This is a guest post by Scott.

In tough economic times, many people are looking at ways to save money. With rising inflation and the dollar having decreased buying power, it is more important than ever you make your money go as far as possible. In general terms, you would need $700 in 2011 to buy the same amount $100 would have bought in 1962.

Ten Tips to Save Money in 2012

1. Turn Off the TV

The average cost of a basic cable package, without fees and taxes, is $50 a month, which adds up to a total cost of $600 a year. By switching to an online streaming service, you won’t have to miss out on your favorite movies and TV-series. Netflix’s streaming package is $7.99 a month with no additional fees or taxes. That leaves you a cost savings of $504 a year.

Note from Stefan: You probably know how I hate television. Serious, this number one tip can save you LOTS of time and money.

2. Become a List Shopper

The easiest way families will blow their budget is at the grocery store, especially if you go shopping for groceries when you are hungry. Write down a list of all the essentials you need and stick to the list. You can also sign up for customer reward programs. Be on the scope for sales in order to find the best price or try your hand at couponing. Ten years ago, the cost of milk was $2.00 a gallon, now it is hard to find for under $3.00 unless you look for the sales.

3. Pay Your Credit Card Debt

Another significant drain on the family’s budget is credit card debt. The average American family has ten credit cards. Consider keeping only two with the lowest interest rates and balances. If you cannot afford to pay more than the minimum monthly payment, pay more on the cards with the highest interest rates. Call the credit card number on the back of your cards and ask for an interest rate reduction. If they say no at first, ask to talk to a supervisor and explain you can take your business elsewhere. Most of the time, they will reduce the interest rate. However, this really only works if your account is in good standing and you have been making the payments on time.

4. Kick Bad Habits to the Curb

If you have never sat down and figured out how much money you spend on smoking every year, just on cigarettes alone, not including doctor bills or increased insurance premiums, you may want to consider doing just that. Most people who are smokers will smoke a pack per day and the average cost of a pack of cigarettes, depending on your brand, is $6.87. That is an average cost of $48.09 a week, $192.36 a month and $2500.68 a year.

5. Turn Off…Everything

Turn all electrical devices completely off when they are not in use and pretty soon you will see the savings on your utility bill. If an electrical device has a power light that stays on even when it is turned off, it is still drawing electricity and costing you money. Over time, you will start to see a savings.

6. Get Your Yard Sale On

In the past, used items seemed to get stigmatized and everyone was all about buying everything brand new. This is not the case anymore. If going to garage sales is not your thing, try searching classified sites online like Craigslist or auction sites like eBay. You can also visit second hand stores or consignment shops for a significant savings over the cost of retail.

7. Try Your Hand at Gardening

Growing your own vegetables is stress-relieving and saves you a ton of money. Grow your own tomatoes and make your own spaghetti and pizza sauces. It is simple to do and it saves you from buying bland and tasteless store bought sauces. You also do not need a lot of room to garden most vegetables, especially tomatoes. An outdoor deck will work fine. Do some research about container gardening to find more cost-effective ways of growing your own food.

Note from Stefan: I’m growing my own peppers – amazing taste and they are growing in my growing in my window

8. Car Maintenance

Keep your car in good running order and you can save yourself hundreds if not thousands of dollars in repair costs. Also, be sure to keep your tires aired up according to the manufacturer’s recommendation. You lose 1% gas mileage for every 2 PSI your tires are under, so keeping them aired up is almost like getting free gas.

9. Home Maintenance

The same concept applies to your home. Fix leaks as soon as they appear in order to prevent future problems with rot, mold or mildew which can be expensive to remedy. Make sure all your windows are sealed properly to prevent the loss of heat in the winter and cool air in the summer.

10. Create a Budget

Creating a budget can be one of the best ways to see where and how you spend your money and the areas that offer the most potential for saving money. Stick to your budget and do not give up if you go over, just reaffirm your decision to save money and try again.

Note from Stefan: Probably going to write an entire article about it, but if you want to learn more ways to save money and to handle money responsibly, check outI Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Best personal finance book if you ask me.

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

This is a guest post by Jabe from MindMaple.

As a college student, my lack of organization skills was often an obstacle to my success. I am a creative thinker, but if I let my creativity run wild it can become as much a problem as it is a benefit. When generating ideas for an essay or project in college, I never found myself stumped by a lack of inspiration but rather by an excess of unfocused ideas. After a brainstorming session I would often end up surrounded by more ideas than I knew what to do with, and without any idea of how to integrate my thoughts into a unified argument.

In our electronic age, we have access to an enormous amount of information. However, without effective methods of organizing and connecting this information, we can be easily overwhelmed. In this post I will show how mind mapping software, a creative organization tool used by many professionals to manage projects and information, can also be an extremely valuable tool for students.

Mind mapping allows us to represent information visually. We can organize topics and ideas by categories and subcategories, and it is easy to show the relationships between different ideas. Using mind maps, we can analyze specific ideas in detail while maintaining an awareness of our general goals and concerns. Mind maps can be used for brainstorming, taking and sharing notes, organizing projects and schedules, and many other purposes.

