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Do you need caffeine to get through your day? I’ve experienced every over-the-counter wakefulness supplement produced before 2007 (when I smartened up) and can promise you that it all has the same effect: A brief period of increased alertness is followed by a dramatic increase in lethargy (a crash) or anxiety and fidgeting. Consume enough caffeine combined with whatever jungle juice is in vogue and you’ll eventually turn into an over-clocked grouch.

Perhaps you already are? You don’t have to be. Here are 7 ways to increase your alertness and subsequent productivity without reaching for that 6th cup of coffee before lunch:

1. Drop Napping

A quick version of the power nap, a drop nap takes only a few minutes and will usually give you enough of a boost to get through the last few hours of work. How to do it? Sit in a comfortable chair and hold something in one hand that, when dropped on the floor, will make enough noise to wake you from a shallow sleep. Hold the object you’ve chosen so that it will drop to the floor when you relax your hand and let yourself fall asleep. As soon as you fall asleep the object will drop and you’ll wake up with a boost of alertness. If you’ve ever fallen asleep for a few seconds while driving you already know what it feels like to wake from a drop nap!

2. Micro projects

A micro project is any small project that can be completed in a very little time. Taking a few minutes away from your sleep-inducing labor to work on a small project of your own can provide the excitement and immediate fulfillment needed to get your brain back in gear for the less interesting work you face.

3. Stretching

Get your hind parts out of that seat and release some of that lethargy and tension with a few minutes of stretching! You can start with some basic stretches and move to more complex ones as you feel comfortable.

4. Competitive games

Play a game that makes your mind work as you push for a win over another, preferably somebody you know. The combination of competition, strategy, and social interaction will give you the boost in brainpower you need to keep going. WeeWar is a recent favorite of mine. The combination of strategy, simplicity, and a bit of luck make for a fun way to take an “alertness break” from my work while connecting with a friend.

5. Hydrate!

Your brain is mostly water so it makes sense that you’d need to keep yourself hydrated for maximum alertness and productivity! They Mayo Clinic recommends three hydration styles to make sure you keep your body stocked with fluids:

• Replacement – The idea is to replace all the fluid you lose throughout your day. The average adult loses about a liter of water each day due to evaporation through the skin, breathing, etc. If you sweat a lot or live in a very warm climate you’ll want to up that amount appropriately. Combine that amount with the amount of water you lose as urine and you’ll have a good idea of how much fluid you should be consuming on a daily basis to stay healthy.
• 8 by 8 - 8 ounces of water 8 times per day (about 2 liters total) is an easy way to remember how much you need to keep from getting dehydrated and losing precious brainpower because your body is struggling to operate.
• Prescribed quantity – Check with your doctor or registered dietitian for a more exact idea of how much water you should be consuming based on your body weight and gender.

Trading that 4pm cup of coffee for a glass of water may have the extended benefit of guarding you from the hours-long affects of caffeine that might otherwise keep you up late.

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If you’d like to become an early riser, there are some things you should know before you run off to set your oft-ignored alarm clock. Here are five tips I’ve discovered to be most helpful in making the transition from erratic sleeper to early morning wizard:

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Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble.

Here are the first 5 of the most harmful of these traps and how to avoid each one of them.

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I think this is a call, to all who would profess to follow Christ. Following Christ isn’t only discerning what to do, we must take the next step and do it

So I put forth this challenge to focus on taking action. I am accepting my own challenge and I hope you will too!

Here, then, are the seven biggest financial mis-steps of my college career. I sincerely hope that you don’t make the same ones.

1. Going in the door without a clue.
When I went to college, I not only had no idea what I wanted to study, but I had absolutely no idea what the experience would be like. The end result? I wasted a lot of time in classes that I didn’t really need. I spent time blindly involved in activities and social events that never really clicked with me. I built at least three distinctly different groups of friends during my college years – and watched them all dissolve in a blink. I failed to really get involved with anything interesting until very near the end of my college years.

What I should have done More than anything, I wish I had spent my junior and senior year in high school doing some real soul searching to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I also wish I had asked everyone I knew that had attended college for advice on the experience just so I knew what things people consistently found valuable. I didn’t do either of these things.

2. Extending my stay for two extra years.
After four years, I had actually managed to complete a degree within the years covered by my scholarship. Sounds like a perfect time to start a second one, huh? I spent two more years in school – paying out of pocket via student loans – earning a second degree.

What I should have done Again, if I had properly explored my interests early on, I would have had a much better idea as to what I should have studied in college. Similarly, I should have ignored any and all advice relating to what major you should or shouldn’t have if you want to earn a good income. Earning a good income relies much more on building diverse and marketable skills, not what you majored in – what’s actually important is that you completed a degree and learned some generally useful skills along the way.

3. Failing to take advantage of all of the non-classroom opportunities.
I spent much of my extracurricular time in college wasting time. I played piles of video games, hung out with a lot of people that I barely saw again after college, watched piles of awful movies, and thoroughly explored the outer boundaries of wasting time. While “downtime” is a healthy thing in reasonable amounts, I certainly burned through more than my fair share of it.

