Periodic Fable

Monday, 9 March 2009

Have a nap? Or not?

So in America it's National Napping Day.

Apparently a NASA study shows that a few winks after lunch can boost a worker's output by as much as 34 percent.

An afternoon nap 'is good for your heart' reported the BBC two years ago.

Various studies have shown that a "power nap" preserves brain power throughout the day:

Hayahsi, M.; Motoyoshi, N.; Hori, T. (2005). Recuperative power of a short daytime nap with or without stage 2 sleep .Sleep, 1;28(7):829-36.

Mednick, S.l Nakayam, K.; Stockgold, R. (2003). Sleep-dependent learning: A nap is as good as a night. Neuroscience, 6(7): 697-698.

Mednick, S. & Stickgold,R. (2002). The restorative effect of naps on perceptual deterioration. Nature Neuroscience. 5 (7): 677-681.

However this week the UK media have recently been reporting that "Taking regular lunchtime siestas could increase the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, according to research."

So what to believe?
Labels: health, lifehack, productivity, wellbeing

posted by Helen Whitehead 5:26 PM

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Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Saving time and managing information flow

Saving time - vital... Here are some of the ways I'm saving time and managing information flow at the moment:
Creating shortcuts on my desktop to my most-used folders - a no-brainer I think. To keep track of multiple projects effectively I like to keep my files in neatly organised folder hierarchies. But then I find myself taking time browsing through layers of folders to find what I want. So I have created shortcuts to the folders I'm using the most at this moment - key project folders, the Camtasia video I'm working on, the course materials I'm developing, etc.

First thing in the morning I log into the VPN if not in the office, then I don't have to interrupt the flow when I need something from the server, and it's easy to store things on the server rather than leaving them on my hard drives.

First thing I also open a Firefox window with several tabs for my most-used web apps - at the moment typically:

My Google calendar
Wrike task and project management
Sugar CRM
Twitter (or Twitterfox or Betwittered in my iGoogle page when they're working!)
The community I am working on today
Any course I am teaching at the moment
Any course I am taking at the moment (currently digifolios.ning.com)
My blog admin pages
The forum I use most - a small supportive community of fellow elearning specialists

I use two computers at the same time when possible, a desktop and a laptop, then if one is doing something slowly, eg, while a backup is running or a Camtasia video is rendering, I can turn to the other.

I keep up with Twitter and RSS feeds on my smartphone in any odd moments - even in the kitchen stirring dinner...

Now I just need to crack my terrible typing - correcting my typos takes up FAR to much time!
Labels: lifehack, organising, project management, time management

posted by Helen Whitehead 9:58 AM

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