Yossi Gerson - Practical Notes

By Yosef (Yossi) Gerson A reminder that appears while you cannot act often becomes another thing to dismiss. “Return the book” might be clear enough at the library desk. On a busy morning, it still leaves several jobs: find the book, put it in your bag and choose when to go. Before assigning a date, decide what should bring the task back to your attention. Sometimes you need a particular time. Sometimes the useful moment is after another action, or before leaving a place. A reminder works better as a plan when it says both what to notice and what to do next. The examples here are hypothetical. You can use them in an ordinary calendar, task list or paper note. They do not depend on a particular app or an automatic location alert. Start with the moment you can act Suppose a library book is due on Friday. A Friday reminder records the deadline, but it does not reserve a chance to return it. If your next convenient visit is Thursday afternoon, you may want a preparation reminder on We...

By Yosef (Yossi) Gerson A notes folder can hold a good idea, an expired reminder, a reservation and half a shopping list. The problem is not that they all exist. It is that you have to figure out what each one means every time you open the folder. A short reset gives those notes a next use. Try the ten-minute routine below on a small group of recent notes. The time limit is a practical boundary for the exercise, not a claim that an entire archive can be organized in ten minutes. Illustration: giving loose notes a useful home. Illustration for Practical Notes by Yosef (Yossi) Gerson: separate actions, reference material and archived notes. Minutes 0-2: Choose a small working set Open the place where you have been putting new notes. Select the most recent items you can reasonably review in one sitting. Leave the older archive alone for now. Do not begin by choosing a new app, designing folders or renaming everything. First find out what these particular notes need to do. Suppose the work...

A position graph can tell you where something is without telling you how far it has travelled. This worked lesson follows one small, hypothetical journey, checks the answer in two ways, then removes an assumption to show what the measurements cannot establish. By Yosef Gerson, also publishing as Yossi Gerson. For curious readers learning introductory physics. You need subtraction, division and the ability to read a graph; no calculus is required. 1. State what the graph represents Imagine a cart moving on one straight track. Choose its starting point as x = 0 metres and call movement to the right positive. In this idealized model it moves at a constant velocity between each pair of marked times: (0 s, 0 m), (2 s, 4 m), (4 s, 4 m), (7 s, -2 m). The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis is position along the track, not height above the ground and not accumulated distance. The cart does not climb a hill when the line rises. It is farther to the right. The straight segments are part o...

By Yossi Gerson Imagine a walk with two equal sections. You cover the first two kilometers at four kilometers per hour and the next two at two kilometers per hour. What is your average speed for the whole walk? Three kilometers per hour is a tempting answer: add four and two, then divide by two. But the two sections take different amounts of time. The slower section occupies more of the walk, so it has more influence on the average. The examples below use invented journeys and constant speeds within each section. They are arithmetic models, not travel estimates. Start with distance and time Average speed describes the distance covered per unit of elapsed time over a chosen interval. OpenStax's Speed and Velocity gives the definition and distinguishes it from instantaneous speed and average velocity. For a whole journey, use: Average speed = total distance divided by total elapsed time. The first section is two kilometers at four kilometers per hour. Its time is two divided...

By Yosef Gerson (Yossi) Seventy-five is more than sixty. That is a straightforward comparison until the question changes from “How many?” to “What share?” Imagine two weeks of a small project. In the first week, 60 of 80 planned tasks were completed. In the second, 75 of 125 were completed. More tasks were finished in the second week, but a smaller share of the planned work was completed. Both statements are true. Choosing the useful one starts with understanding what the numbers actually measure. Visual guide by Yossi Gerson. Hypothetical task totals; comparison worksheet . Put the question above the calculation Before calculating a change, finish this sentence: “I want this comparison to tell me whether ______.” If the question is how much work was completed, compare the counts. If it is whether the plan was met, compare completed work with planned work. If it is whether the workload is realistic, you may also need information about task size, people available and work carried over. ...

By Yosef Gerson (Yossi) “Get ready” is a reminder. “Put the charger in the bag” is a step you can finish. That difference is easy to miss when writing a checklist. The person making the list understands what each item means. The person using it later may be tired, interrupted or trying to leave on time. Even when they are the same person, they need different kinds of help. A useful checklist makes the next action clear without making a small task feel like a procedure manual. Start with one recurring situation and write for the moment when the list will actually be used. Illustration: preparing for an overnight trip. Illustration for Practical Notes by Yossi Gerson: make each checklist item a concrete action. Name the moment the list begins “Travel checklist” can mean anything from choosing a destination to checking out of a hotel. A narrower title does some of the organizing for you: “Before leaving for an overnight trip.” That list starts when the bag is being packed and ends when yo...

By Yosef Gerson (Yossi) You have narrowed a decision to two good options. Both fit the budget. Both have something you want. Yet each time you return to the choice, a different advantage seems more important. The next step is to identify the tradeoff you are willing to make. A short decision note can help you do that without reopening the entire comparison. Illustration: comparing two appealing day-trip options. Start with the outcome you want Describe a successful result before comparing features. For a day trip, the goal might be a relaxed afternoon together. An itinerary with five attractions may look better on paper, but a long drive could leave less time for the afternoon itself. Keep the goal specific enough to rule things out. "A good trip" gives you little help. "An unhurried afternoon, within $150, and home by dinner" gives you something to test each option against. Separate requirements from preferences A requirement determines whether an option qua...