewed using the following schedule: 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days, 25 days, 4 months, 2 years.For example, if a student learns the word deux (French for two), then deux is tested every few seconds in the beginning, then every few minutes, then every few hours, and then every few days. The goal of this spaced recall is to help the student move vocabulary into long-term memory.
4. Vocabulary is taught in order of most frequently used words
Dr. Pimsleur identified the most frequently used words in any particular language and designed his courses to teach. Hisword frequency analyses indicated that a relatively small core vocabulary accounts for the majority of words spoken in any particular language. For example, in English, a set of 2000 words composes about 80% of the total printed words. In other words, an understanding of these 2000 words would lead to approximately an 80% word comprehension rate. The Pimsleur method focuses on teaching these commonly used words in order to lead to a comprehensive understanding of a “core vocabulary”, and thus a basic grip on the language.
5. Active learning, instead of passive repeating
Language courses commonly require a student to repeat a phrase after an instructor. Pimsleur argued that this passive method of learning was ineffective and in it’s place he developed a “challenge and response” technique, where a student was prompted to translate a phrase into the target language (e.g. “How do you say ‘I have a red shirt?’”) which was then confirmed by the native speaking on the tape (“Tengo una camisa roja” ). This technique creates a more active way of learning, requiring the student to think instead of mindlessly repeating. This better reflects real-life situations where you must either recall or construct a phrase quickly.
The Pimsleur system is, as far as I can see, the most comprehensive application of the science of learning to any field ever undertaken. It’s a real shame that a similar effort has not been undertaken in fields outside of language learning, and that the principles inside his courses are not more widely used .
In my next post I hope to share some ideas about how I think these five principles could be applied to other learning challenges, such as a favourite of mine – programming language acquisition.
Stay tuned. Same bat channel. Same bat jokes.
Finish things.
See things through. Forget starting anything else. Forget moving; forget giving up; forget about the grass on the other side.
Stay put. Keep going. Get it right.
Finish things.