Let’s imagine we have an assignment to write an essay on Shakespeare’s play Macbeth for an English class. Our end goal is to have an essay that makes a clear argument by guiding the reader step-by-step through a complex but organized system of information. The essay must be linear and highly structured: it must have an introduction which leads the reader into a rich body of related ideas that support and develop one another, and eventually it must bring the reader to a sensible conclusion.

When we are initially brainstorming for the essay, however, our thought process will be anything but structured. Different characters, scenes and themes from the play will flash through our mind. Our mind will be making constant transient connections between different elements of the play. The challenge of writing an essay, or creating any kind of presentation, is turning this unstructured intuitive thinking into a structured argument.

To organize our thoughts, we might think to make an outline or list using a word processor. However, the problem with word processing, or even writing an outline by hand, is that outlining is an inherently linear form of organizing ideas—one idea must follow another directly, and it is difficult to represent complex relationships and networks. An outline can be useful for representing the basics of the final essay, but it is hardly an ideal tool for planning in the early stages of the project.

Mind mapping can provide a solution to this challenge. Mind mapping’s ability to represent ideas spatially provides an enormous advantage to us as we consider various thoughts and ideas. When we are children, our brains learn to process complex visual information long before we are able to use language effectively. Organizing thoughts visually is a highly intuitive process, and allows us to think about information in new ways, often revealing ideas and connections we might otherwise miss.

The following images provide an example of the enormous difference between organizing thoughts with mind mapping (using the recently-released mind mapping software MindMaple) and with a commonly used word processor. For this example, I imagined having to brainstorm ideas for the Macbeth essay.

The difference between the two formats speaks for itself. Making a mind map is fun! It encourages us to be creative and follow our intuition. There is always space to add new categories and ideas, and it is simple to illustrate the relationship between different ideas. My mind map is somewhat cluttered, but you can make your mind maps as organized as you like. A simple web search will bring up countless
examples of organized mind maps on a variety of topics. The specific mind mapping software MindMaple is perfect for both beginners and advanced mind mappers. Unlike many other software products, which restrict the placement of new topics, MindMaple allows you to move and rearrange products freely. For beginning users, or for users who might prefer more structured maps, MindMaple also includes numerous formatting features to help you keep your maps organized and clean, as well as tools for integrating documents, pictures, and other features into your maps.MindMaple is available for download at www.mindmaple.com

File storage. I had problems with it, big time. No idea where everything was and no idea where I should put them. Until Martijn Engler came along. Martijn is a Dutch Apple Coach which knows, and has a lot of experience in, a lot about file storage. He developed a system where you will never lose a file again. There are some real nuggets in this 45 minutes long episode!

Items Mentioned in this Episode:

• Obviously: Dropbox!
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Selected Sync
• Free Extra Storage on Dropbox
• Martijn Engler on Twitter: @martijnengler
• Stefan Knapen on Twitter: @StefanSSF

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

• Click Here to Subscribe through iTunes
• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS-feed (non-iTunes)

Thank you a lot for your support. I would love it if you could leave a rating or review. Please leave me an honest one on iTunes here. It will help the show and it’s ranking in iTunes immensely! I appreciate it!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

This is a guest post by the writing team of BusinessInsuance, if you would like to feature a guest post send me an email!

I know. Not everyone prefers listening to music while studying or reading or writing or creating art or whatever. But I think most of us can agree that it’s nice to have music around for activities like these. They can help set a pace for your project, break up the monotony, and (in their greater moments) inspire us. Of course, not all music provides the optimal environment or setting for creating or digesting words and ideas. Some music is too distracting or abrasive while other music might just put you in the wrong mood. This is why it’s important to have an extensive arsenal of a variety of musical styles that fit your every aural need in your quest for knowledge or creation. So without further ado, below is some of the best music to accompany your writing, reading, and studying endeavors.

Sigur Rós

What music is better for working and proving something of yourself than an epic dream-like post-rock band from Iceland that uses a hybrid of Icelandic and English and bowstrings on their guitars? This band has a variety of track lengths, but most of them are well beyond the five minute mark, which lends the music well for writing or any extended focus activity. Most Sigur Rós songs, like “Glósóli” linked above, begin with a very soothing, beautiful opening and just build upon that opening with a rich arrangement of sounds that just get bigger and bigger until you feel like the song is representing the most important moment of your life. In short, Sigur Rós sets the perfect soundtrack for doing activities that are important to your life, and they inspire.

Most of Sigur Rós’ albums are great for any quiet creative or knowledge work, but in particular, Takk…, Agaetis Byrjun, and (). Their most recent album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust actually has less epic buildups and more contemporary songwriting; both are great albums but not as ideal for writing or studying.

Do Make Say Think

While Do Make Say Think (DMST) falls under the post-rock genre, it sounds quite different than most post-rock bands. DMST employs more of a jazz aesthetic to its sound, using plenty more horns and two drumsets playing simultaneously; the band is mostly instrument although they do use vocals sparingly on rare occasions. DMST does build some epic ten-minute songs, but they are less linear in buildup and tend to have unexpected turns (hence the jazz description). DMST also has a distinctively more rock-band sound, utilizing much more grunge or dirty sounding guitars with less reverb and delay. If you feel like whatever post-rock you’re hearing might be putting you to sleep, try out DMST. The sophisticated musicianship and unexpected songwriting work great in accompanying any creative activity.

