When breaks are more productive

Summary

I tried a simple approach to doing a udacity course - do them in breaks of 5-10 minutes while doing your obligatory work. Over a period of three days, I had finished 10 units, effortlessly. Total time taken - 3 hours and 30 minutes

But watching the videos is not all there is to learning, which is why I was very careful with the notes.

 

That little experiment

One or the other thing kept pulling me away from doing the courses. It's hard to be committed to something voluntarily unless your life depends on it. Interest can sure get you started, but in love, life and passion - plain commitment matters more than your zeal. (I'm sure Dravid would agree and Prof. Gautum Kaul would utter such a statement)

The stopwatch helped me keep track of break time and the activity tracker was very useful for logging total time.

Improvising, and not waiting for the perfect time, I decided to do a little experiment. I'd study my obligatory subjects and in between them, I'd pick up a subject which is pretty easy to grasp.

The plan was to spend 5-10 minutes watching the videos of that course and taking notes. All breaks should go in such a manner. Udacity courses came in handy because they have videos that range from 30 seconds - 3 minutes.

The results were very uplifting. Over a course of three days, for the cumulative time of 3 hours and 30 minutes, I had finished ten units of the course.

Before we get down to notes, here's why you are uncool if you think they're uncool

The college I study in actually takes into consideration attendance in classes. I was doing a course under the current dean, Prof. LS Ganesh. He rarely took any attendance. He didn't think it correlated with learning. Pretty radical approach in India.

You'd think he was very liberal, for the sake of being liberal. No. He, in earlier times, checked each student's notes to give him an honest feedback. This was not for the sake of being an off the rocker disciplinarian, but for reminding students that the notes you take - either now or in boardroom meetings later on in life - are the things that are left with you after the event is done.

How good those notes are depend on the clarity of your thinking. CLARITY of mind. Now THAT is something to aim for.

I have shared the images of the notes here, to do a bit of an analysis:

This introductory unit went around a lot of concepts AND changed a lot of frames. It wasn't the discussion of one situation, but three different situations. I did not want to keep track of them in my head.

I noted them down alright, but see the second line - that is the sequence of events jotted down from memory. The amount of processing that is required: recollecting, elucidating and becoming aware of gaps in our thinking, we get to learn. (Gaps in my thinking - marked with a checkbox)

There are a lot of people out there, who go through their learning material assimilating something by chance and creating chaos rather than benign confusion. That's not the way to learn. WHY? You'll do something more if you enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a confused state of mind.

This is from one of the more involved units. It requires the assimilation of a problem and simplifying it to a procedure.

You can clearly see that I am not a big fan of copying verbatim notes. I am actually jotting down my own thoughts to ponder later. Plus, annotation is the order of the day. Look at the arrows.

You will also find a note at the top that I should attempt questions - whether illustrations or exercises before they are given. That attitude gets noted down here. We all develop attitudes while learning. Becoming conscious of them is what will allow us to practice them.

Passively going through some process and actively chasing standards - these two are very different things. You make a choice.

Updates I - Gaining Traction

Devavrat is still answering his exams.

Dharav has moved on to Scott Young's Bootcamp and finishing up his obligations for the week. Semester coming to an end at University.

Jinish and Dharav have moved up with 100% on 6.002x and targetting 6.00x right now.

Sucheta and Dharav have worked some timny bit on their proposed CS253 project, interfacing Wiki with Google Translator Toolkit. Sucheta has already gotten in touch with people from the Wikimedia community.

And there are a lot of conversations happening amongst each other.

Jinish is doing 6.00X with his 15 year old sister!

MOOCs and the Rise of the School of Four

Being ambitious about learning a variety of subjects and having the opportunity to do so in 2012, I enrolled in several free online courses (MOOCs). I found thousands of people like myself here. Udacity and Coursera (and now edX) are like oases for the lifelong learners and knowledge seekers. Free, high quality education that can be accessed from anywhere! Unlike traditional courses, there isn't one definite classroom or college where people can gather, find friends and study together. Instead, the world is one global classroom!

