The Spike

The Spike PDF

Author: Mark Humphries

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-01-24

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0691241481

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The story of a neural impulse and what it reveals about how our brains work We see the last cookie in the box and think, can I take that? We reach a hand out. In the 2.1 seconds that this impulse travels through our brain, billions of neurons communicate with one another, sending blips of voltage through our sensory and motor regions. Neuroscientists call these blips “spikes.” Spikes enable us to do everything: talk, eat, run, see, plan, and decide. In The Spike, Mark Humphries takes readers on the epic journey of a spike through a single, brief reaction. In vivid language, Humphries tells the story of what happens in our brain, what we know about spikes, and what we still have left to understand about them. Drawing on decades of research in neuroscience, Humphries explores how spikes are born, how they are transmitted, and how they lead us to action. He dives into previously unanswered mysteries: Why are most neurons silent? What causes neurons to fire spikes spontaneously, without input from other neurons or the outside world? Why do most spikes fail to reach any destination? Humphries presents a new vision of the brain, one where fundamental computations are carried out by spontaneous spikes that predict what will happen in the world, helping us to perceive, decide, and react quickly enough for our survival. Traversing neuroscience’s expansive terrain, The Spike follows a single electrical response to illuminate how our extraordinary brains work.

Extreme Productivity

Extreme Productivity PDF

Author: Robert C. Pozen

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2012-10-02

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0062188542

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“Required reading for professionals—and aspiring professionals—of all levels.” —Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Former Chairman of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Robert C. Pozen, one of the business world’s most successful—and productive—executives, reveals the surprising secrets to workplace productivity and high performance. It's far too easy for working professionals to become overwhelmed by a pile of time-sensitive projects, a backlog of emails, and endless meetings. In order to be truly productive, they must make a critical shift in mindset from hours worked to results produced. With Extreme Productivity, Pozen explains how individuals can maximize their time and energy by determining and focusing on their highest priorities. He also provides a toolkit of practical tips and techniques to help professionals at all stages of their careers maximize their time at work. This essential handbook empowers every person with proven methods for prioritizing their time to achieve high-impact results and refine their career goals for long-term success, all while leading a full and meaningful personal life as well.

The Productive Graduate Student Writer

The Productive Graduate Student Writer PDF

Author: Jan Allen

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781003448037

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This book is for graduate students--and others--who want to become more productive writers. It's especially written for those who want to:• increase their motivation, focus, and persistence to move a project to completion• overcome procrastination and perfectionistic tendencies• reduce (or write in spite of) their anxiety and fear of writing• manage their time, work, energy (and advisor) for greater productivityThe process or craft of sustained writing is not a matter that's taught to undergraduate or graduate students as part of their studies, leaving most at sea about how to start a practice that is central to a career in academe and vital in many other professional occupations.This book grew out of conversations Jan Allen has held with her graduate students for over 30 years and reflects the fruit of the writing workshops and boot camps she has conducted at three universities, her own and numerous colleagues' experiences with writing and advising, as well as the feedback she receives from her popular Productive Writer listserv.While Jan Allen recognizes that writing is not an innate talent for most of us, she demonstrates that it is a process based on skills which we can identify, learn, practice and refine. She focuses both on the process and habits of writing as well as on helping you uncover what kind of writer are you, and reflect on your challenges and successes. With a light touch and an engaging sense of humor, she proposes strategies to overcome procrastination and distractions, and build a writing practice to enable you to become a more productive and prolific writer.Jan Allen proposes that you read one of her succinct chapters - each devoted to a specific strategy or writing challenge - each day, or once a week. When you find one that increases your concentration, motivation or endurance, make it a habit. Try it for two weeks, charting the resulting increased productivity. It will become part of your repertoire of writing and productivity tools to which you can progressively add.

