Suppose you have a paper due the last week of classes. You can plan to handle that paper in a few ways:
- Closing your eyes and dealing with it the week before
- Planning your next steps
- OR, planning backwards from that deadline
How often do you miss your own deadlines? You’ll say to yourself, ahh, I have time, I can start researching this next week! But soon, the weeks close in, and you’re left cramming everything together at the last minute in your dining hall, with a large cup of joe.
Next time you have an important project, try planning backwards from the deadline.
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One of the best pieces of advice that freshmen receive is: Do not try to plan out your four-year academic career. This piece of advice will be tucked away in that guidebook that freshmen get, in a section addressing course selection and academics.
The guidebook will then continue in a reassuring tone: Just make sure you’re taking the classes you need to take in order to set yourself up properly for your classes next year.
As I’m looking forward to my junior, senior years and my career plans, I’m realizing just how wise that advice is.
There’s no need to stress yourself out by planning each detail of your life.
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The supply chain and distribution network behind a simple product, like a lamp, is ridiculously intricate and complex. Chances are the lamp had to cross the seas, move through customs, hit a warehouse, get distributed via trucks or planes, hit the stores, get deboxed and brought out to the sales floor for a given store. And somewhere along the way, all of this needs to be coordinated.
Think of the sheer number of people involved, the time, the effort. But, somehow, we can keep massive grocery stores perfectly stocked with a few thousands different types of items. So, although the supply chain is exceedingly complex, the network becomes more efficient with increases in scale and follows a few basic principles.
If you consider the end product of thought and action — be it a novel, new business etc. — it too follows a mental supply chain of sorts, going from conception to finalization.
This post examines ways to improve the mental supply chain — decreasing the time/effort between thought and action and increasing efficiency overall.
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People are shocked when I tell that the only time I give presentations at Harvard is for my Chinese class. “Business” majors everywhere else in the country are working on group projects and giving final presentations for pretty much all of their classes.
If you’re shy and/or socially awkward (which may or may not be the case for a Harvard student), then you may need some tips on how to sound confident and competent when you’re presenting your recommendations for a multi-million buck project. While Public Speaking is a natural given for theater geeks, it CAN be learned. I somehow managed to learn it even though I was that kid who would never speak in class unless called upon.
Presentation skills are essential in today’s work force. Don’t let your Ivy League education hold you back from presenting yourself well.
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The Japanese perfected just-in-time inventory, with a great many savings and benefits. Right when you need a product, you produce it. No need to worry about the cost of holding that inventory and sitting pretty on potentially 5,000 extra units of stuff that might not sell.
Similarly, while I was stressing out over my class schedule last summer, I realized the sheer pointlessness of brooding over decisions that I can’t possibly make without further, next-to-the-last-minute information. I’m not going to be able to decide between two core classes unless I shop both of them…two or three months down the road. There’s no point in spending hours two or three months ahead of time trying to decide between the two.
Just-In-Time thinking is a way of managing decision-making, so that you think through what you need to think through WHEN you need to think through it.
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Lots of Harvard’s undergrads are athletes. You’ll find some of the best lacrosse players, hockey players, swimmers, runners, rowers, kickers, catchers, and throwers around. On some nights you’re going to be eating in the same dining hall as the football team, and your reaction upon seeing their eating habits is probably going to be some combination of disgust and amazement.
I am not one of those athletes. But I like to eat - quite a bit, actually. The dining halls don’t always offer the best entrees from night to night, but I can get pretty creative with sandwiches, salads, and burgers (ask me about my peanut-butter-honey-banana-bread or my humus hamburgers!). Food isn’t available after-hours either, but that always gave me all the more motivation to grab a burrito or a slice of pizza before 2 AM if I knew I was going to be staying up late — better safe than hungry, right? So how are you supposed to stay fit and avoid the Freshman-15 when Harvard’s welcoming week involves an ice cream bash, several outdoor barbecues, and a whole new Square of restaurants to explore? By working out.
For me, coming to Harvard was the first time I had full access to a nice gym. In high school, my idea of a workout was a few rounds of DDR, but going to MIT just to play an arcade game definitely wasn’t going to work for me here. Luckily, Harvard has more than a few places to work out, and it’s definitely worth your time to check these places out.
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A “typical” Harvard student is busy and bounces from one activity to another. Events are back-to-back, overlapping, with locations and times changing at will.
No one likes waiting on someone who’s late for a meeting. So, don’t be that girl or boy.
Here are some tips on how to keep organized.
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Email: you get too much of it already, you’ll get waaaay too much of it at Harvard. It is arguably the most important communication tool on campus. Professors will use it. You’ll use it. Your friends will use it, everyone in your club/house/organization will use it.
Thus, it’s important to understand the rules of emailing, or else people will start to tune you out.
(BTW, am still getting into the tandem of posting, so forgive me for this late post.)
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Reading Period is that time of heaven/hell when students have approximately a week and a half of “no” classes to spend time reviewing for their finals and writing their final papers. It’s wonderful because classes meet less often. It’s awful because it’s a mammoth amount of free time to re-remember what you should have learned this past semester.
Kids at other schools looong for this. Harvard kids have a tendency to love and hate it because it is and isn’t quite the original conception of the “Reading Period.” Sometimes classes still meet, sometimes you have four papers due and take-home finals.
Here are some tips I’ve gained from my 3 previous reading periods on how best to survive and utilize this precious but damning amount of free time.
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