Browsing Author

martin

How To Take Notes With A Smartphone And Gain Zen Master-Level Focus

Classes are back, and they’re bringing with them a slew of information that you may be accustomed to keeping in the form of notes. You may even, if you’re generally awesome at things, be keeping these notes in Evernote, taking advantage of the many beauties of searchable data.

Perhaps, though, you’re not. Why is this? Maybe:

You don’t have a laptop
You’re not comfortable taking your precious laptop to class
You’re already carrying around 5,000 books and don’t want to destroy your spine

I happen to fall under the last two. I use my laptop to record my music, and risking my ability to record music every day isn’t exactly enticing. It’s also extra weight I certainly don’t need on my back, with the amount of coursework I’m taking this semester.

Luckily, there is an easier solution for note-taking that adds almost no weight, is much more replaceable, and brings a few other benefits your laptop wouldn’t have.

Your smartphone. Read More →

Better Health, More Focus, Mind Powers… My Vegan Diet Experiment

Martin Boehme Experiences, Health

Near the end of January, some friends and I watched Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, a documentary about a man’s ambition to juice fast for sixty days. Now, I have no desire to lose weight, so I was not inspired to juice fast. I need my food.

However, I did take note that Joe was eating a lot more fruits and vegetables than me. In fact, I’m pretty sure my main source of plant intake was applesauce, which, while delicious, is definitely not going to give me all of the plant-based nutrients I need to be at optimum health.

But where would I start? Being a meat, bread, and potato eater for twenty-one years, how would I best find the fruits and vegetables I liked, and truly bring change to my diet?

Simple: by forcing myself to eat the complete opposite of everything I had eaten before. To do this, I decided that I would try and follow a vegan diet for an entire month.

Messy Room, Messy Mind

Martin Boehme Productivity

So, a while back I posted about how keeping your digital world organized is essential to maximizing productivity and focus, and I made the comparison of your hard-drive space to your room, I said:

“…a messy abode can be the bane of your studying.”

Now, about three-fourths of the way through the school year, I find that this piece of wisdom may merit a larger, more anecdotal recap. Read More →

Lost in a Sea of Accounts: Managing Your Internet Presence

Martin Boehme Internet

Quick: how many accounts do you have online? One? Ten? Fifty? Who knows, right? This is just how things are now. Whether you want to buy something online, watch a video, or do your school work, you have to have an account. This is fine and all, but it can start to become quite discomforting when you realize you’ve forgotten your password, username, or that you even have an account for that website all together. I, as of right now, have at least 58 accounts in my name floating around the internet, and I guarantee you I could not name them all from memory alone.

To help the students of the world keep their collective sanity, not to mention security, here are a couple ways to manage your internet presence.

Zendone: First Impressions

Martin Boehme Productivity

Back during the Evernote Developer Competition, I was pretty excited to see what people would come up with using my favorite software in the universe, Evernote. There were quite a few great ideas and projects, but the one that stood out to me the most was Zendone. According to their description on the contest entry, “Zendone is a personal productivity tool based on the Getting Things Done methodogy. It offers a powerful, well-designed interface for implementing the GTD workflow, using Evernote for collecting and archiving all of your projects and tasks.” Read More →

How Twitter Helped Me Take Myself Seriously

Martin Boehme Experiences

Gather ’round, kids. It’s time for a story.

Everyone knows about Twitter. It’s huge. It changed the internet, and social media as we know it.

But, for me, Twitter has done something different, and profoundly more personal. It allowed me to take myself seriously as a person, and as an adult.

Prepare Your Data for the New School Year

Martin Boehme Productivity

It’s August. Around this time of the year, many of us will be moving into our new apartments or dorm rooms for the next nine months. Moving can be an annoyance to some, but one of my favorite things about moving is that it means I get to start completely over with my room, returning it to a state of organization seldom seen otherwise. This is especially helpful for school, where a messy abode can be the bane of your studying, and be a constant distraction from productivity. Something many of us probably don’t think about cleaning as much is our information systems. Here are a few steps to help you manage your data now, so you can focus on productivity during the school year. Read More →

Protect Your Savings With A Spending Firewall

Martin Boehme Money, Tips

So, you’ve tried all of the traditional savings tips you see on the internet; you’ve started buying generic brands, you rent your college books online (if you don’t, you definitely should), you eat less fast food, and you’ve tried keeping a limited amount of cash on hand, only to find that having a debit card is too convenient not to do. What could you possibly do to save more money without trying to abide by a budget that’s so tight you’re bound to break it? Read More →