The Productive Online and Offline Professor

The Productive Online and Offline Professor PDF

Author: Bonni Stachowiak

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1000978435

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What does it mean to be a productive professor in higher education? What would it feel like to have more peace and productivity? To have nothing fall through the cracks? The Productive Online and Offline Professor is written for today’s busy higher education professional. Through an exploration of what it means to make work meaningful, this book offers practical strategies and tips to support higher education professionals in efficiently managing and effectively using a wide range of technologies and productivity tools.Higher education instructors will find this guide helps them to fulfill their teaching roles with excellence and to build engaging relationships with students while also successfully managing other priorities in their professional and personal lives.The Productive Online and Offline Professor assists those who teach online and blended courses with managing their personal productivity. Faculty are often expected to provide support and feedback to learners outside of normal work hours in non traditional classes. Programs that are designed with more asynchronous content may cause faculty to perceive that it is difficult to ever press the “off button” on their teaching. The author offers guidance and suggests software tools for streamlining communication and productivity that enable faculty to better balance their lives while giving rich feedback to students.Part 1 addresses the challenges in defining productivity and presents a working definition for the text.Part 2 describes the ability to communicate using both synchronous and asynchronous methods, along with ways of enriching such communication.Part 3 describes methods for finding, curating, and sharing relevant knowledge both within one’s courses and to a broader personal learning network (PLN).Part 4 examines specific tools for navigating the unique challenges of productivity while teaching online. It includes ways to grade more productively while still providing rich feedback to students.Part 5 shares techniques for keeping one’s course materials current and relevant in the most efficient ways possible.The Productive Online and Offline Professor is a practical guide for how to provide high quality online classes to diverse students. This book shares specific technology and other tools that may be used in charting a course toward greater productivity. It is intended to be a professional resource for fulfilling our roles with excellence and joy, while managing other priorities in our personal and professional lives.

Critical Play

Critical Play PDF

Author: Mary Flanagan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-02-08

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0262518651

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An examination of subversive games like The Sims—games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique. For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry—and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of “playing house” include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists’ alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns—including worldwide poverty and AIDS—can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice—which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium—can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.

How to Write a Lot

How to Write a Lot PDF

Author: Paul J. Silvia

Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn

Published: 2007-01

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 9781591477433

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All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles, how to improve writing quality, and how to write and publish academic work.

The Productivity Project

The Productivity Project PDF

Author: Chris Bailey

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1101904046

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A fresh, personal, and entertaining exploration of a topic that concerns all of us: how to be more productive at work and in every facet of our lives. Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream—to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research and interviews with some of the world’s foremost experts, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen. Among the experiments that he tackled: Bailey went several weeks with getting by on little to no sleep; he cut out caffeine and sugar; he lived in total isolation for 10 days; he used his smartphone for just an hour a day for three months; he gained ten pounds of muscle mass; he stretched his work week to 90 hours; a late riser, he got up at 5:30 every morning for three months—all the while monitoring the impact of his experiments on the quality and quantity of his work. The Productivity Project—and the lessons Chris learned—are the result of that year-long journey. Among the counterintuitive insights Chris Bailey will teach you: · slowing down to work more deliberately; · shrinking or eliminating the unimportant; · the rule of three; · striving for imperfection; · scheduling less time for important tasks; · the 20 second rule to distract yourself from the inevitable distractions; · and the concept of productive procrastination. In an eye-opening and thoroughly engaging read, Bailey offers a treasure trove of insights and over 25 best practices that will help you accomplish more.

Productivity in Higher Education

Productivity in Higher Education PDF

Author: Caroline M. Hoxby

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-01-10

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 022657461X

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How do the benefits of higher education compare with its costs, and how does this comparison vary across individuals and institutions? These questions are fundamental to quantifying the productivity of the education sector. The studies in Productivity in Higher Education use rich and novel administrative data, modern econometric methods, and careful institutional analysis to explore productivity issues. The authors examine the returns to undergraduate education, differences in costs by major, the productivity of for-profit schools, the productivity of various types of faculty and of outcomes, the effects of online education on the higher education market, and the ways in which the productivity of different institutions responds to market forces. The analyses recognize five key challenges to assessing productivity in higher education: the potential for multiple student outcomes in terms of skills, earnings, invention, and employment; the fact that colleges and universities are “multiproduct” firms that conduct varied activities across many domains; the fact that students select which school to attend based in part on their aptitude; the difficulty of attributing outcomes to individual institutions when students attend more than one; and the possibility that some of the benefits of higher education may arise from the system as a whole rather than from a single institution. The findings and the approaches illustrated can facilitate decision-making processes in higher education.