People from almost every country are enrolled in these courses. There is a lot of hustle-bustle within the discussion forums on the course sites, where peers can share their ideas related to the course and solve one another's doubts. But facebook turns out to be the best place to connect with your peers since almost everyone taking online courses is on facebook and it is by design a place to socialize. Almost every course has a facebook group. People taking the same courses socialize with their classmates from all over the world on facebook. Besides the course-specific groups, there are some more general groups like OpenEducation, CompScisters, CompSciblings and STEM MOOC Hangout.

Design for the CompScisters Group

Owing to this global excitement, new networks of people have begun forming. People taking MOOCs not only receive world-class education for free but also get to experience the borderless global village that the world is becoming. Where ideas and emotions are upheld over nationality, race and age. Its the beginning of a new era where free global education unites people from all over the world.

But all is not well in the world of MOOCs. A major bulk of the students who enroll in the MOOCs do not complete the courses. The main reason must be that these courses are free. So the registrations are done more out of curiosity than with a determination and planning of pursuing till the end . Even then, the absolute number of students who are genuinely interested in learning and completing the courses is also huge. Why then do such students also face problems in completing the courses? Over-enrollment can be one reason. Since many courses offered by Coursera and edX follow a schedule, students cannot handle more than a certain number of courses at once. Currently, the number of active courses are around 30 from Coursera and 7 from edX. And inspite of the courses at Udacity are self-paced and always available, people are unable to complete them as they are busy meeting the deadlines of the courses from Coursera and edX. They think of completing the Udacity courses once they get a break from the courses with deadlines. As can be expected, the number of pending courses keeps rising and the joy of learning is quickly replaced by anxiety of not having enough time to complete them all.

This is a case of greed, bad time management and setting of unrealistic goals by enrolling in too many courses. On the contrary, if one takes too few courses, one might miss out the good ones that could have been pursued with just a little improvement in one's time management skills. The solution is to choose and pursue an optimum set of courses according to your interest and time availability. With the common goal of bringing in sanity to this endeavor of MOOC learning in which a lot of people all over the world are investing a lot of time, energy and aspirations, we formed the School of Four.

Dharav has a lot of effective ideas about productivity, time-management and good habit formation by design rather than force. He is greatly inspired by David Allen (Getting Things Done). He has already tested many techniques on his own learning before- use of speed reading, mindmaps for taking notes, making lists of things to do and gamifying the tasks by setting short term goals and giving points as per his performance on those tasks. He keeps telling us that "some things are easier done than imagined" and so, we should use simple and effective tactics that help us to accomplish things. We often spend a lot of time just planning or worrying about things, while once we start doing them, they can be accomplished quickly! Breaking the bigger tasks into smaller, manageable chunks and setting appropriate due dates for them can be very effective.


The following are the major things learnt from Dharav at the School of Four that I have recently adopted:

1) 'Getting Things Done' using Trello
You are anxious- there are so many things to accomplish! With numerous things on your mind, it becomes difficult to focus on one task and do well in it. This only leads to piling up of more pending tasks and increasing anxiety. That's because you are not keeping enough room in your mind to actually do the work. Clear your mind by listing down all the things that you need to do. For this, we are using Trello, a free online tool that is great for the planning and tracking of tasks- whether personal or collaborative. For a more comprehensive coverage on the utility of Trello, check out Dharav's post (coming soon)

2) Superbetter's Resilience Buildup
There's a complete game-like tool Superbetter developed by Jane McGonigal, which helps us to achieve any personal goal by increasing our personal resilience which is of four types- Physical, Mental, Emotional and Social. I'm not using the complete interface currently, but employing the tips for resilience building.

