Tag Archives: writing

My Morning Routine: reflections on reading this book

Benjamin Spall & Michael Xander, My Morning Routine London: Portfolio Penguin, 2018 This is a fascinating and easy-to-read book which has caused me to reflect carefully on what I do in the mornings. In the last few months I’ve been working with Michael Hyatt’s ideas on ordering your life so that you achieve the things you believe to be important to achieve, and one of his themes is about structuring your morning routine (he calls it ‘morning ritual’) so that you make a good start to Continue reading →

Two helpful recent productivity and writing posts

  Here are two recent posts which I’m finding helpful. The first is from patter (Professor Pat Thomson) about a new collection of short essays critiquing bad ideas about writing (which mostly seem to be US-based and derive from Strunk and White’s key book). Her summary is both clear and helpful (and a model of how to do so), and there is also a link to the book, which is freely available in digital format. The other is from the Nozbe team, and gives seven Continue reading →

Some useful blogs for study and research

Here are a six of my favourite blogs which offer helpful material to help doing with study and research—and the organisation required to accomplish those things. I thought others might be interested; please share other blogs and websites you have found helpful in the comments. Study Hacks is Cal Newport’s blog. He is the author of the superb books Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and teaches and researches in Computer Science at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Cal is simply excellent at Continue reading →

Review of Deep Work by Cal Newport

Here’s a helpful review of Cal Newport’s outstandingly good book Deep Work, a book which I read with great profit when it first came out. It’s by Imogen Mathew, and found on the Thesis Whisperer, a very useful and readable blog for those involved in PhD work (and their supervisors—I find it very helpful). Thanks Imogen and Inger Mewburn!

How I researched and wrote a conference paper

Our St Mary’s education journal ReflectED has just published an article of mine reflecting on the process of writing a conference presentation, called ‘Thinking it through: researching and writing a conference paper’. It’s freely available online in the full pdf issue here. The reference is: Steve Walton, ‘Thinking it through: Researching and Writing a Conference Paper’, ReflectED 7 (2016), 3-5. The article is based on a talk I gave at our St Mary’s University School of Education, Theology and Leadership research conference last June. In the Continue reading →