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Recently I wrote an article in which I referred to ‘my notebook’.  Since then I have had several requests for some more information about ‘my notebook’.  At first I thought this to be slightly strange….I mean really what more explanation does the phrase ‘my notebook’ need?

However upon reflection I did remind myself that I have not always carried ‘my notebook’ with me and at different times in my life I have been slave to a diary, my calendars – digital and otherwise and scraps of paper for keeping notes and records of things I needed to do in a day.

It was actually whilst doing a creative writing subject a University that I was first introduced to the concept of carrying a notebook with me.  In this case it was to record thoughts, feelings, experiences and observations to be used in my writing.  I do still keep this type of notebook, although it is a much smaller version now…so that I am not weighed down as I run around being all the things I am in my life.  This notebook is part journal, part research.  The one I referred to in my recent article is very much a tool for me to use to keep me on track in my day.

I began to use this type of notebook when I realised that I was not a naturally organised person.  There are those who thrive on being organised but that is not me.  I am a bit of a hippy at heart and if I had the money to be a rich hippy I would do away with lists and diaries and just go with the flow.  However that is not possible and it would embarrass my kids if I ‘came out’ anyway!

Earlier today I read a quote about some people feeling better after a wardrobe organising session than they do after sex.  Okay, that is definitely not me, but I also understand that my life does not work if I don’t have some level of control over it.  I work in a field that demands it and for all my, ‘I am a hippy talk’, the truth is I like it too.  I can be much more relaxed when I am organised.  To deal with my lack of organising instinct, I have incorporated strategies into my life, like ‘my notebook’, which help me to be organised.  It did take some time to adjust to, but now using ‘my notebook’ is just a routine I follow, like brushing my teeth.

I guess the first thing to say about ‘my notebook’ is that it is not a ‘diary’.  I have tried to use diaries over the years but they just become a jumble of far too much information as I try to keep records of my, ‘to do lists’, other important information and my appointments in them.  These days I use my IPhone calendar and Outlook program to keep track of appointments and this works very well for me.  I am logged into both everyday and they send me reminders to let me know when I should be somewhere, which is very nice of them – my gorgeous leather bound diary never did that!

My notebook changes face every few years.  Originally it was a simple exercise book which I would cover in a collage of images that inspired me.  In recent years I have become less concerned with its look, although lately I feel drawn back to spending some time to complete this activity.  The main purpose of ‘my notebook’ however is definitely its functionality so I always ensure that it is not too large.   You want to be able to throw it in your handbag and take it with you – religiously (maybe not on a night out but everywhere else, ok!).

So, what is ‘my notebook?”

I use ‘my notebook’ firstly as a list of things I need to do in a day.  So the first thing it is, is a ‘to do list’.  Secondly I use it to record notes on conversations I have, emails I receive and respond to and just general thoughts I may have during the day.  It really is for every note I take down.  I have tried keeping personal and business things at separate ends (front and back) of the notebook, but this does not work for me.  Everything goes in there now.

To make ‘my notebook’ work there are several rules I observe without fail:

How to increase IQ? Look for the science and use your critical thinking.

Can you identify with any of these three scenarios? 1. You are a student preparing for a college admissions test. 2. You have graduated from college and are faced with the prospect of having to take a challenging job aptitude test to be interviewed for a competitive job. 3. You are a professional dealing with the pressures of a demanding career who feels the need to sharpen his cognitive performance. The common element in these scenarios? A pressing need for a high level of intelligence. You go to the Web for help and Google the keyword phrase: ‘how to increase IQ?’ The top ranking site advises the following: watch less TV, read more, use your nose and take a whiff of rosemary, listen to music with a good rhythm and beat, eat carbohydrates and proteins and believe in yourself because “if you believe you are more intelligent, you become more intelligent.” Site number two on the list advises you to inhale the scent of rosemary, write, listen to Mozart, speed read, talk more, do something you enjoy, and – once again – “believe you are smarter, and you’ll become smarter.” Other sites on the first page of your search offer similar advice.

Although these recommendations may sound reasonable, the reality is that they are not based on fact. As a cognitive neuroscientist with expertise in the science of IQ and methods to increase intelligence, I have made it a personal mission to increase awareness about misinformation about intelligence on the web. Smelling rosemary does not improve your intelligence. Nor does listening to music, nor eating more protein.  Of course eating protein is important for brain function just as it is vital for the functioning of every organ in the body, but eating MORE protein doesn’t help your IQ. Confidence and belief in yourself is important for taking intelligence tests because anxiety can impair performance, but increasing your self-belief doesn’t make you more intelligent. And the same goes for reading, writing or talking, nor doing something you enjoy, nor watching less TV.

