keep on plodding

"What a dull, heavy creature," says the Hare, "is this Tortoise!"

"And yet," says the Tortoise, "I'll run with you for a wager."

"Done," says the Hare, and then they asked the Fox to be the judge.

They started together, and the Tortoise kept jogging on still, till he came to the end of the course.

The Hare laid himself down midway and took a nap; "for," says he, "I can catch up with the Tortoise when I please."

But it seems he overslept himself, for when he came to wake, though he scudded away as fast as possible, the Tortoise had got to the post before him and won the wager.

Slow and Steady wins the race.

In my early uni days, I was a hare. People knew me to be a bright and energetic sort. I found the idea of sitting still to be very dull. I would find myself sleeping in lectures, then "waking" 2 days before a due assignment, and no matter how fast I Sprinted, I couldn't catch the dull Tortoises that had started weeks before.

Introducing the Stride, the steady, unwavering and determined pace that always reaches its destination.

From a quick research trip on Google for hiking, I discovered a concept that sounds perfect, the "hiking rhythm". There's so much information there, but here's what I feel is important:

• When setting out to do something, like an assignment, do so at the easiest pace possible such that you're not really exerting myself. Just as changing gears often while driving isn't fuel economic or even good for the gearbox, you should also avoid studying in bursts when you can't afford to waste the energy. Finding this pace takes practice, so if you have a spare hour, take the opportunity to get familiar with it.
  
• Take a break every hour or so for about 10 minutes. This doesn't mean browsing to a new page with the latest goss or firing up Counter Strike. This means things like having a stretch, grabbing a cookie, anything that puts you back in the real world. We don't want to be tightly focused, we want to be absorbing the fruits of our labour. Again, it's up to you to find out how long you can work before you lose efficiency, and have to rest.
  
• Don't let yourself be interrupted. Yes, you probably do have time for the interruption. But no, you can't afford to lose rhythm once you've got it going.
  

There's another reason for the breaks each hour as well. Think about going into a lecture, which lasts an hour. If you pay attention and understand, at the end of the lecture you'll have a pretty good recollection of what happened. Fast forward 4 weeks. How much do you suppose you'll remember?

Enter the Review.

Plenty of students seem to avoid reviews because it sounds like cramming. It isn't. A review of a one hour lecture doesn't take an hour. People who stop practicing (such as playing golf) for a while, then "forget" how to do it, coming back to it is much easier then learning from the beginning. A review may take only minutes, even seconds.



So, in brief:

• Work diligently and comfortably without interruption.
• Every hour, break away from work and get a grip of reality.
• When you start up again, look over what you were doing before.
  

I was looking around my room today, tidying it up, and made a quick observation: almost everything in my room is arranged such that only a few objects were on top of one other object. Arrangements in that manner looked neat even if the objects themselves weren't "beautiful". Such things as:

• My bed. Has a blanket and a pillow on it, with nothing on top of those. Looks cosy and neat =) But as soon as I throw something more on the blanket or pillow, it's not so cosy!
  
• My desk. Has my laptop, monitor, keyboard and pen cup on it. As soon as anything gets put on top of any of those, its messy!
  
• My home theatre unit. See the picture. If I added anything to the arrangement, it would spoil.
  

How many objects can we put in a top layer? Not more than a "few", otherwise those objects become piles of "stuff". Some "stuff" in my room includes

• A big mash of CDs in their jewel cases. With yet another layer of CDs on top of them. Ugh.
  
• Books without a bookshelf
• A pile of pens and other stationery on my desk
• Layers of alphabetised DVDs. Alphabetised, but still layers of chaotic ugliness.
  

With that said, I now have my own simple fundamental rule for tidying up my room as well as laying stuff out. I feel an inclination to stick piles of paper into folders so that they're just one object. I've tossed pens into a pen cup so that they're just one object which is easier to use anyway. I also have motivation to buy a storage unit - those piles of "stuff" become just one object too.

Do any of you have an opinion on what makes a room "clean"?