DMST has a beefy discography full of great musical moments that are sure to inspire; if you are unsure where to begin, I would advise starting with Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn and following that with & Yet & Yet or You, You’re a History in Rust. Their most recent album Other Truths is also riveting but may be a little too heavy or rock-sounding for some people’s attention spans while studying.

The Field

Let’s take a quick break from post-rock, and look at something entirely different but just as inspiring. The Field is made up of one electronic musician from Stockholm, Sweden named Axel Willner. As far as genre can be discerned, Wikipedia calls it microhouse and ambient techno. I also hear trance elements as well and wouldn’t be surprised if someone described it as intelligent dance music (IDM). The Field usually creates lengthy tracks mostly over five minutes (and some just a bit longer than ten). Sometimes voices are sampled, but they are used distinctively as instruments and wouldn’t distract someone reading how a lyric-heavy band or singer would.

To best describe The Field’s sound, imagine a simple beat on a loop that gradually morphs textures every few seconds until a living, breathing, and moving song emerges. The beat will drive your mind and focus as you work while the subtle variations will keep your mind from becoming restless and wanting to change the music to something else. Since they have a limited discography of only two full albums, I recommend checking out both the critically acclaimed debut From Here We Go Sublime and the more recent Yesterday and Today.

Yo La Tengo

Some of you may be thinking, “Yo La Tengo has lyrics. I can’t read or write while someone is singing in my ear.” Well I’ve got news for you: Yo La Tengo has a good number of instrumental albums. A lot of the instrumental tracks come in the form of soundtrack work, but I think even the soundtrack material has a distinctive Yo La Tengo sound. For those unfamiliar, Yo La Tengo is an indie rock band with a wide variety of sound that fits mostly in a mellow arena of dream-rock. Sill, despite many songs with a lulling go-to-sleep tone, Yo La Tengo also sports a good amount of (almost jarring) noise, distortion, and extraordinarily creative guitar solos in its music. Also, even on albums that do have plenty of lyrics, Yo La Tengo’s lead singer has a very modest voice that I’m sure many won’t find distracting at all while studying.

If you’re looking for Yo La Tengo’s instrumental work, check out the albums The Sounds of the Sounds of Science and They Shoot, We Score (scores for four separate films). For those that can’t work while listening to lyrics, there are also a few instrumental tracks on their regular discography that could enhance your drive; these include “Tired Hippo,” “Pass the Hatchet” (excellent guitar solo!), “Daphnia,” “The Story of Yo La Tengo,” and “The Fireside.”

Flying Lotus

Flying Lotus is the product of an incredibly talented experimental music producer who’s actual name is Steven Ellison. While his music tends to run along a BPM much slower than most electronic music, it is stocked full of innovation, surprises, and rich textures that you won’t even notice the slow tempos. His music style takes on a wide range of jazz, downtempo, dubstep, and just plain experimental (wonky also comes to mind). His beats tend to jitter in perfect precision, thriving on a chaotic feel to keep your mind interested while having just enough order to keep you bobbing your head. There is simply nothing that comes even close to imitating Flying Lotus. Perfect for studying; perfect for dancing at a party.

For those looking for a good entrance to this artist, I would start with Los Angeles or Cosmogramma. Cosmogramma has a bit of a rounder, smoother sound with may render itself better for studying, but Los Angeles is far from disruptive. His debut 1983 is also extremely interesting and innovative, but doesn’t have that flow and finesse of the later two albums.

Battles

For anyone unfamiliar with this band, allow me to warn you fully before first listen: This music may induce seizures. However, it may also induce extremely vibrant thought or drive you threw even the most monotonous workflow. Battles is a heavy-hitting math-rock group that loves utilizing loop and distortion pedals. Their music usually builds on a repetitive beat or musical idea but often takes unexpected turns, sometimes resulting in the perfect combination of layer adding and beat turnarounds. While Battles is not for everyone, I strongly recommend giving it a shot. I’m sure it’s not the most ideal study music for everyone, but when it works, it works extremely well.

Battles has a fairly limited discography. I recommend both its full length albums although I personally believe Mirrored is by far the band’s best work. Gloss Drop is still plenty engaging, and be sure to check out the various confusingly titled EPs (IP C, B EP, and EPC if you can find them

.

Jon Hopkins and Brian Eno

I hate lumping these two extremely talented musicians together, but I only do so that I have enough space for other artists. Also, they’ve become long-term collaborators since teaming up in 2004, and their work together produces amazing tracks like this. For those wanting one word describe the music of these two artists: Ambient. However, both musicians have created material spanning far outside the constraints of that genre (sometimes even dipping into relatives of dubstep). It’s extremely difficult to describe their sound, particularly since Eno’s career extends all the way into the seventies (he has a whole wikipedia page dedicated solely to his lengthy discography. I will say that they both arrange and polish massive soundscapes that can make you feel like you’re the only person around for miles or that there is some lurking figure sneaking around behind you.

Where to start. For Hopkins, I recommend checking out any of his full length albums as his career as a musician is only budding. For Eno, I’d start with Music for Airports, which is great for any quiet, concentration work and then start working your way through his ambient career, just going on intuition. He has so many albums available that just listening through a few seconds on each one will give you a glimpse of which albums you make like more than others.

Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails has so much material ranging from noisy industrial rock to more eerie acoustic work. It’s only natural that it has some great studying music. Not all of Nine Inch Nails lends itself to great studying music, but there is definitely some great material out there for getting your thoughtful work done. While some of the sound can be a bit grating, even the noisier moments all conform to solid rules of great songwriting. Trent Reznor always seems to deliver.

A great place to start for studying is their double LP work called The Fragile. The album transitioned away from the gritty and distorted industrial sound of The Downward Spiral and headed more towards an ambient direction full of soundscapes, ambient noise, and much more melodies and harmonies. This album does have lyrics, but you can tell there is definitely an instrumental emphasis. Of course another solid choice for studying is Ghosts I-IV which is an entirely instrumental concept album full of soundscapes and soundtrack-like work.

This content was recommended by the writing team at BusinessInsurance.org special thanks!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

To become the successful student we want to become and to become the best person we can every be there is a constant need for information. You need to be a sponge, you need the urge to suck up all the information you can get.

But how do you gather all that information? I’ve received this question multiple times over email and in real-life. And during the past years and especially during the last half a year (I have a smartphone in my possession now for half a year) I’ve developed a system how I can gather all the information I want to read on semi-autopilot. The semi is for the human filter (me) which is always needed when you are sorting out information you would like or not.

The Sure-Fire Way To Read (And Share) EVERYTHING

When I say ‘read’ please read ‘consume links’. This is because I use this system not only to read articles, but also to consume video’s, websites and everything.

This method will enable you to read all the interesting things you come across on the internet, with internet I mean everything: also email, twitter and other social media. What is special about this method is that you not only have a way to capture everything online, but this works also offline.

You know the feeling of course. You are on Twitter, somebody shares an interesting article about for instance Google Plus. You click the link only to find out the article is around 4000 words. You know you would like to read it, but you don’t have the time right now. Four thousand words take around 12 minutes to read when you are an average reader (maybe 8 when you implement some speedreading techniques) and this is simply too long. So you want to bookmark the page or something only to never look at your bookmarks again.

Offline this is even worse. You are talking to a friend with an interesting article he mentioned. You jot it down somewhere, hoping to find it with Google and you lose the paper you’ve written on it.

Not with this system! Let’s get into it.

Your Toolkit

• an Android/iOS smartphone. We are going to use a couple of apps which require a smartphone. Also the reading itself will be done mainly on a smartphone itself!
• Google RSS Reader. This RSS reader is simply still the best reader for me to subscribe to all of my RSS feeds.
• an IFTTT-account. IFTTT stands for ‘If This Then That’ and is a service which connects different services (like Google Reader and Read It Later) to each other. The service is now in Beta and I have 25 invites. The first 25 commenters who ask for an invite will get one. And a smart move would be if those lucky people with an invite will invite others as well (you get 5 invites to give out).
• Read It Later. Both the phone app and the web app. If you want to share the read articles on your iPhone you need to get Read It Later Pro, to only read the free app will be sufficient.
• Twitter. Obvious there should be a way to get all the interesting information to you. Therefor is Twitter of course. With an app like Tweetdeck you can even create filters to filter out irrelevant content. I can work with the normal Twitter app (necessary for Read It Later!) and some lists made for this workflow.
• Captio. Captio is an iPhone app which enables you to send notes immediately to an email address. Combined with the following tool the ultimate productivity to-do system. For Android users there is Jotter.
• Toodledo app. Combined with tags and Captio a great application to fix to-do lists! Android users, there are 3rd party apps which you can use!
• Just a little discipline. If something requires ‘a lot’ discipline it won’t work for me. This is just a little and I can stick to it, so I know for sure you can too!

Gathered everything? Alright! The best way to show you guys how I use this system is to make a flow-chart. You can find the flowchart below (click to enlarge). I will write it down as well.

My reading system is Read It Later. This is where everything comes in and this is the place where I can share everything to Twitter/Tumblr/whatever. I use Read It Later as well to read all the articles of course. Read It Later is the center of my Reading System.

Offline articles are captured through Captio. On a post at Stepcase Lifehack I explaind how I connected Captio with Toodledo with email. That post will explain a lot of things I am doing right here, so it is highly recommended to read first! Again the link: Editing To-Do Lists on the Go: Integrating Captio with Toodledo

Every note captured on Captio will be automatically send to Toodledo. I use the %read tag to sort make these notes stand out from the rest of my notes/to-do’s. So when somebody says ‘Stefan, did you read the article on X or X?’ I will say no and ask for the title of the article. Save the name of the article as a note through Captio (captio is one of the most used apps on my iPhone). If they don’t remember the name, ask if they can send you the article over email. Because they won’t remember this (please, refer them to my to-do system article, I want people not to forget these things!) save this as a note yourself. Write something down like ‘Asking Tom for the article on Google Plus %email’. When they get to their email again they are online anyway and can look the article up real quick.

Online articles are split up in 3 categories: 1) ‘Surfing’, 2) Social Media and 3) RSS Feeds.

