Web Dev Modulette

Life Hacking

How to get your life in order

Modulette Intro

Life Hacking Portfolios

Networking On-line Presence

Working out a future plan• Now is a great time to work out what you

want to do– Or what you don’t want to do

• Work out your priorities in life– What are you willing to do for a job• Location• Role• Company

– You need to be open minded– The Games Industry is a big place

Audit your Skills• Start looking at jobs if you haven’t already

– It will give you a clear idea of where you’re heading

– It will motivate you when times are hard

• A recent Skills audit will be a big help– It will help you plan your P&P– If you’re planning to go freelance it will help with

working out how much you’re worth per hour

Finance and Planning

• How much money do you need to live on?– Start getting use to budgeting– You might need to move somewhere quickly• Moving is expensive• Attending events can be expensive

• When does your student finance stop being paid?

• What outgoings do you need to factor in?

Embracing debts =(• When I left my MA I had £15K worth of debt– Not Student loan – a personal loan– I finished paying it off 2 years ago– I finished paying off my student loan this October

• I wouldn’t be where I am now without those debts– Paying them back was a bitch

• Work out now what living within your means entails to you

How I took control of my life

I used to be messy and disorganised

Things weren’t good at home / work and by my 2nd year of teaching here I felt like I wasn’t coping

I did a life audit a little while ago

I realised the following:- My Work / Study / Life Balance was out of whack- I didn’t have a clear plan of what I was doing – or where I

was going – and I needed that- I needed to sort my money situation outI needed to get organised – for my own sake and everyone

else's

6 years on I’m organised, I’ve paid back my Professional study & Student loan

(I’m still messy)

How do you organise your life?

• Up until now we’ve organised all of your hand ins, assignments, learning etc– We’ve told you what to read– What to study– When to do it by etc

• You need to start to find ways to manage your time and the information out there….

Audit your Life• What’s important to you?• What have you put on the

back burner while you’ve been studying?

• What do you need to do to reach your goals?– What have you enjoyed most

in your time here?• Do an honest SWOT analysis

of your life• Learn how to control your

demons

This is me when I work from home

Building in discipline• If I’ve a lot of work to do I default to the

Pomodoro Technique

• There are five basic steps to implementing the technique:– Decide on the task to be done– Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes

(traditionally 25)– Work on the task until the timer rings;

record with an x– Take a short break (3–5 minutes)– After four pomodori, take a longer break

(15–30 minutes)

Hunt around for digital pomodoros, use your phone, a kitchen timer – whatever works for you

Managing Time

• You’ve got a lot of things to balance this year– Modules– Senior Roles– Project & Portfolio– Future plans

Short & Long Term tasks

Tasks should have a ‘done’

Task 1

Write your to do list for the week

Work out the priority list

3 categoriesUni | Home | Personal

Rules I Live by

Nia

Research, Enterprise

& Non Teaching

Teaching

Social Life & Family

Community Commitments

This is the stuff that makes me life varied – makes a name for myself and helps secure

funding for the university so I can do my own projects e.g. Phd

There’s a cycle to teaching – writing, iterating, reflecting – it doesn’t stop and we work a year ahead mostly

This is both local community events, slightly further afield and national / international – you make your own

opportunities

Work is less important then the people you love

Apps & platforms I use to organise mine

Nia

Research, Enterprise

& Non Teaching

Teaching

Social Life & Family

Community Commitments

Trello, Any. Do, Calendars that Sync (Hotmail & Google) Evernote, Dropbox, Drive

Any. Do, Calendars that Sync (Hotmail & Google) Dropbox, Drive

Facebook, Google Calendars & Mail, Any. Do, Dropbox

Wunderlist, Facebook, Google Calandars, Skype & GMail

How I use thingsGoogle Calendar is my organised nerve centre – I sync it with pretty much everything (Work uses an outlook calendar that’s also synced to

my phone but this Google calendar is also synced to that so I can check in a moment if there’s a clash) - I also use Chrome to sync bookmarks

Facebook Events

TripIt (for travel)

Synced Calendar

Recurring events

Teaching

How I use thingsAnything I need to be doing however far in the futureThe calendar feature links with my Google oneIt’s on my phone, netbook & iPadIt’s linked with my drive & DropboxGreat for building on ideasSatisfying feeling of things being moved to the done column

I’ve also used it successfully on large team projects.

My Phd supervisory team are attached to my board so

they can track my process

I get a notification if someone adds my name to something – always useful

Interestingly I haven’t found it useful as a tool for planning teaching – but I’ve got some new modules in the pipeline so maybe it will have it’s day for that too

How I use thingsI’ve a link to my dropbox on every device that I own

I use it extensively to keep a track of documents and things I’m working onThe games tech team also use it a lot

Shared folders are an amazing way of cutting down on e-mail

I use Google Drive in the same way – especially if I need to kick start an idea and keep it somewhere

If I’m writing things from my phone or tablet I tend to use Drive to start with

I also use it for surveys, forms and shared spreadsheets & documents

How I use thingsThis is my Digital ScrapbookI share things I find on the web to here (recipes, call for papers, train times etc )I tag things – especially photo documents (using my phone camera as a document scanner) to find them laterI use it on my IPad, my phone and as a web app

It’s also set up that I can directly e-mail things to it

(from my work hotmail and home gmail) – so it’s a very easy for me to keep a track

of interesting / useful things.

This means I don’t intrrupt the flow of my day and limit

distractions

This hasn’t entirely replaced physical paper notebooksI find writing lecture / meeting notes in a physical form easier then digitally – although the

iPad helps a little with that – I just now go to the effort of digitising the key points somewhere

How I use thingsI use 2 different To Do List Apps

<- Wunderlist because it allows list sharing

˅ Any. Do because it’s very pretty and works well with my phone, google calendar

More importantly both have phone and web app versions so the moment I think of something I can add it. – Again so I don’t have to break the flow of my day

- Both allow me to add notes, reminders etc

- Any.Do has a great daily planning function that allows you to plan your day

- Any.Do + Cal on my phone means my main to do list and calendar is combined and adding events that flow to my main google calendar is effortless

Much like Trello and Teaching, I’ve not found Wunderlist that

great for teaching to do, but it’s very handy for shopping,

errands etc

Disclaimer

• You need to find your own path and method for keeping your life in check

• You might find it useful to mix up techniques from time to time

• Harness the power of the technology you have to hand

Next Week’s Study Week

• This will be a wonderful chance to put some of this into practice

• Don’t squander this opportunity – you’ve got too much to do

• We’ll be discussing how we got on in the next session.