Cornell University

50 minutes on, 10 off.

This is classic learning theory. Most human brains can tolerate two or three repetitions of 50 minutes of focused, active learning followed by 10 minutes of walking around, push ups, checking email, or getting water. I like to track my learning at school with toggl. I have experimented with many internet activity tracking tools, but toggl seems to work the best. I like that I can press the start button and see the clock begin. Toggl also provides utility in the work place. I have a dual screen setup, so the timer one one screen reminds me that I am clocked in and need to work on one project at a time. Nonetheless, I have retired to 50 on, 10 off cycle for cubicle life. After my first few weeks as an intern at Organic Valley, I realize that distractions, new projects, and unexpected tasks prevent even 30 minutes of uninterrupted work.

Daily Schedule/To Remember Schedule Method.

It’s hard to find a rhythm in college, so one needs organizational tools that complement a mutable lifestyle. Cal Newport’s method is the one that I have found to be the most suitable. It requires that you define a rough schedule in the morning for about ten minutes. On the left side of an 8 1/5 x 11 or any scrap piece of paper you write, “Schedule” and on the right, “To Remember.” I like to record mine in a moleskin. You follow the schedule during the day and capture any to-dos in the “To Remember” column. The next morning, you add whatever you didn’t complete from the previous and the new to-dos to the “schedule.” Rinse and repeat. This works well in the office. It prevents the scattering of forces that often happens when emails come in and one starts working on five things at once. When the mental multitasking urges begin to simmer, one can refer to the “Schedule” and get back on track. The main difference between college and work is that to-dos or problem sets are called “action items.” I think this is funny for some reason. Probably because action seems to be the last thing anyone is doing in an office. I like this method and will continue to utilize it.

Memory Palace

This is a method of memorizing information that provides little utility in the office. There are no exams, so there is little need to memorize things. The memory palace theory of learning is one of the earliest methods of memorization, used before things were compulsively recorded in ink. It involves first visualizing a familiar spacial location and a path within the location. It could be a palace, or a childhood home, or a familiar street. If you want to remember a grocery list, for example, you begin in the first place, hence the expression “in the the first place” and you imagine the item in a crazy, lewd, outlandish situation. Suppose the first item is socks. You create in your mind’s eye a pile of socks the size of a car, the rotting smell of clothes taken from a gym locker you’re cleaning out after two months, and even some of the socks are crawling around, like maggots. That’s an image you probably won’t forget. The whole point is to take the banal and turn it into a memorable image. Anyway, the time this is useful in the office place is when you need to memorize a speech, otherwise it’s useless.

Every month at Organic Valley’s headquarters, there is a P&W, which stands for Powwow, an event that circles around CEO George Siemon’s “State of the co-op” talk that updates everyone on the happenings of the co-op and the organic market in general. The P&W is an hour and half long and gathers about 500 employees down into cafe for the event. This month, I was also on the agenda. I spoke for a half hour on the enterprises and practices of my family’s farm and  outlined Generation Organic, the project I am working on this summer and have been involved in since 2008. This month, the news was that Organic Valley projects a 13% growth rate for the year, which would put gross sales around $7 million.  Organic Valley is growing very quickly, perhaps a little too quickly for some, as a few parts of the business end at the HQ need to be optimized. In a nut shell, there are cases of work overlap.  As the company grows, it will have to streamline and become more efficient.

I am working on a bunch of projects. Today, we laid out the framework for a video contest for our Gen-O farmers.  We want our farmers to make a fun, original video about their farm, a day of chores, or something that makes their situation different than other farms.  It would act as a marketing tool for co-op and as a chance for our young Gen-O farmers to get some publicity about their farm.  We want to offer a really cool first prize, something like a SLR digital camera or a Flipcam to create a large enough incentive for our farmers to make a video.  The videos will be 2 to 4 minutes long. Transparency is a hot button topic in the food world, so what many companies are doing, namely Organic Valley and Stony Field, is creating bios and videos about their farmers to really connect eaters with their food, to demonstrate that there are real family farms providing for the company.  When total transparency becomes the norm, Organic Valley will be ahead of the curve.

Last February, I was accepted to attend the TEDx “Changing the way we eat” conference in New York City.  They just put out a request to attendees from last year asking them to submit applications to become a speaker for the 2012 conference.  They want the speaker to highlight a project they are started or are involved in that has caused an impact on the way that a community eats.  I am going to apply to be a speaker, citing the Generation Organic “Know your farmer, own your food, drive your future” bus tour from Fall 2010 as a project that caused the impact they desire.  The Gen-O bus tour was a two week trip around the Northeast with stops mostly at college campuses to talk with students about the importance of knowing where their food comes from and knows who grows their food.  We made over 8.2 million media impressions, so I think it stands a chance at winning the contents, especially with the “truck farmer” that spoke last year.

Speaking of the bus tour, we are moving forward with the West Coast Bus Tour for this fall.  It leaves Wisconsin on September 28th and ends at the Bioneers conference on October 17th.  The tour dovetails with Cornell’s Fall Break, so I will be on the last 7 or 8 days of bus. This works out nicely as I am one of the speakers at Bioneers on Friday, October 16. Generation Organic is gaining traction every day, and I get so excited to go into work I can hardly stand it.