So what advice can I give you if you have a need to improve intelligence and increase IQ and want to know what to do about it? Start off your inquiries with a skeptical attitude and always look carefully for the science that backs up a claim. Consider adopting the following information processing strategies.

Five strategies to help you steer clear ‘how to increase IQ’ misinformation.

1. Recommendations need to be backed up by facts. Be suspicious of personal recommendations where there is nothing else to corroborate them. Many ‘IQ improving’ methods are promoted with a wealth of user recommendations to create a wave of enthusiasm and self belief – and the intention is that you will get caught up in this and spread the word. Recommendations grab our attention and can appear persuasive and trustworthy. But they can mislead us. How can you tell that the recommendations are genuine and not made up? And many recommendations are simply the result of an uncritical positive thinking. Recommendations can of course be a good source of information in your investigation – but only after you are convinced by the hard facts underlying someone’s ‘increase IQ’ claims. And what substantiates those facts? The answer is science.

2. A scientific journal article for every claim. Always ask yourself: Where is the scientific research  article – published in a reputable journal – that an ‘increase your intelligence’ claim is based on? Where are the references to the research articles on the site? Where – for instance – is the journal article that demonstrates scientifically that Mozart makes you smarter? Where is the research paper that demonstrates that smelling Rosemary gives you an IQ increase? They don’t exist. It’s usually pretty obvious if a claim is based on published research. Take the time to look at the references. If there is no reputable journal article backing up an IQ related claim, then don’t trust it.

3. Who is the author and what are his or her credentials? Take a good look at who is responsible for promising ways to ‘increase IQ’ or ‘improve intelligence’.  Is the information written anonymously or by someone who is prepared to put their name to it? And is the author a qualified cognitive psychologist, or neuroscientist – working at a reputable university, with a PhD? If the author is not a professional scientist – not an expert – why trust the claims he or she makes?

4. Intelligence, or something else? Does the technique improve intelligence s

The money available for college scholarships or grants does not long for very last as there are thousands of students competing with you for that money. So here are some tips for you to grab that money before it runs out.

You have to be fast and not wait until the day of deadline. Apply for the scholarship or grant ahead of time, because even if you are deserving of the scholarship, other students will get your spot because they equally deserved but applied before you did. And once there is no more money, there are no more scholarships.

Do some research regarding the scholarships and grants for which you are eligible.  A great start would be The College Board website, www.collegeboard.com, which gives you an overview of different scholarships available to you. Also, see what is available to you on the Student Financial Aid Office website for your State, like for instance if you are living in the State of California you can start researching California Student Aid Commission, www.csac.ca,gov.

Make a plan and organize yourself. If the colleges you are planning to attend starts next fall then start working on your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as early as January. FAFSA will decide everything, whether you are eligible for scholar ships and grants. The deadline to submit FAFSA is usually the 1st of March, but a safe call would be to submit it no later than the 15th of February. The director of Financial Aid Off at Wayne State said, “Some scholarship programs run out of money and if your FAFSA isn’t in, you won’t be considered.”

You might be excited and enthusiastic while filling the scholarship forms, but do not make silly errors as this form will decide your fate. Go through the form entirely first before beginning to fill it. If you’re writing on paper, fill out the forms in legible hand writing.

Your essay is also an important part of the application. Be as specific and at the same time as creative as you can. Do not think that one essay can be used for every application, so you might have to write many essays during the application process. You may also want to check out various financial aid websites that can provide you with useful information and tips to help you out in your process of applying for either loans or education grants.

Once you get the acceptance letter from the university, contact the Financial Aid Office immediately to know what options are available to you.

If you’re stuck and need some help finding good information online try using Financial-Aid-Directory.com for finding the latest information on financial aid to help you when you need it most.

How to save time – and get RATED by clients

Most business reports are indigestible.Tony Scott offers a recipe for the weight-conscious.

Leaders of businesses and leaders of professional practices – more burdened than ever as an uncertain economy adds to their work but not to their workforces – need more than ever to drop some of the load.

Since even a cursory survey will show that they, like their clients, spend most of their time with screens and bits of paper – writing on them or reading them – diminishing that task would seem to be a particularly powerful route to lightness.

Everybody moans about having to write reports, and everybody moans about how boring most reports are to read. Few, however, put those two ideas together to come up with a solution for both complaints: write shorter. The other commonly applied tactic – read faster – doesn’t solve the problem, merely makes it easier to live with.

The leaders of consultancies and other business organisations could do much to reduce the problem themselves – and save whole forests of trees in the process – by refusing publicly to accept long reports from peers or subordinates.