3) Scott Young's Timelogging
I use a diary to log down the time whenever I start a new activity. I can go back to it at the end of the day and see how much time I spent on worthwhile activities and how much got wasted. This information is very crucial in setting of tasks based on the times when one is most productive, and can indicate if a particular habit needs to be corrected. More on this later.

4) Shawn Achor's Happiness Advantage
Are you doing what you love? If yes, then you are on the right track, and instead of worrying about the huge amount of work to be accomplished, focus on enjoying it. Using the above techniques, its very simple to set clear and manageable goals, maintain your resilience, watch where you are wasting time and where you should be giving more time and enjoy what you are doing!

The first reality check and the way forward

Background

Sebastian Thrun - The man behind Udacity

It all started on the day when the two of us, Jinish and I, started doing Udacity's CS101 together. The day of the final exam was a particularly memorable one, because it Started with Jinish answering the exam and attempting it in half. After that, it was me who picked up the Baton from there, after which Jinish joined me again (although he had already made up his mind that this much experience was sufficient.) and we went on to work for 11 hours straight on the exam. Discussing, but NOT sharing code.

It was a fun beginning to a lot of amazing things, that COULD have happened. But didn't.

Here's the reality check.

Dharav

Don't believe such teenage crap.

One thing I know for sure is that actually doing the work is much much simpler than what your mind makes it out to be. (This long series of post is a product of that belief!) But there are other problems.

As I have explained on a separate blog-post (which is actually a spin-off from my reality check), we tend to view life as a series of deadlines (if you don't, it's debatable whether you do anything worthwhile), rather than viewing them as a landscape of things and choices - a game in which we make choices to do the things which we love the most and enjoy the most, while maintaining our life.

THAT is the problem. I have done several units of a lot of courses, completing none. WHY? Because there has been one or the other commitment that HAD to be dealt with. I was not playing the game of life. I was not living it. Merely letting my life pass me by.

David Allen's GTD system saves lives.

I have done a lot of good work, but it has never fetched any results, because the work done has to move upward through a series of events and people to get ground level results. That requires not just a landscape of the battlefield, but also a battle ready soldier who knows where to attack with the sword of his skills.

I was not battle ready. Worse, I kept pushing off the one thing (David Allen's GTD) that could give me that control over my days, waiting for a perfect moment to be in steady state, as if it'll come tomorrow instead of someday else!

Jinish

"Projectile motion, Shawn, not the football!"

It's amazing how much work can this guy gets done DESPITE his penchant for distractions and a mind that swivels faster than a Radar.

Most of his work gets done spontaneously. And he somehow manages to get interesting work done when he HAS to do it - for example - a 6.002x deadline or an event together.

Troubleshooting Google App Engine on FB!

He is consistently involved in and thinking about the things he has learnt, but he suffers from the lack of upward mobility more than me!

There's one more subtle soft issue here - belief in discipline. One day or the other, it'll come. For me the belief in discipline has come because I know that without it I would never be able to do anythings that I have to do. With him, it would be perhaps even more organic - he'll get involved in doing things and the other undisciplined stuff will just slough off. Just like that. On it's own!

Selecting the courses

Dharav - 6002X, 600X, CS253, CS50, PGM, SaaS, ML, Social Network Analysis, Tissue Engineering, Metabolic Regulation.

TOO MANY courses? No, I'll find a steady state and a way out. I have spent 6 months just being haphazard. I know what doesn't work, and an idea of what works and the calm confidence to make it work.

Jinish - 6002X, CS253, CS50, CS373 - and some other.

What do you get from this Blogpost?

1. You could take a look at your own days and see if you are doing all the things that you want to do!
2. Take a look at the blogposts and wiki on Getting Things Done, to find a skill to maintain your life
3. Think about discipline and find some more sources. Think how you will become disciplined - will you force it on yourself or will you get sucked into it because of passion?
4. Use Facebook from something other than either gawking at girls or letting guys gawk at you. (Most of our friends are well, college students, so this is a justified remark.)

Learning: Distractions and Addictions

One picture is worth a thousand words

Yes, editing this pic still remains!

