Productivity for Academic Librarians and Researchers: Session 8 - Habit Forming

The eighth session of the Productivity for Academic Librarians and Researchers programme is about habits. I found the blog post useful in getting me to question how and why habits form and how they can be made or broken. I have mixed experience with this. Some habits I attempt to form are successful, others not. Sometimes, simply forcing myself to repeat something until it becomes more of an effort to stop doing it than to carry on is enough to make a habit stick. At other times, despite my good intentions, I fail within a few days.

It helps if I can see a benefit to continuing the habit. I developed the habit of going to the gym a few years ago, and managed to stick to it for several years because I could really feel the benefit. Sadly through lack of time I've stopped going recently but I definitely intend to start again!

I've recently resolved to eat more healthily which will involve a lot of determination and concentration! I've made a good start by being organised and making lots of lists so I have time to shop for the right ingredients and cook well-balanced meals. Let’s see how that goes!

Productivity for Academic Librarians and Researchers: Session 7 - Notebook Software

Notebook software is the topic for Session 7 of the Year of Productivity programme. I'm a big fan of Evernote and use it constantly for so many things: rough notes, more detailed notes, conference notes, Christmas card and present lists, recipes, clipped web pages, lists... I wouldn't want to be without it. I have the desktop version on my laptop and netbook, the app for my phone and use the web version at work.

I wasn't able to read the article1 as I don't have access to the relevant databases, but I looked through the abstract. I read some of the other articles and blog posts and found several useful, particularly the post about using Evernote for genealogical research. I also looked at the Secret Weapon site and found some tips. I'd never thought of using Evernote to store emails: this looks like it could be a useful way of organising them.



1 Axford, M., & Renfro, C. (2012). Noteworthy Productivity Tools for Personal Knowledge Management. Online, 36(3), 33-36.