A chief executive at Procter & Gamble once announced he would not read any report that filled more than one side of one sheet of paper. His lieutenants did not at first believe him. But when he politely returned longer reports to them through the internal mail – and ignored them – they rapidly got the message.

The result was not only that the chief executive saved himself hours of reading time. It was also that the lieutenants learned to think harder about what they needed to say.

Short reports have four additional advantages. First, they leave the author nowhere to hide: sloppy thinking will be apparent even to him or her. Second, they force authors straight into the meat of an issue, and out of the Background-Purpose-Method-Scope-Conclusion routine which so deadens a reader’s heart. Third, once the habit takes hold, reports take far less time to prepare and review. Fourth, and most important, clients – and bosses – prefer them.

Over more than 15 years, I’ve worked with thousands of senior businessmen and women – and hundreds of consultants – on the craft of writing reports for internal or external consumption in the private and public sectors, and have devised a simple five-stage model that seems to fit most circumstances and reduces the length of most reports by at least 80 per cent. It looks like this:

1 Remind the client (or boss) what his or her question was. There always is a question or questions of some sort, even if it or they are not explicit. Nobody ever wanted to spend much time reading or serious money buying a directionless ‘review’. Given the weeks or months between the time a client or boss asks for a report and the day it thuds on to his desk, starting your report in this way saves the reader the trouble of trying to remember why he asked you for the document – and the effort of hunting through his files when he can’t. It also helps to focus your mind very clearly on the purpose of the whole assignment.

2 Answer the question, as directly and briefly as possible. ‘Yes’, ‘No, unless…’, or ‘Buy an IBM next week’ are perfectly adequate answers for an executive summary. A crisp answer may be all that a business leader wants. But the chances are that most readers will want more. In particular, their natural response will typically be another question: ‘Why does your answer make sense?’ So…

3 Tell the reader why. The reasons for your answer will usually have to do with time, money, quality, risks or organisational convenience – from the reader’s point of view, not yours – and can be summarised in a handful of lines apiece. If detail is required, refer the reader on to a related section of…

4 Evidence: the salient facts which support each of the reasons you’ve given. This is not an excuse to throw in all your research material. It is a chance to demonstrate your ability to throw away the irrelevant. Finally, and critically…

5 Dare to stop. Repeating

You’ve done it! You’ve written the next great American novel. It took years to do it, but now it is ready to go. You just need to find a publishing house. You start sending the manuscript off, but just get form letter rejections back. What’s the problem? It might not be the content of your manuscript, but the formatting that is the problem.

We are a superficial society. Oh, come on. Admit it! We go for looks just about every time. There is a reason a Ferrari sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars and a Camry sells for slightly less. Image is everything and that also applies to the publishing industry. The reason, however, is not so much visual seduction as it is practical.

What does an editor spend the vast majority of their time doing? They read. Then they read some more. After that, they spend a few hours reading. As you can imagine, this can grow old very quickly. While they might receive a quality manuscript every so often, the vast majority of submissions are not so hot.

To keep from going insane, editors have built in filters that they use to eliminate the obviously weak copy being submitted. One of those filters is the formatting of the manuscript. There is a process that must be followed in formatting your work. If you fail to follow it, the work will not only be rejected – it will not be read! This is true if you are Bob Smith or Stephen King. Okay, it probably isn’t true for Stephen King, but you get the drift.

What are the formatting requirements? Well, each publisher is going to have slightly different ones. What does this mean? It means you need to go research them. You’ve spent considerable time and effort writing you novel. Don’t blow getting published by being lazy now! Still, there are some basic formatting guidelines used across the publishing industry. Let’s take a closer look.

The overriding goal is to make your manuscript as reader friendly as possible. Nobody likes to read even the best writing if the print is size 8. The first rule is to use white 8.5 x 11 paper. You want to use one inch margins all the top, bottom and sides of each page as well. Use black print, 14 size and double spacing so the editor doesn’t go blind trying to read the pages. Courier is the accepted font across the industry, but Times is also okay and I personally prefer it. Make sure to put a brief version of the title and the page number on each page. You don’t want the editor to mix the manuscript up with something else and not be able to find your contact information!

There are a few extra steps you need to follow as well. The front page should have your contact information in the upper left corner. The title of the manuscript should be in the middle of the page. The title should be in all CAPS and you should include any alternative pen name you might want to use.

Finally, add a cover letter to the top of your manuscript. Put it all in a box and send it off. Do not bind it. Do not clip it together. Just leave it as a stack and the editor will at least be willing to read the cover letter and first few pages. Many times, that is half the battle to getting published!