This picture says it all. And it is universal.

That blissful state of learning something new is addictive, it is empowering. (Most college students, unfortunately, have no idea of this state of life.) Why then, have the four of us not done awesome things in the last six months that we have known MOOCs?

Distractions. We go through them, they keep us away from that addictive state, and that addictive state does not build up. It does not let the addiction overpower the distractions and sedentary states, which in turn keeps the addiction controlled.

It's a textbook negative feedback loop, one that keeps a system stable. Except that in this case, it is keeping the system in a state that is undesirable!

Our story is no different from the story of the human race.

Distractions, Anxiety and Boredom

We, all of us, want to get a lot of things done. We want to do them. We really want to do them. We wake up in the morning and we don't even realize that it's afternoon already. We sit down and try to get something done, but we get distracted.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

By night time, we want to sleep and start over again, in hope that all's not lost, that there's another tomorrow. We don't remind ourselves that we have no plan for making tomorrow different than today.

All the while we tell lies to ourselves that time wasted enjoying is not time wasted, paying no heed to the fact that a life wasted in waiting for tomorrows is indeed a life wasted.

We really want to be addicted to the courses. There's no need of "want.". One eventually does get addicted to learning, partly because learning is part of living. 

We often walk through our days unaware and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: during much of the day we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, while during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

The key, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is to challenge ourselves with tasks requiring a high degree of skill and commitment. It's more than just procrastination in learning. It is the story of our lives.

There's one thing that bothers me though. Passive boredom these days does not happen so much. It results into greater distractions. All you have to do is log on to Facebook and plug into the plethora of posts that seek your attention. Just to keep it. To Hijack it, with your own willingness, so that you may not be able to do anything good with it.

So that you are no longer able to face your own lack of management skills and control over life. So that no matter how much of a rebel you are, you are unable to do anything except accept the status quo of today, finding false hope in a tomorrow where you will do 15 courses, or exercise to your heart's desire or practice cricket from Dusk to Dawn.

The answers

Imagining living in a Nazi concentration camp in your head might not lead to such a great sinking feeling that the above two paragraphs that might have caused you.

But you don't have to accept this state of affairs. All you need to do is realize something. Your time slips out from your hand because you don't know it's slipping by. You keep doing things that you kept doing because you have no idea that you have a choice - a choice between being the same as before and saying no to letting time go as you sit down and engage your brain in a focused activity.

Young finished MIT CS in 51 weeks

Yes, you keep doing it because you have no idea you keep doing it. So, the answer becomes simple. There's an anticlimax here. The somewhat ultra-realistic tone of this post will give way to a geeky solution.

The solution lies in Timelogging. Next post is about how we will implement it. We were introduced to timelogging by someone who finished 33 MIT courses in 51 weeks flat.

In the meanwhile, you can (but we insist you do) read about Timelogging here on Scott Young's Blog.

Everyone looks like a geek while doing awesome stuff!

The Two Ted Talks introduced here:

TEDxEastsidePrep - Scott Young - Can you get an MIT education for $2,000?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=piSLobJfZ3c 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs

The time spent on this Blog would pay dividends if....

1. You have understood what we wanted to say about our daily life patterns
2. You have watched Scott Young's video and wondered if a Business Student can do this then why can't a Science student do it?
3. You will mull over Prof. Mihaly's work on Flow, Optimal experience and Creativity
4. Most importantly, you have found the importance of timelogging.

Friends at School of Four - One

Introduction

The four of us have bumped into each other on the subject of doing awesome courses at some point of time or the other. It's all a simple matter of doing courses and having fun!

"Nice to meet you", she says

But then, education is also about the future. So what if most of us don't think about the future to knowingly avoid the painful reality? It's not just us, it's also our friends who will benefit from School of Four.

And we'll be more responsible when it comes to execution

Welcome
Who you see on the side is Dhara! (say Hello!)