1. Surfing articles. Of course sometime you are just wandering across the internet. And sometimes you stumble upon something awesome and want to read it later. You need to install the Read It Later bookmarklet on your browser for this situations. When you come across something awesome just hit the ‘Read It Later’ button and it will be saved to read later! (Install this bookmarklet also on your mobile browsers!)
2. Social Media. This means most of all  Twitter of course. You can install a special app within Twitter with Read It Later where you can hit ‘Read Later’ and the link will be saved to read later. So this is really convenient to do. But what is the most important with Twitter is to create a list. I’ve a list called ‘Interesting’ with people who don’t very often tweet about what they are eating or where they are heading. This list contains most of all people who share interesting stuff. So I have all the ‘link-potential-people’ in one place and this means I only spend a short time on Twitter to scan if I won’t miss anything!
3. RSS Feeds. If you come across one blog more often and you know (most of) the articles are going to be interesting subscribe to it with RSS! I have around 50 subscriptions to different blogs. Once a week I go across all of them and scan articles real quick. If the article is read-worthy I ‘star’ it which means it will be downloaded in Read It Later automatically with IFTTT. The way I’ve set this up is explained below.

Sharing happens from within the Read It Later app. If the article was good, I like to share it on Twitter, basically because I want other people to read it as well. I tweet both in Dutch (my native language and the language of the country where I live in), so I try to read the Dutch articles during the morning and tweet it right out (and tweet in Dutch, the US people will be sleeping) and I read the English articles in the evening, when the American fokes are awake as well!

For sharing you need the Read It Later Pro app, I think it is worth the 4$, because it is a service where I would like to pay for anyway and I think when you are sharing important content your social value will increase. So yes, it is a little investment, but worth the money.

Read It Later System: The Flowchart

Click on the flowchart to enlarge and see how the flowchart is build up. This is exactly how I approach all of my readings.

I check Google Reader and Toodledo once a week (sunday night preferably) to see what I want to read in the upcoming week. The thing with Google Reader is that the feeds are interesting but not every post will be interesting. So I can serve as a human filter to filter out the non-interesting articles and filter in the interesting only

Click the image to enlarge or click here.

Setting up the system

You don’t need to be tech savvy for this system, although it will help. The services are mainstream and made for people without any knowledge of code and everything. But I want to share a couple of links to make sure you set up everything correct.

1. Saving from the web to Read It Later with a bookmarklet
2. Saving from Twitter app to Read It Later with a bookmarklet (explained in the app)
3. Sharing from Read It Later to Twitter (explained in the app)
4. Connect Captio with Toodledo
5. Setting up IFTTT is explained below.

Setting up IFTTT with Google Reader and Read It Later

To use IFTTT you will need an invite. You can get on the list at IFTTT.com or you can have one of the first 25 comments on this post asking for an invite to get one of the 25 invites I can give away.

Setting up IFTTT is really easy. Below you will see screenshots of how I did it.

Create a task

If this will be: starring an item on Google Reader

and then that will be: save to Read It Later.

Missing Things

This system will always be changing. And it will needs some changes, because it isn’t really flawless yet.

• I miss tags. In one way or the other, tags aren’t really coming through. Need to find a way to get that, if you know of a way, please shoot me an email.
• The articles weren’t really ‘findable’  afterwards. Now, you can actually send from Read It Later to Evernote and that is what I do right now. I’m going to think of another way as well, because this requires a little too much right now (I know, I’m lazy).

Recently I got the idea in my head that standing behind a desk is better than sitting.The idea came from an article of Gina Trapani (known as the founder of Lifehacker.com). There are a couple of benefits to it and it has my interest. But the thing for me was, am I going to maintain this set-up? Therefore I decided not to buy a stand-up desk, but to make my own to test out.

First, why?

Using a Stand-Up Desk: Why Would You?

There are a couple of benefits to the system:

• Better condition. Because I have to stand all day when I am behind my computer, I will stand for a lot more hours, this will benefit my condition. Gina, as a woman, of course pointed out there will be a lot more calories burned (something I don’t consider as important), that would be a thing too.
• Better posture. My main reason. I’m pretty tall, so when I’m sitting I have a bad posture, I tend to hunch when I sit. Now I don’t feel anything from that now, but I know I will have backpain in 10-20 years if I continue to sit like this.
• Better productivity. When standing, you tend to work faster. There are studies which show that when meeting would be standing meeting they would go way faster. I think this is the same with standing behind your desk.

So 3 simple reasons to try this system out.

Now, I was wondering how I could test this out, cheap. And I thought of something.

How to Create a Stand-Up Desk for Almost Nothing

Necessities:

• 12 Pringles packages. These tubular things can carry a lot of weight.
• Two simple bookshelves. Again, easy. They should be big enough to carry your laptop (plus external monitor) and keyboard + mouse
• A Desk.

Creating a Stand-Up Desk

1. Divide the pringles boxes in 4 sets. Three boxes at each set.
2. Put one shelf on 2 set of boxes. This makes 6 pringles boxes in total.
3. Repeat step 2 with the other shelf.
4. Put your laptop, monitor, keyboard and mouse on the shelves.
5. Put your chair away and done!