Writing eBooks is one of the ways to make money online. In today’s paperless society, the proliferation of eBooks became a phenomenon because it gives readers the capability to read and to take with them about a dozen books without having to carry loads of stuff. It is also a good way to save the environment since the books are no longer printed on paper. These eBooks are can be easily bought and downloaded through many different websites and can be stored in your computer and many other devices. This is why writers have now shifted on learning how to write eBooks to keep up with the trends.

Here is your step-by-step guide in writing your very own eBook:

Step 1 – Do your research

Choose the category of the eBook you want to write about. You have to also determine what the book will be written about. If you are starting out, it is best to research about topics and reports that have not been saturated by other writers. Choose subjects that are interesting and relevant to your target market.

Step 2 – Catchy Title

Try to come up with a good title that is sure to catch everybody’s attention. This title should give a bird’s eye view of what the readers could expect from your book. It should be appealing to the senses and creative.

Step 3 – Brief Introduction

One of the main concerns on how to write eBooks is writing about a brief introduction about your book. This shouldn’t be too hard, except if you have written a very complicated piece of work. However, you would at least need to shorten it a bit so it won’t take a lot of space in your marketing campaigns. It would also be a good way for people to see what you are offering to your readers that other eBooks don’t. Try to include a table of contents also after your introduction.

Step 4 – Know your Target Market

Try to tailor-fit your eBook to your target audience. This will help you streamline your ideas and get specific details that would reach out to your particular market. This also gives you a more specific outline on what to write about.

Step 5 – Edit carefully

This is probably one of the most neglected parts on writing eBooks. Before submitting for publishing, make sure you have edited your eBook carefully. Edit for grammars, and possible mistakes in spelling and typographical errors. Make sure that your outline was followed and that your sentences make perfect sense. Remember that readers can be very critical at times and that a lot of professionals may be viewing your work. So be careful in editing your piece. Use word-processing programs that have the option to check grammars and spellings to help you make the necessary revisions.

Now that you have a better idea on how to write eBooks, you may begin creating your very own book and market them soon. Just remember all of these steps and you are ready to go.

Writing papers and book reports has long been the bane of high school and college students’ existence. It seems that no matter how hard you work to stay caught up, there is always a paper due tomorrow. Using book notes to help get the ideas flowing can save you time, heartache, and the stress of getting a bad grade.

There are many styles and formats available now, but a book note typically includes a summary of a literary work, commentary on the subject matter and deeper meaning of the passages, and biographical information about the author. The best book notes are written by qualified people (i.e. a college degree in literature, or in the academic area the book note is covering). Most importantly, the book note you choose should be easy for you to use – after all, if the information is just as difficult to find in the book note as it is in the book, what’s the point?
When to use Book Notes

Book notes can help you out with more than just book reports. They provide valuable information you can use to write a paper about an author, philosopher, society, or culture. Let’s say you had to write a paper about nineteenth century Russian culture. You gather together a lot of information about what was going on politically, what kind of figures were popular, what the economy was like, etc. Imagine the authenticity you could add to your essay by including even a small part about Leo Tolstoy, a prominent Russian author from the nineteenth century.

Providing information connected to a specific person makes the essay much more enjoyable to read, and showcases your ability to provide breadth and depth of research. Naturally, it is not necessary for you to read all of Tolstoy’s works to know enough about him to include a piece in your essay. Book notes on one of his masterpieces will usually contain enough information for you to apply what you learn to your more general topic.
How to use a Book Note

The most important thing to remember about using book notes is they are not intended to be substitutes for reading the real book. You will miss out on the opportunity to read some of the greatest works of literature if you only read their book notes. Try reading the book note chapter by chapter after you read that chapter in the book. This helps confirm the ideas you come up with on your own, and will point out new ideas while the reading is still fresh in your mind.

Alternatively, you could also try reading the summary of each chapter before reading the chapter in the book. This will help direct your reading to find the things that are most important in each chapter, and will help you find new ideas that either agree or disagree with the ideas discussed in the book note.

When you sit down to write your paper, having already gone over the reading and the summary, you will have an arsenal of ideas on which you can rely to start writing the paper. Very rarely will you receive an essay assignment that is answered perfectly by the information in the book note, so you’ll have to pour some of your own thoughts into your paper.
Where to find Book Notes

The best things in life are not always free, but there are a lot of free resources available now online. The three best places I have found for book notes are SparkNotes.com, CliffNotes.com, and PinkMonkey.com. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages, so try each one out until you find the one that works best with your style.