Jinish and I know her because Daman's such a small place that you know everybody else! When we got to know that she'll be preparing for college entrances for a whole year from Home, well, I thought she could benefit from the work here, without having the hassles of doing all the uncertain experiments and performing them on us. (Note: Insert link to experiments when I put them up!)

It started with a Private Trello Board for her, but then we revamped School of Four's Trello and I made her Trello board a part of our "organization". (That's the way Trello puts it.)

What's the plan?

First year in medicine, proud Doctor!

So, here are the facts. Her goal is to prepare for the NEET exam to get into an MBBS (Medical) course in India. But since she's already done a year of medicine in China (and also the fact that despite her wishful thinking, she's already in her 20s), she also wants to do a few medicine courses by the side.

As you can see from the picture, it's clear that she likes to have fun. Sincerity without serious, droopy mouths. That also tells you that courses are not boring, doing them in college makes them boring.


She'll be doing her studies, we'll help her manage stuff, so her job's to do things and leave the thinking and careful planning to the four Devil's Advocates!

"Salsa can make you look good in your jeans.
Don't forget, correlation does not imply causation!

And driving. And Salsa. Because Life's what happens while you're busy making other plans. (Although the alternative is to say that life's what happens while you're busy making your excuses!).


This will be interesting. EVERYONE thinks Salsa is glamorous, and fun, and romantic. It's only the people who actually try it out who know that it is everything you think it to be, but before that it is a painful, discipline demanding exercise!


Current Status
It's NOT complicated.

She's doing whatever she finds interesting at the moment. There are a few online courses suitable for her, from Benchprep and Grockit. We haven't yet talked about OCW and Coursera, but those should be doable!

Installation of software - from Mindjet to Flashcards - all of that is remaining! We shall be done with it soon, though.

How it'll help us ourselves
Introducing her to Mindjet and Mindmapping will require some effort on our part too! And we can't talk off the top of our head kind of advice! It has to be workable, usable information that gets results for her. I am getting a feeling that the small tutorials we create will end up being useful for everyone who visits the School of Four Blog in the times to come.

Kicking the dirt off the turf

Photographs, Introductions, off the top of our head
"It doesn't matter who we are, what matters are our plans!"



Sucheta

---

FOSS and Wikipedia. Loves to do a lot of stuff. Loves to feel the power that one learner has right now. Excited about integrating Google Translator Toolkit in a mediawiki extension via  Github projects. That is what SaaS is for. And CS253.

Dharav

---

There are a lot of possibilities with interdisciplinary things. Web Applications, UI, Mathematics, Social Network Analysis, all the stuff that's needed to understand the things we read in Newspapers are here! Journey started with Jinish doing CS101 together. The trouble is that we have done only cs101 till now.

Web Apps, applications of CS101 + CS253 and all of that. It's all needed!

Jinish

---

No plans to get a mediocre lifestyle just to survive. Might as well head to Himachal Pradesh after being a Sanyasi. Currently spending times being distracted beautifully, focussing on 6002x, and cricket. Biggest curiosity is what happens after compilation. Not just as an answer, but to things we can understand in our computer after that. Likes coding but not interested in Software engineering, is equally interested in fundamental sciences and classical curricullum - differential equations and all of that.

Devavrat

---

Has diverse interests in the fields of music, photography, graphics, science, mathematics, computers, internet, cinema, education, literature, travel and society. Learning from a variety of MOOCs now- and trying to figure out ways of earning money from doing the things he loves! Currently focusing on managing multiple tasks and learning new productivity skills in the School of Four with a lot of motivation from Dharav.

 


The story so far
Distractions by the dozen

The Development in the last few days
Trello, Scott Young, and Mindjet, Shawn Achor
Fitting in the context
Compscisters and so on

Work ahead
Another Blogpost.
Focussing on a course, finding out what we want to do. Maintaining blogs. Learning techniques. And having incubatees who will find some good help in us.