The beginning of the winter term, or spring semester, or whatever your current chronological unit is called on your campus, is always kind of exciting and kind of hectic, like the beginning of any academic season. But if your campus is anything like mine, in addition to thousands of students, you have several colds and viruses arriving on campus during those first few weeks, which can make life difficult for students and faculty alike. Here are some tips from the ProfHacker archives on things you can do to enhance your physical well-being and to help get through it if you do get sick. Staying Healthy

• Erin offers tips on how to fit exercise into your busy semester in The Rule of 200: Fitness Edition
• Kathleen discusses Prioritizing Exercise by putting it first and making it social.
• I wrote about some analog and digital ways to keep track of your water intake if you'd like to make...

Chapter 8 of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography recounts how his desire for self-improvement wasn't in itself enough to beat the force of habit:

As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.

He realizes that "mere speculative conviction" about what would be the right thing to do isn't enough, and that "the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established" in order to live his ideal life. So Franklin developed a method that continues to be adopted and adapted by many people today, including Gretchen Rubin, whose Happiness...

How do your eyes feel right now? How long have you been sitting at the computer? Chances are pretty good that if you're an academic, you spend a significant number of hours each day reading from printed material and from the computer screen. Dry, itchy, or irritated eyes can be caused by a number of factors, including fatigue, allergies, medication, and aging. However, there are some simple self-care strategies you can use throughout your day to improve the comfort and health of your eyes. (Please note that these general recommendations should not replace medical care. If you have a medical condition or experience pain or other serious symptoms, consult your health care practitioner.) Change Your Focusing Distance Spending too much time at the same focus distance is one of the primary causes of eye fatigue, particularly when you're focusing at fairly close range. Every 40 minutes or so...

If you will be teaching in Summer or Fall terms, chances are good that the deadline for placing your textbook order is coming up pretty soon. Perhaps it's already passed. But if you're like many faculty, you haven't yet placed your textbook order. Soon you'll get a reminder email. And another one. Maybe a phone call. Maybe the threat of some kind of consequence if you don't meet the next deadline. And so on. I've even heard stories of faculty who haven't ordered textbooks mere weeks or days before the term starts. Why? Based on my own experience and that of colleagues and friends I've spoken with, there are three main reasons why we tend to put off this task. We don't have enough information.

• If you haven't decided which books you want to use, then you don't have enough information. If you haven't decided what sub-topics you're going to focus on in your course, then you don't...

If you read books, blogs, or other materials devoted to productivity, time management, or goal setting, sooner or later you will encounter the 80-20 rule, also commonly called Pareto's Principle. It derives from the work of Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who showed that 80 percent of that country's wealth was controlled by 20 percent of its population. This formulation of the relationship between causes and effects was adapted by other social scientists and later applied to a variety of other contexts, often with the tag phrases "the trivial many" and "the vital few." Proponents of this principle use it to analyze where the best results come from and where one's focus and energy should be applied. In business contexts, it's frequently used to suggest that 80 percent of your profit will come from 20 percent of your clients. In academic terms, you could use this rule to consider...

Although some of the ProfHacker team would probably do better than others in handling a bear attack or the zombie apocalypse, in general I think it's fair to say that part of the ProfHacker mindset includes the old maxim "Be Prepared." A little action now can save you a lot of time and frustration should something unexpected occur.

Prepare for the Weather

As we head into fall, it's worth revisiting George's Anticipate the Commute (and the comments by other PHers), which recommends updating your regular auto maintenance tasks and switching out the summertime items in your trunk for rain, mud, and snow gear as appropriate for your region.

At a more pedestrian level, how many umbrellas do you have? Do you have them where and when you need one? Pick up a couple cheap ones to keep in your office or in your car for those mornings when you forget to check the forecast.

Back Up Your Digital...

Stever Robbins, aka the Get-It-Done Guy, is the creator of a series of popular productivity podcasts, the host of productive "action days" for his online community, and now the author of a new book Get-It-Done Guy's 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More.

One of Robbins's distinctive qualities as a productivity expert is his engaging sense of humor and straightforward approach to solving problems. Rather than fill his pages with lengthy theories or case studies about why we procrastinate or fail to set clear goals, Robbins assumes that as human beings we are all prone to make similar kinds of mistakes, and quickly moves on to offering solutions.

His book is, as you would expect from the title, organized into 9 chapters:

1. Live on Purpose
2. Stop Procrastinating
3. Conquer Technology
4. Beat Distractions to Cultivate Focus
5. Stay Organized
6. Stop Wasting Time
7. Optimize
8. Build Stronger...

One of the characteristics of academic work is that it is often portable and can occur in a variety of settings.

Here are tips and ideas from the ProfHacker archives about the various spaces in which academic work happens. Where to you like to work?

The office

As most of us have returned to the semester's routine, it seems that offices have been on the ProfHacker mind: Erin asked How is Your Workspace Furnished and George asked an Open Thread question What Does Your Office Door Look Like.

I wrote about Organizing Your Teaching Materials, which can often take up a significant amount of space in your office, as Jason points out in What Will You Throw Away Today.

Jason shared a picture of his workspace and linked to those of a few others. Some of our readers joined in the fun and posted pictures to the ProfHacker Flickr group. Of course, if your primary office is at home, you may have more...

In the United States and Canada, curriculum vitae (Latin for "the course of a life"), or "CV" in common parlance, refers to a document that describes an academic's educational background and professional experience. It's often thought of as something like an academic's resumé, with the important difference that the CV is typically comprehensive (and therefore long) and a resumé is selective (and short). A copy of your CV will frequently be requested when applying for academic jobs, grants, or conferences. It's important to note, however, that in Europe and the UK, the term CV refers to a shorter document similar to the resumés produced for corporate contexts in the United States. Thus many websites offering "CV advice" are actually aimed at European jobseekers rather than academics.

If you are already employed, your institution may require that promotion or website CVs follow a set...

So now that the semester is underway, course enrollments have settled down, and you've learned your students names, maybe discussion is going well, with most of your students enthusiastically participating. But if it's not—maybe you've got Domineering Danny monopolizing the conversation, or a general shyness settling over the room when you ask a question—here are some tips from the archives.

Structure the Discussion

Nels's excellent post on Leading Effective Classroom Discussions on Controversial Issues offers some good suggestions for managing any kind of class discussion, even one that isn't organized around hot button topics. Nels suggests "keeping the focus on the issues" by using structured questions, rather than just "what do you think"; "use the words of others to guide the discussion" by providing short quotations from secondary sources; and "avoid binaries as much as...