That easy? Yes that easy. Here a picture of my set up:

Now, this is a good test set-up. After three days I can say now that your legs will hurt at the end of the day. But hey, you need to get your workout right?

Again, this is only a test set-up, if you want to go for the real deal right away, the Safco looks right and is only $236.99 on Amazon.

Let me know what you think about this set-up and about this experiment, are you in?

Contest + Giveaway announcement!

On Sunday the 14th the microsite of the Adobe Back to School Contest/Sweeptakes will launch. I will notice you in time and there will be more details by then.

Adobe gave me a CS5.5 package to review and to tell you guys about and I have to tell you, it is pretty awesome! Played around with it for a little bit (actually created this Read It Later workflow with it (more on this in Friday’s post!) and it works pretty smooth. The cool thing is, 80% off for students!

So in the near future I will send out updates about the sweepstakes and the contests! I hope you don’t mind, I mean, I’m giving away free copies, so I don’t think you’ll mind! Last note: I will be on (a well deserved) holiday the upcoming weeks, so my excuses if I don’t respond very fast. I have the posts about the contests and everything scheduled, so their won’t be any problem with that! Thanks!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

Dear readers, I would like to start this post for an apology for not posting the last two weeks. I needed some time to reflect what I was doing with StudySuccessful and where this site is heading. Got some new ideas, one better than the other probably Got one awesome idea, where I would like to get some feedback on! Anouncement will be at the end of the post!

Feeling tired in the afternoon? After lunch maybe? Or just in general tired every once in a while. Some people are ashamed of yawning, try to cover it with their hands. ‘No, I’m not tired at all’ is a lie told often. But please, why should you be tired? Why shouldn’t you embrace your inner tired person and sleep instead. Why wouldn’t you do a quick powernap?

A Powernap is a quick nap, not more than 20 minutes. This sleep can boost your creativity, effectiveness and productivity. You won’t sleep long enough that it will effect your night sleep, but also not short enough that there is no effect.

In this post I will review an app which stimulates brain waves to get to sleep and get awake again, but in order to understand what I am talking about you need a little background about powernapping. If you are familiar with the subject already, please skip to the end of the post where I will review the app!

I’ve discussed this subject before, including a quick ‘How To Powernap’ post. Besides this, I’ve also tested something called ‘The Key Method’, where you will wake up from the falling keys from your hand. Besides this blog, I’ve also written on several other blogs, including a Dutch one. This post has been featured as well in a published book called ’175 Lifehacking Tips’.

Of course, all this knowledge doesn’t come from nowhere, I am actually a devoted napper myself, at least 4 times a week I use the power of the nap. Which makes me way more productive, way more creative and more energized in general. Yeah, I will call myself an expert. Let’s sum up real quick how you should powernap (this will be a little bit different than the other post about powernapping, as I’ve grown into a different system more).

How To Powernap – Without the App

1. Grab a glass of water, close your curtains and lie down. All important steps. You want to have a glass of water besides you when you wake up, because the cold water can refresh you. The curtains should be closed to imitate night and lying down has proven to be effective. Of course, you won’t have the luxury of all this at your office or something, but I’m sure you can come up with something neat. When I am powernapping in the library for instance (yeah I do)I just lie down on my books.
2. Set your alarm 20 minutes ahead. You will sleep within 5 minutes, this means you will have around 15 minutes sleep left. More than enough. I usually set my alarm only 16 minutes ahead, because I get to sleep quick and I feel more refreshed with a shorter nap. The thing is, when you sleep longer, you will get into another sleep phase, which means you will be in a deeper phase. This makes it not only harder to wake up, but you will feel sleepy as well when you wake up (instead of refreshed with a normal nap).
3. Sleep! Sleep, nap, enjoy!
4. Wake up, GET UP! REALLY IMPORTANT. Getting up immediatly. You don’t want to snooze off again, because this will result in more sleep, another sleep phase and a failed powernap. Get up, drink water, walk around.
5. Get going again. When I am napping in the library, I usually get up, walk to the other end of the room, go sit again and get along with my work. The short walk really gets your blood flowing again and you will feel refreshed!

That is all for the powernap, it is actually really easy!

Power Nap – An app which helps you powernapping!

One of the first things I was looking for when I got my iPhone was an app for powernapping, something with an alarm function would be sufficient. Then I stumbled on Power Nap.

Power Nap is an app which uses advanced Binaural Brainwave Entrainment – this means it stimulates brainwave frequencies to different states of minds.

The idea is really simple. You select the sound you want to hear (for instance, I use ‘ocean waves’) which is the background sound. Rain is also possible, which is a sound a lot of people like to fall asleep with. Then you will select how long you want to have this app running. As said before, I use 16 minutes. You put in both of your earplugs (necessary, because the sounds are different in both ears) and you hit play. Lie down and enjoy.

First there will be descending delta waves, which makes you go to sleep. This will be followed by constant delta waves which makes sure you stay asleep, after this you will hear ascending beta waves, which will wake you up!

The Review

After using it around 5-10 times I have come to the conclusion that the app works. I am a trained powernapper of course, so maybe it is something I do normally as well, but I will wake up around 30 seconds before the program is finished. I think this is the result from the beta waves, which will wake me up.

