Using Tags to Organize Your Documents

Using a computer for our work and in our everyday life we generate a lot of digital material, which all gets stored on our computer’s hard disk. The ordinary way of doing this is by using a nested folder structure. But is that the only way to organize things?

In my documents folder I usually have a few main categories like ‘Projects’ or ‘Administration’, in which a whole tree structure of folders resides. The ‘Projects’ folder contains a folder for every year and in those folders I put a folder for each project.

There are always folders I use more than others, and most of the time I make a shortcut to those folders (in the OS X Finder ’sidebar’ for instance) so I don’t have to browse through the whole structure to find and open the document I want. But as I’m working on quite a lot of different things at the same time, those ‘favorite’ folders change often so I have to keep those shortcuts up to date manually. [Read more]

A New Year of Learning: Resolutions

Last in this series about starting a new year of learning it’s time for some final thoughts. The beginning of a new year is a good moment to have a look what we would like to improve in our habits in order to learn better.

We all have our own weaknesses, those things we know we could improve but we just don’t have the discipline, or we simply don’t know how. It’s easy to just say “Well, that’s the way I am, I’ll have to live with it”, but wouldn’t it be better to just face our weakness and see a challenge in it, an opportunity to change things?

Maybe you want to stop coming late all the time, or hand in your assignments on time. Maybe you want to be more focused, to absorb more of the information given to you. I’ll have a look at a four resolutions that are important to me: [Read more]

A New Computer: Laptop or Desktop?

We’ve looked at which planner would be right for us, and what is the best way to take notes. We’ve done our research, now it’s time to start working! And another question a lot of students ask at the start of the year is what kind of computer would be best for them to buy.

What are you going to do with it?

The most important question to determine what’s the right computer for you is: What are you going to do with it? If you’re using your computer mainly for internet related things, like checking your email, browsing the web, blogging, using social networks and using Web 2.0 applications like Google Docs or if you use it mainly for writing articles, papers and collecting and organizing research material (using DEVONthink Pro for instance), you don’t need the most powerful computer out there. And if you’re planning to buy a laptop, a Macbook will be just fine. [Read more]

A New Year of Learning: How to Take Notes?

You might think it’s ridiculous to spend your holiday thinking about how you’re going to take notes the coming year. When the year is over though, you will be glad you did, when you have all the notes you took together so it will be easy to find the information on that specific topic you wrote about in january.

During the year a great amount of information will be fired at you, and it will be way too much for you to remember. It will probably also be way too much for you to write down, so it’s important to capture the essentials.

Don’t let those precious words escape

As a student I had a ring binder with tabs for each class. I used this binder for a year and the next year I bought a new one, fresh paper and tabs to start over. Looking back at the things I wrote down at that time it’s amazing to see how much information got lost. Some lessons are almost gone, just a few words remain but I don’t remember a thing of what’s been said. [Read more]

A New Year of Learning: Which Planner?

A well prepared student knows at what time which lesson starts in which room. It’s not only a good thing to be in the right place at the right moment, it’s also good to be prepared for what’s going to happen. To bring the right materials and notes from the week before.

But that’s only one reason to have a good planner. Another one of course is to write down all assignments and their deadlines. It sounds so simple, but I’m amazed by the amount of students who neglect to write down this kind of useful information and then ask their teacher later on “Oh, what was it we had to do this week?”. They’re not leaving a good impression.

Flexibility is key

One very important feature of a planner should be the possibility to input data in every possible situation. We need to be able to get an appointment, reminder or deadline into the system immediately without having to remember to write it down or to write it on a piece of paper and put it on the calendar when we’re at our computer. So the work you do and the situation we’re in might influence our choice. It’s best to find our own favorite tool and adjust it to fit our needs if necessary. [Read more]

A New Year of Learning: Preparations

While summer holidays and traveling can be a very educational experience, the inspiration to write about it is more present during the period the real learning takes place and lessons are being taught. Now things are starting up again, Streamlined Mind gets a little check up (you know, checking her oil level, tire pressure) and now seems ready for a new year of productive learning!

Before we start off, a big thank you to Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, the President of DEVONtechnologies for linking to my post Would a Paperless Life Make You Happy? on his blog The Balcony. I love their products, DEVONthink in particular! [Read more]

Say Thank You and Make Someone Smile

In januari we launched the Thank You Project. It comprises small businesscard-size booklets containing removable cards with a short sentence followed by ‘Thank You’. You can give those cards away to someone you like, or just a stranger. Put them in someone’s bag, mailbox, leave them at a restaurant or put them in a book for someone else to find.

This month we launched a new website! Here you can read what the project is about, order freshly printed booklets, postcards and a Thank You stamp. For the really thankful people there is also a complete Thank Pack available, with two booklets, to sets of postcards and a stamp. There are two other new things on the new website: You can choose a postcard, fill in a message and the address of the person you want to send it to and we will write the message by hand on a real postcard and send it off. You can also write your own Thank You sentence, which will appear on the website, and maybe even in a future version of the booklet! [Read more]

Time for a Break

Summerholidays start, graduation parties take place and schools close. A good moment to take some time off and travel to a far and sunny country!

Streamlined Mind will not be updated for the next three weeks. From the end of july I will be back with more interesting subjects to prepare for a new, productive ands streamlined year!

Have a good summer!

10 Things To Do During Presentations

On April 26th I wrote 10 Things to Avoid During Presentations. Following up on that post I would like to look at presenting again, but from a more positive side.

This time the list is not particularly focusing on the content of the slides we’re using but on our appearance and the structure of our presentation. Every situation is different of course. Some presentations are more important than others. Some presenters tend to be very nervous, while others seem very confident. A few things that might help you during a presentation: [Read more]

Popular Posts: First 3 Months of Streamlined Mind

It’s been three months already since the first post here on Streamlined Mind. 28 posts have been written in 19 categories, and already more than 250 spam comments have been caught and deleted. A good moment to look back and see what were the favorite post of the visitors so far!

As the first few articles were written in the very beginning, not a lot of people knew of the existence of Streamlined Mind. But slowly readers started to find their way to the site and I’m very happy to say I received quite some feedback, and all of it was positive. Now here are a few posts that received the most attention: [Read more]

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