With blogging, my poor essay writing skills have deteriorated to what can only possibly be called high school level.
It can’t even be called prep school level but rather the average high school in an average community level.
Linked are some good advice to bolster your essay writing skills.

Students (grad students too) should read this essay closely, then read it again. I give tips to my students on writing, but Farrell’s are more and better (and better written).
Below the fold, from my undergrad African development course, the 10 tips I give my students for writing an essay (in their case, a book review).
via How to write an essay – Chris Blattman.

Excellent set of advice on how to answer hard problems.

Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions
I've collected some tips and tricks for answering hard questions, some of which may be original, and others I may have read somewhere and forgotten the source of. Please feel free to contribute more tips and tricks, or additional links to the sources or fuller explanations.

Liked the advice below, problem is that I can’t adhere to it. I just begin to obsess on the problem and can’t go to sleep.  I really need more discipline!

Sleep on it. I find that I tend to have a greater than average number of insights in the period of time just after I wake up and before I get out of bed. Our brains seem to continue to work while we’re asleep, and it may help to prime it by reviewing the problem before going to sleep.
via Less Wrong: Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions.

What Makes Great Teachers Great?
“Strong teachers insist that effective teaching is neither mysterious nor magical,” says Ripley. “It is neither a function of dynamic personality nor dramatic performance.”
Instead, Teach for America has identified the following traits as the most important for high-performing teachers such as Taylor:
1. They set big goals for their students and are perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness.
(In the Atlantic article, Teach for America’s in-house professor, Steve Farr, noted that when he sets up visits with superstar teachers they often say something like: “You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you — I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure…because I think it’s not working as well as it could.” )
2. They’re obsessed about focusing every minute of classroom time toward student learning.
3. They plan exhaustively and purposefully, “working backward from the desired outcome.”
4. They work “relentlessly”…”refusing to surrender.”
5. They keep students and their families involved in the process.
An expert quoted in the article summarized the findings: “At the end of the day…it’s the mind-set that teachers need — a kind of relentless approach to the problem.”
The first four traits above should sound familiar. Setting big goals, working backwards from results to process, perpetually trying to improve, relentless focus — these sound a lot like the traits of deliberate practice.
via Study Hacks » Blog Archive » On Great Teachers and the Remarkable Life: A Deliberate Practice Case Study.

The whole post is about how to win against time. It’s a short fun read. Read the whole thing.

Do what you love
We always find time to do what we love. When you do what you love, you do it well – you make a good job of it and you are rewarded along the way. Some things you just love for no discernible reason, and doing these things is no chore. When you’re doing something that makes you feel good and gives you a sense of purpose and achievement, you are at your most effective.
It is a great tragedy that so many people do jobs they hate, seeing their work only as a way of earning money to enable them to really enjoy themselves at weekends or during vacations. Such people are truly wasting their time. Of course, we can’t just choose to change our job, bur it is possible to find ways of enjoying our work – there are good things about every job, and by focusing on these things, they will grow and the job will become more enjoyable.
via Becoming Friends with Your Nemesis: Time – by Dumb Little Man.

This is a nice list I don’t agree with completely, but its a worthy read nonetheless. Read the whole thing from the linked article.

Bias against action: There are always plenty of reasons not to take a decision, reasons to wait for more information, more options, more opinions. But real leaders display a consistent bias for action. People who don’t make mistakes generally don’t make anything. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy argued that a good decision today is worth far more than a perfect decision next month. Beware prevaricators.
Love of procedure: Managers who cleave to the rule book, to points of order and who refer to colleagues by their titles have forgotten that rules and processes exist to expedite business, not ritualize it. Love of procedure often masks a fatal inability to prioritize — a tendency to polish the silver while the house is burning.
Long hours: In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you’d better not let him manage anyone else.
via 10 signs of incompetent managers | View from the Cubicle | TechRepublic.com.