One of the things I love is the sound you can select. The brainwave sounds make a strange sound, a little spooky as well, but if you select another sound besides it you won’t notice it that much.

Another thing is the design, it looks like you are working with a medical program or something, that savvy. The program runs a little slow, but it works!

Concluding thoughts and a request!

Powernapping is something I’ve been doing for a long time (almost two years now) and it is definitly something I love to do. There have been changes in how I do it, there have been different insights as well during my journey! For instance with the new app now, this will change the way I powernap! I can induce the sleepiness easier now.

I have a request for you. As you probably learned during this post powernapping is something I love to do and love to learn more about. I want questions/experiences! Have you ever done a powernap? What were your experiences with it? Do you think I should try a different approach? Share it! I would love to learn more about this subject, so I need questions! I will answer them, probably in upcoming posts, so make sure to send them!

Special anouncement

Every day I get questions from readers and everyday I try to answer these questions. But in one way or the other I feel like doing this isn’t enough. Because when one person has a question about something, someone else will be stuck with that question as well. That is why I would like to answer more questions to the audience. And there is only one way to do this easily and good. With a podcast.

This is the anouncement, I will start a podcast. One of the reasons of the silence last weeks was reflecting on this idea. The idea is simple. Once in every two weeks or so I will pick a question which is asked a lot and I will discuss this in front of a microphone. Nothing more, nothing less. This will be published on iTunes, so you can subscribe to the podcast. It should be a low-treshold podcast, which will motivate and inspire you. I like to listen to podcasts when I am running or something and I couldn’t find one about successful studying. StudySuccessful will fill this gap!

Share your thoughts on this idea! And share your questions of course, because I will need some content! Hope you are as enthusiast as I am!

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

Who watched the Superbowl 2011? And who watched the commercials? If so, you’ve seen the Chrysler commercial for sure. If you haven’t, do it. This commercial, these 2 minutes, PURE GENIUS. A 2 minute tribute to the Motor City: Detroit, Michigan. Together with Eminem, church singers and a beautiful car this commercial have been making my day for the last week.

There is one sentence in particular, a quote which is older than the commercial of course: ‘The hottest fire makes the hardest steel’. This sentence has captured my attention immediately. The hardest worker makes the best product. The most heavy machinery makes the most robust products. And the deepest thinker has the most beautiful thoughts.

The hottest fires makes the hardest steel

Thinking deeper to get the most beautiful thought

Remember the last time you’ve been sitting with a blank sheet in front of you and a pencil? Remember the last time you planned in some ‘thinking time?’ Probably not. Let me share something with you. My most productive hours are the hours spent with a pencil and paper. With nothing more. Maybe a cup of tea.

I do this every week. Preferably on a Sunday, which is a slow day in general. After breakfast I grab a sheet and I grab a pen. I am going to sit in a quiet place and start thinking. First: Where will I be thinking about? Second: Thinking about the subject I want to think about. Just me and my thoughts for around half an hour. Most of the times I am thinking about what I am doing, where am I heading? Where should I be heading? Last week I thought about this blog, where is it headed? Where should it be headed? What changes can I make to make the goal more clear. How can I attract the right audience? How can I make my content more shareable? How can I create a more discussional atmosphere? All question I can ask myself, where I can think about and where I learn a lot from.

These thinking hours are really precious to me. It is not the moment I learn something new. It is not the moment where I feel intense satisfied or happy. But these times are the moment where I can give everything I learn during the week a place. A way to clear my head a little bit, to create some road from all the chaos.

Besides the rest I find in this thinking it is also a moment where I get great ideas. When I am just sitting somewhere to think I get beautiful thoughts. From awesome metaphors till great new business ideas. Life changing ideas, but also ideas on what I should eat.

Thinking deeper doesn’t mean big words, big names, it means more time

When you talk about philosophy a lot of people already have their opinion ready. Philosophy is all about big names, big books and big words. But when I think about deeper thoughts, about philosophy, I think about broader thoughts. Not big words, but thinking broader than your normal thoughts. Thinking deeper isn’t thinking more complicated, but looking beyond the obvious.

Start your own thinking sessions right now!

Feel like you could use some inspiration yourself as well? Feel like you need to get your mind straight? Or just want to create new insights? Start your own thinking session right now!

1. Get a clean table, a white sheet, pencil and a cup of tea. I prefer sitting in the kitchen, drinking green tea and writing with a pen actually.
2. Make your subject clear first. Where are you going to think about? What project are you working on? In my case this would be something: ‘The direction of StudySuccessful.com’, put this on top of your sheet.
3. Start with a little evaluation, than start your brainstorm. First, look at your problem more clear, what is the problem? Why? Go back to the roots. For instance, I am not completely satisfied with the message StudySuccessful is telling, because I am not a straight A student myself and I want to encourage people to look further than just grades. Is that the message I am giving out right now? Not sure..
4. Write all your ideas down. If you think it could help, write it down. Think about it. Write it more clear. Don’t edit, just write and keep writing.
5. Review your ideas. What is a good idea? What was a good thought? Where are your next action?

As said, these moments are really precious to me. These thinking sessions really help me to get work done, to make my view on certain things clear and to map out the road in front of me. Thinking really hard (a really hot fire) will create the best thoughts (the hottest fire). Have fun thinking!

