{"id":20989,"date":"2022-05-13T09:55:37","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T08:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/?p=20989"},"modified":"2022-10-26T11:57:16","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T10:57:16","slug":"work-smart-not-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/work-smart-not-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Work smart, not hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Working digitally does not come naturally to me: I confess, I have reams of hand-written notes left over from my degree and I still scribble ideas on the nearest scrap of paper to hand \u2013 or, in fact, on my hand. But I\u2019m fed up of carting boxes of convex ring-binders between rentals and of post-its piling up until I bin the lot before acting on any of them. I want one of those clutter-free desks which has room for plants! And I don\u2019t want location to limit what work I can do. So I\u2019ve been checking out some of the software<\/a> available to us that can help with productivity and these are some of my favourites.<\/p>\n

Trello<\/h3>\n

This free task-management software has been an invaluable find. It functions like a virtual whiteboard and I use it for so much already, from brain off-loading to list-making. I\u2019ve even used it to create revision cards: \u201cincunabulum\u201d \u2013 it sounds rude, right? It isn\u2019t, I promise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As soon as I started using Trello<\/a> I felt inspired and less stressed: it\u2019s diversely applicable and gives an organised visibility to my ideas, plans and commitments \u2013 and I love the mountainous backgrounds. Lastly, it also supports collaborative working and could be ideal for planning group-projects given its shareable interface that sends notifications and updates in real time.<\/p>\n

Print friendly<\/h3>\n

Whilst most academic digital resources have this as an in-built feature, enabling you to access articles in PDF fashion, this website enables me to save copies of web-material that\u2019s more transitory, such as news articles and blog posts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It not only condenses material to reduce printing, but makes it easy to store material digitally and thereby avoid printing altogether. As soon as I tried out printfriendly<\/a> with a couple of URLs I felt empowered because it enables me to manage my research material more consistently, downloading diverse content in the exact same format.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Lens<\/h3>\n

Microsoft Lens<\/a> is unlocking so much productivity for me because it converts physical material into diverse digital and editable forms. It\u2019s perfect when I want to capture something from a reference book or a whiteboard. I simply take a photo, convert the image to a word doc, and the app\u2019s OCR technology does the rest.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can check out the full list of software online or delve into Your Digital Library<\/a>; don\u2019t forget you have subject-specific digital resources too \u2013 for more info, go to your subject library guide<\/a>. And for the digital aficionados out there \u2013 what are your favourite digital resources? Share your tips, tricks and comments below.<\/p>\n

Final tip:<\/strong> as I see it, working more efficiently isn\u2019t necessarily about getting more<\/em> work done \u2013 rather, it frees up time for fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working digitally does not come naturally to me: I confess, I have reams of hand-written notes left over from my degree and I still scribble … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68512,"featured_media":21053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[248696,227575,10269,155646,1],"tags":[95415,227613,257576,398,257575,70,44,721,205706],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20989"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21058,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20989\/revisions\/21058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}