What I should have done I don’t entirely regret all of the time I spent involved in such frivolous activities – some total leisure time is good for everyone’s mind. However, I should have spent at least some of that time involved in activities that were simultaneously fun and also enriching in some fashion, such as seeking out interesting organizations to participate in or getting involved with volunteer projects or actually building some connections and friendships with people on some version of my own career path. I didn’t do any of that, and it was a profound misuse of my time and also of my financial investment in school.

4. Signing up for a credit card – then using it with reckless abandon.
During my second year of college, I signed up for a credit card at one of those little booths that credit card companies like to stick up on college campuses. I don’t remember exactly why I signed up – it probably seemed like a good idea at the moment and I likely got a free t-shirt out of the deal. The real problem came later – I decided to start using it a little. And, rather quickly, a little turned into a lot. By the time I left school, I had thousands in built-up credit card debt.

What I should have done Signing up for the card wouldn’t have been a huge mistake if I had a plan in place for using it. I should have simply used the card to pay for textbooks each semester, then lived off of my stipend and the money I made from a part-time job. That way, I could have built up my credit in a positive fashion and not left college with a bunch of needless consumer debt that required me to keep writing fat payment checks for years.

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One of the key ingredients of creativity and innovation is failure. In order to be creative, people have to be willing to take risks and–to use the analogy of a painter–use bright and bold colors instead of creating dull, bland, and “safe” paintings. If you want to discover inspired ideas you have to accept that you’re going to encounter more than a few that won’t work.

Below you’ll find stories from Disney, a business book written in manga, Silicon Valley, and a Stanford University classroom which illustrate the importance of failure for creative success.

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As you  start the new year it may be important to consider thinking and reflection as a valuable part of your work.  Do you have a big project to get done?  Or perhaps you are confused about what paths to take in this new year.  Take some time to reflect.

Consider taking a time of reflection at the beginning of your day to consider what you want to accomplish and what is important to you.  It is also helpful to periodically take longer times of reflection about your goals and direction in life.

Though easily forgotten, the work of thinking and reflection are important keys to your success.

It’s hard to believe, but the Spring semester is upon many of us already – I have colleagues who are already 3 days into the semester, and my own classes start back in just a few days. Outside the US, students are still working on their Fall terms, but they’ll be starting Spring soon enough, too.

At the beginning of the school year, I posted a list of tips for first-year students; with the new semester getting underway, I want to turn my attention to upper-division students, the third- and fourth-year students who have gotten their “sea legs” and begun the advanced coursework that will make up their majors.

If you’re a junior or senior, by now you should have mastered basic stuff like citing references correctly, using evidence to support a thesis, and taking effective notes in class. That was “general education”; the work you’ll be doing over the next year or two is intended to immerse you intensely in the ideas, findings, and ways of looking at the world that make up a particular academic discipline.

Success in upper-division courses depends not so much on your mastery of basic skills or even of the material in your courses, but on what you can make of that material using those skills. While you’re not expected to make significant contributions to the disciplinary body of knowledge – that’s what graduate school, and graduate research, is for – you are expected to be able to apply what is already understood in the discipline to the world you live in.

While to some degree your approach to these years will be dictated by your plans after graduation – do you plan to continue studying in grad school? Or maybe you want to get into the workforce right away? Or teach? – the following tips should apply regardless of your future plans. Even if, as many others in your place are, you don’t have a clue what your future plans are.

Continue to the 8 Tips for Advanced Students

Everything that exists has a purpose. My computer has a purpose, my shoes have a purpose, my watch has a purpose, if I had a dog, he or she would have a purpose, and most importantly, you have a purpose.

You showed up on this planet for a reason. Maybe you showed up to sing, or to dance, or to teach, or to write, or to entertain, or to act, or to talk, or to cook, or to paint, or any other thing, but you showed up for a reason. There’s a purpose that you came here to fulfill. Don’t “sell out!”

In other words, don’t settle for a life of doing a mundane job that you’re not passionate about. You only live once, you must live your life to the fullest; you must die empty.

Don’t buy into the thinking that it’s too hard to become a singer or whatever else you’re passionate about. It’s exactly that thinking that will make it appear like an impossible task, and your perception will become your reality.

Yes, it will take work; you and I both know that anything worth achieving is going to take a ton of work, but we also know that it will be worth it in the end.

Everyone is born a diamond in the rough; we just need to be uncovered. The truth is, if anyone else can succeed in this world, so can you. No one is any better than you.

So don’t sell out! No matter how long it takes, I don’t care if it takes the next 45 years; you owe it to your creator and to yourself to live out your intended purpose.

You will never be truly happy until you’re doing what you were created to do. Yes, you may be able to settle and push your feelings of dissatisfaction to the side, but there’s nothing like the exhilaration of doing what you love and watching others benefit from it. Even if you never make a dime from it…the joy of doing what you love is priceless.

Don’t “sell out” because you’re afraid of how much work it will take

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