Friday Round-up of Tips, Help, and Advice

Today is a round-up of tips to browse through while you try to find motivation to make it through the Friday work day. I can’t believe we are coming into the last week in May, that it is still raining regularly where I live, and that ALA Annual is going to be happening in about a month. Where does the time go? In the interest of saving time, let’s get right to the productivity tips.

I think Lifehacker has some of the best summaries of productivity tips and hacks. Check out the Top 10 motivation boosters and procrastination killers. Great stuff, especially when it is Friday and all you can think about is the weekend.

Also, in the interest of productivity, check out the Top 10 ways to upgrade your morning routine. Personally, I’m a morning person (it has a lot to do with once working for a bakery and (unrelated) doing bird counts when you have to be up before the dawn chorus), but I know a lot of people aren’t and need a little motivation in the morning. Check out the tips and I’m sure you can have productive mornings, even if you don’t love them. I need a list of the “top ten ways to upgrade the middle of the afternoon when any sane person is taking a siesta”, but I digress.

Librarians, and savvy library users, already know that public libraries are great places to check for free passes to museums and events. However, a lot of people, probably the vast majority of people, don’t know about this great service. I was very excited to see this short piece on Lifehacker, no less, Check your local library for free museum, concert, and event tickets. I loved Boston Public Library had a great program, though I wonder about its viability given the massive budget issues it is now facing.

Finally, on the tip front, it is getting to be vacation time up here in the Northern Hemisphere so check out a savvy traveler’s guide to vacationing abroad. It completely makes me want to travel abroad this summer.

Oh, and some shameless self-promotion. For those of you dear readers who are going to ALA Annual, I will be speaking on Sunday, June 27th along with Megan Oakleaf from 1:30-3:30 in Room 146B at the Washington Convention Center. Our talk is titled, “Question, Find, Evaluate, Apply: Translating Evidence-Based Practice to Information Literacy Instruction.” Come by and say hi. We’d love a full house for our talk. Okay, shameless self-promotion is over, back to the Friday fun stuff.

And because, once again, xkcd did not fail to delight, we (almost) end with today’s comic strip:
Infrastructures comic strip by xkcd

My very good friend, Hanna, who writes the amazing …fly over me, evil angel… (extra bonus points if you know what song that’s from) has a custom/tradition/thing to have Friday blog posts sharing awesome YouTube videos. I think it’s lovely, and so completely riffing off of her (and giving you a nice, short break from all that productive work you are doing), we’ll end with this amazing video–seriously how do people do that with cards?

Have a lovely weekend (whatever the weather brings), read a lot (I happen to be enjoying Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad at the moment), and there will be more tips next week on The Waki Librarian.