Being more productive with Coffitivity

When I was writing my dissertation, I found I was most productive in turning out words during cross-country flights.[1] I also spent a great deal of time in a few coffee shops writing as well.

Coffitivity, a new website brings the sound of a coffee shop to anywhere. I doubt anyone will create this type of site that recreates airplane noise though.[2]

I have been using it as background noise in my office. Unscientifically, it sure does beat relative silence.

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1. I probably should have put a thank you in my dedication to Virgin America, but since I (or work) was paying for the flights, I think it is ok.  ↩

2. Might try combining Coffitivity with my next flight to see if there is a multiplier effect.  ↩

When to write and publish →

There is some great advice about writing out there, but Brett's perspective hits home.

Two things to keep in mind:

• You never know when a hero of yours is going to happen upon something you’ve written.
• If you always write to the best of your ability, then you’ll always be improving and you won’t need to decide to do something the right way. You’ll just do it. And, you’ll want to do it better.

If you want what you write to be taken seriously, then give a shit.

Everybody makes mistakes, but carelessness is as obvious as it is difficult to forgive.

I know there were many times when I just don't want to write or work on research and it comes down to finding a way to still write when you do not "give a shit". Just don't publish until you do.

A Caption and Cross-Reference Guide

Another useful article by Aleh Cherp over at Academic workflows on Mac.

When I am doing academic writing bound for print, it always ends up finally in Word. Much like a final resting place. I wish it was not the case, but it currently has to be. In most academic work that I write there are numerous figures and tables that all have to be in the right place at the right time. While you can try to piece together captions and cross-references through many youtube videos, he puts it all in one place, in a clear guide.

His final point:

Transferring texts from Scrivener and then adding automatic captions and cross-references is certainly tedious so I am always open to an alternative solution for caption management.

While I do not have an alternative solution to this, a simple hack I use is a placeholder in my captions and text. The placeholder I use is "Table X" or "Figure Y". When the final text is placed in Word, I can do a simple find and update those with the proper caption or cross reference. While it still requires a good deal of manual work, they are at least easier to find.

Markdown certainly does not have this and I do not know of it in MultiMarkdown, but captions and cross-reference for the most part are things of paper and not the internet.