First analysis

I'm still not sitting on a vast pile of data, but I've done my first bit on analysis on my log file data, and it mostly showed me what I was expecting. I had put the link to upload resources on a page that I thought was rarely visited. My analysis shows that this page is in fact visited 3% as often as the other page I could have put the upload link on.

Compass, the Curriculum Management System/Virtual Learning Environment that I'm adding these social tools into, is built around two main objects: the Teaching Activity and the Learning Objective. It is a searchable database of those two things, and the linkages between them - around 2,000 of each are in the database. It also holds learning resources, provided by the teachers, which are linked to the Teaching Activities. Part of the idea behind my project was to add prominence to the Learning Objectives, by linking the student resources to them.

The problem was that I did the logical thing, by adding the "upload resource" button onto the Learning Objective pages. The students currently have no need to visit these pages, since the key parts of the Learning Objectives are displayed on the page of the Teaching Activities they are linked to. The predictable result was that almost no students discovered the Add Resource button. In fact, it was predictable enough that I pointed it out as the second requirement for a successful social network for learning in my first post on this blog. Oops.

I've now finished most of the coding to add the tools onto a range of more high-profile web pages within Compass. The coming weeks will show whether that makes any difference. In the longer term, I'll be adding even higher profile links, such as an Activity Stream of the latest uploaded resources on the portal page for the web site. I'm expecting each new tool will add to the amount of utilization my network receives.

Data!

Things are starting to get a little bit interesting - I've finally got some data! Not a lot - in fact very little - but it's better than where I was a few weeks back, when I launched my software to deafening silence.

My social network now contains three posts, and two students have sent through feedback. Still disappointing, but to be expected. I'm now working towards the release of phase two of the software, which I plan to roll out this coming Friday. It contains a few bugfixes and cleanups, but mainly it's making the social tools visible in more places across the site, to encourage participation. I would have liked to have put more changes into this upcoming release, or to have released it sooner, but I've had about six weeks of illness - depression, stomach bugs, and now a cold - which have deep sixed by productivity. But overall, things are looking up.

Productivity

I've been working on productivity a lot this year - step by step, incremental improvements to the way I run my life, with the aim of becoming more productive. I've been actually considering setting up a separate blog about it - it's been a big thing for me this year. Over the last few years - since starting my PhD, and even before that, I've been trying to work out ways around my laziness and torpor. I'm not one of those people who feel a natural urge to be doing productive things all the time - I'm happiest in front of a TV and computer, playing games, reading, and/or watching comedies and shonky horror films. Planning has never been my forte, nor has systematically working towards a goal.

This all needs to change. After various experiments over the years, I've found some things that work:

1. Remember The Milk. It's just a to-do list, really, but it's got a number of features that make it more effective than any other to-do list I've used. It was good web and mobile clients, so it's everywhere I am. It lets me set dates and categorize things. So, everything in my to-do list is set to happen at a certain time, so each day, I know I can't really rest until I've done everything I need to. I'm using it for work, study, and in my personal life, and in all three, I feel my productivity has significantly increased.
2. Weekly PhD planning - each week, I schedule what work I need to do each day - whether it's software development, reading, data analysis, etc. I set a minimum standard for what comprises a successfully completed task. This means I no longer have the luxury of thinking "hmmm, PhD night or TV night?" when I've put the kids to bed and dealt with everything - if there's something on my list, it needs to be done. Remember the Milk is where this to-do list lives.
3. "Leads to follow up" - a PhD involves gathering vast amounts of information about a subject area, and trying to ingest it. You're learning a huge pile of new skills and concepts. Every day, you hear about new things that you ought to look into to see if they're relevant. Early on, I would try to remember them, and hope they didn't slip away. I didn't remember, and they did slip away. My solution is Evernote - a folder called "Leads to follow up" contains anything that might be important. Also, a repeating task in RTM to follow up a lead every few days. Currently there are 70 items sitting in my leads to follow up notebook, and 41 in my "Leads - followed" list. It's really handy, and also helps prevent distraction - if I find something useful thread of info while working on something else, I can just pop it into the Leads notebook, and get back to what I'm doing.
4. Evernote in general - I set up my Evernote account a couple of years ago, but I'm finding it more and more useful as I go along. Recently I started using the "todo" system in there - If I make a note that requires a followup action, I put that little checkbox in there. I can then run a search, for "todo:false", and find all the things in evernote that need doing, and follow up on them. Fantastic for ensuring I do things I've promised in meetings.
5. Triaging. I schedule in several sessions each week, to make sure things are in the right lists. The "leads to follow up" notebook is one example, but there are more - I schedule in a weekly session of searching through evernote for todos, and put them into RTM, so they get done. I also go through my email, to move things into RTM and other places.

That's where I'm at now, but after years of failed efforts to improve productivity,  I now have some velocity, and want to keep improving. The aim is to get to a point where

• The things I say I'll do, I actually get done
• I don't have a backlog of things that are overdue, but instead am tackling things in advance
• When I'm not working on things on my list, I don't feel guilty about that nebulous pile of stuff to do

That last one was a doozy in my undergrad degree - during those years, I always felt bad when I wasn't studying. It wasn't until three or four years after I graduated that I read a fiction book, so ingrained was that feeling that I ought to be working on something serious. I wasn't productive at all; I just spent all my time feeling bad about it, and not properly enjoying my leisure time. This time around, I'm changing things.

There are a bunch of next steps in this. Firstly, some longer term planning, especially around the PhD. Currently I'm only planning out each week. I've got a few tasks set to recur after four weeks or six weeks, but the bulk of my planning is short term. I'll be putting together a multi-month plan, probably through to the end of the year, so I can see where I'm going, and give some larger structure to my work. I want to play around with the pomodoro technique - especially once I start writing. I've heard good reports from many smart, productive people. I need to find a way to get a big picture of my literature review - mind mapping, maybe? Mind maps irritate the hell out of me, but I need to find some way of getting that high-level view and drilling down. There's a lot more room for improvement, but the great thing is that I'm making progress.