Have a short (1-4 hour) class/tutorial to give? Want your students to learn tons and rave about the class? Want them to teach you and stay engaged in the topic moving forward?
Here are a few tips I’ve picked up from running mini-classes in academic and professional settings:
- Listen to the room
- Build skills through lessons
- Let them get their hands dirty
- Do the boring stuff in advance
- Follow up with homeworks
These are mostly related to programming-type topics (see here and here from some examples), but I’ll bet the ideas are broadly applicable. Hopefully you can share some of your experiences as either a student or teacher in the comments!
Click to continue →
“Do you mind if I plug in for a sec?”
“Seriously? Only one plug in this room?!”
“Damn, I have to go buy another adapter”
Anyone who travels and uses electronics has said these phrases more than once. I say them less often since I started travelling with a power strip. Just a little one, but it does the trick and helps in 3 ways:
- Creates values in airports in cafes
- Simplifies the hotel-room hunt
- Lets you take one adapter aborad
Click to continue →
One way consultants add value by being “insightful,” but what does that really mean? What’s more, if you aren’t “insightful” already, how do you improve?
I’ve been thinking about this lately and distilled 4 ways to push your thinking and get more insightful.
- Change your shoes
- Find parallels to things you know
- Ask ‘how’ and ‘why’ to dig deep
- Get super specific
Click to continue →
Who knew I spent so much time staring at walls… I now use that time to read articles, papers, reports, and more! Instapaper helped me find HOURS per week in my already jam-packed that I can spend reading.
Instapaper is a “read later” service that has changed my life. It allows you to easily capture content from multiple sources and store it in the cloud so you can consume it at your leisure.
Simply click, “read later” across Instapaper’s many incarnations and the service comes through the internet to capture text and images from an article. That content is now available to read whenever and wherever you have some free-time.
It’s a ubiquitous and beautiful reading experience that I never knew I needed.
- You’ll find new time in your day
- It goes where you go
Read on to find out more, and check it out at instapaper.com.
Click to continue →
Excel is the go-to tool for business calculations. Simple or complex, weeks of work or merely minutes, you’ll use Excel eventually. As with any tool, knowing a few tricks can transform the output from a clunky mess to a useful, beautiful creation. 
- Learn before you hack
- Make it pretty
- Document everything
These three hints apply to lots of life’s endeavors,
but let’s talk about how they apply to Excel.
Click to continue →
…or, “how I consistently defeat fruit fly armies”
I came home from a weekend trip to Atlanta to find my apartment swarming with fruit flies. Luckily, I’ve done battle with these little bastards before… (I keep fresh fruit and don’t spend much time at home) By the next morning all the fruit flies were gone. Here’s how I did it.
- Build the trap
- Hide the prize
Click to continue →
You’re scouring the internet for data to prove your point…
After hours of searching, you finally found it!
One problem – it’s a chart in a pdf…
Charts are better than nothing, but you really want to have the numbers in Excel or Matlab so you can do analysis and get big insights (or at least make a nicer-looking chart).
The answer is Plot Digitizer
Click to continue →
I spend lots of time making PowerPoint slides. To get my life back, I learned to make them very quickly.
Shortcuts, macros, and toolbars all speed up the brainless parts of slide-making. Here’s the 5 that everyone should know and use… They’ll get you 80% of the way there with minimal effort. If you want more, just ask. I’ve got a million of these!
The Tao of keyboard shortucts
Before I tell you my secrets, I want to to appreciate them! Here is the basic philosophy for getting the most out of shortcuts:
They don’t work if you don’t use them – learning them without using them is a waste!
Learning them is an investment – and it pays huge dividends in time saved later on.
Don’t touch your mouse – think as it of a game, practice makes you faster.
Bonus: on-lookers will be impressed and terrified by your skills, and you’ll and save your wrists by becoming a key-ninja (mixed metaphor with the whole Tao thing, I know)
Click to continue →
I made a new-years resolution this year: quit going to the gym.
Instead, I brought the gym into my apartment and re-vamped my workout so that I can take it anywhere. I’ll outline a workout strategy to get a kickass workout in 15 minutes with or without gear.
Basically: Use your whole body, work where you sleep, and do it hard.
Click to continue →
Being a consultant is not like being James Bond… but I pretend it is! When I find out I’ve got two hours to make the red-eye to Bucharest, I order another beer before I head out – I know packing will take 10 minutes, tops.
These are a few tips, tricks, and time-savers that I’ve learned that have made packing an afterthought instead of a project…
Click to continue →
Recent Comments