This is a guest post by Ryan, if you would like to send in a guest post as well, visit the contact page!

Let’s face it, we’re a generation of multi-taskers and on-the-goers. Most of us use our mobile devices for just about everything BUT phone calls. There’s work to be done, responsibilities to be fulfilled and obligations that require commitment. Oh, and sometimes we sleep.

For today’s college student, sleep is just as hard to come by. Some fall prey to the merciless grip of procrastination; others are true overachievers and go above and beyond in their academic life.

Whatever category you fall into, one thing is for sure: a good night’s sleep is not always an option. Luckily for you, I have spent many nights burning the midnight oil to complete term papers, financial statements, SWOT analysis, etc away from mattresses that were calling me to rest.After completing both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, I have not only earned a wealth of business knowledge but have crafted some ways to increase productivity while losing shut eye.

Here are some tips that have helped my productivity with minimal sleep:

1. B-Vitamins: This type of vitamin supports and increases the rate of metabolism. Many doctors will argue that most people receive enough Vitamin B from their daily diet. However, if you live an active life and don’t always gain your necessary 8-hours of sleep, the extra boost of vitamin B can be instrumental for the late nights. Check your local pharmacy for B6, B12 and B3 dietary supplements. You can also find many B vitamins in tuna, whole grains, bananas and potatoes.
2. Stretching & Movement: When we sleep, we’re still. So it’s quite common to feel sleepy when you remain still for long periods of time in front of the books. When you’re eyes to start to get heavy, get up and move around. If you’re into dancing, bust a move. Take a walk to the local coffee shop for some tea. Students that practice yoga can take a break to stretch. Whatever works best for you, just get up and get loose. Not only will this help ease the tension, it will release endorphins and serotonin through your body.
3. Music: This won’t work for everyone. For some, it may even hinder the process. However, if you’re a music enthusiast who can handle the background noise, some low tunes can help you feel the rhythm and get into a productive study pattern.
4. Shower: Sometimes, a quick shower can get the mind back in the game. Start the shower off hot to relax your nerves and muscles. Then, switch over to cold to give you a nice jolt to get back into focus. When done your shower, your body will feel clean and refreshed. This will make you feel good as a whole, and will have a positive impact on your productivity.
5. Sleep: Ok, so you’ve taken your vitamins, danced your way to the coffee shop while jamming on your iPod, and showered when you got home. You’re still hitting a wall. Now what? There comes a time when you’re brain is telling you that enough is enough. So go to sleep already and set you’re alarm a couple of hours earlier than planned. You’ll be getting the same amount of sleep if you stayed up, but the extra hours will come at a time when your brain is rested. Usually you focus and retain information better if studying is the first activity you accomplish during the day.

This guest post is contributed by Ryan Fontana, who writes about accredited online colleges and universities. He welcomes your feedback via email: ryanf_ecf@ecollegefinder.org.

Next?	Stefan Recommends
View the StudySuccessful homepage.	9 ways to get motivated for college – The ebook by Stefan Knapen (free)
More on the author.	Learn More, Study Less – Relearn learning
Get in touch.

What if you are facing a final. What if you need to ACE the upcoming test. What if you need to make the upcoming test so amazingly good that you are scared of it. You need to make this test as good as you’ve never made a test before. Pretty scare right? You will need a completely different type of focus. This isn’t high school studying where you study for 3 evenings in a row. This is college-mayhem. You need to be a machine the upcoming weeks. Let’s just do so.

Olympic athletes can do it – why can’t you?

If you look at the really crazy olympic athletes, for instance Michael Phelps. They train an absurd amount of hours in order to become as good as they are. What if you trained for every day except the first day of Christmas? You will be (of course) awesome at what you do. Get that mentality for the upcoming weeks. Get in the state of mind that you don’t want to do anything aside from studying.

You will need a coach – Probably yourself

In order to become that awesome you will need a coach. Someone who keeps saying you need to train more and harder. This coach can’t be anybody outside of yourself. You will need to do this, you will be the one who gets you through this process. So get a couple of clear goals for yourself. Set goals, make a plan. I explained this extensivly in my Successful Students’ Motivational Course on day 1 (fill in your email address on the side to get this course for free in your inbox!). Setting goals is probably one of the most important steps in this process.

Than, the coaching itself. In one way or the other you will need to bring up the motivation, over and over again. You will need to be the one who pushes you just through another half an hour. You will be the one who says that this isn’t ‘enough’. Can you ace the test yet? No? That means not enough.

You cannot be good to yourself, because you are the one who is going to ace the test. You cannot let yourself slip off for a little while, because you are the one to blame if you screw up the test.

Get in the olympic mood, work hard, work harder and ace the test

I’m not sure if I have anything to add to this sentence. Read Phelps’ biography ‘Under the Surface’ and you will find out what it takes to become an Olympic champion. Just imagine, if you did half of all the work he did, what will this do to your results? What will you accomplish? Of what will you be capable doing. Imagine what happens when you work as hard as an Olympic champion.

Now. Stop imagining. Just do it. Become an Olympic champion, in whatever you are doing. Good luck.