Life of a TAC - Professional Development

For those of you interested in becoming a TAC or in what we do, we're going to start writing about what happens in our weekly TAC meetings. For those of you who don't already know, as TACs we meet once a week for two hours to train on how to do consultations, plan workshops for the UCD graduate student and post-doc community, and have professional development. After new TACs have learned the ropes, the program likes to give each TAC a chance to lead meetings through professional development. 


Professional development can take the form of philosophical discussions, education videos, team building exercises, or reading a relevant paper. This week's professional development was lead by Jamiella Brooks. Jamiella is active in various campus groups and was developing a workshop for undergraduates on how to stay focused and not procrastinate. Jamiella ran a condensed version of the workshop for us. 


We started the workshop by thinking about and discussing what causes us to lose focus. For our group specifically, there was often an emotional component of either dreading the thing we were suppose to do, or wanting it to be so perfect that we don't want to start (i.e. writing our theses, which I'm also currently procrastinating doing by writing this blog post). 


We also talked about the myth of multitasking. Jamiella demonstrated this the best by having Henry Yeung try to send a text, draw a cow, and stomp his foot every two seconds all at the same time. We talked about how each of the things Henry was doing suffered from distraction (he never sent the text, and the cow looked like a chicken with spots). And we discussed if there was ever anytime multitasking does work. 


We then talked about what we do to avoid the work we should be doing, and what helps us do the things we are avoiding.  For our group it seemed the internet was the biggest distraction. To prevent that distraction, Jamiella showed us some software that will lock out specific webpages for a set amount of time. Erin Hendel offered up the tip to set the lock out when you go to bed so that when you wake up you can only visit websites you need to do your work. I don't know that I have the willpower to do it, but I gotta admit I'm glad the programs are there. 

**Update** The the suggestion for minimizing internet distractions that Jamiella suggested can now be found at the bottom of this post. Thanks Jamiella!

Jamiella's professional development was only 30 minutes, but I wished I could be a participant for a longer amount of time. Maybe come up with some tips that don't involve getting rid of the internet? Who knows, maybe this will become a future TAC workshop! But in the mean time feel free to offer your tips to avoid procrastination in the comment section.

Internet Use Control
Have a “fun” browser and a “work” browser
e.g. Use Safari for facebooking, personal email, etc. and Firefox for research, job
searches, doing taxes, etc. Your bookmarks will also reflect your choice and keep you
from “accidentally” clicking on that tempting site.

Leechblock (Firefox browser only)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/
Blocks sites browsed on firefox for either a time limit (e.g. 10 minutes) or a block of time
(e.g. 9am-5pm M-F) or a combination thereof. You can even set a password to help delay
your access.

Self Control (Mac only)
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31289/selfcontrol
Add your forbidden websites to a “blacklist” and set a timer. Once the timer begins, you
cannot undo it—even by restarting your computer or going into the application. Works on
all of your browers. More info and troubleshooting can be found at
http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/ (Works with wildcards: *.facebook.*)

Stop Distractions (PC only)
http://www.stopdistractions.com/
Costs $5, works like Self Control. Disclaimer: I have not used this and cannot vouch for
its effectiveness/safety