2.17 one notebook to rule them all - research notebooks
i have never felt jealousy like i did the day i heard about research notebooks.
but my jealous can be your gain - learn all about why keeping a notebook might help you develop more insights into your research process! i give flexible examples, and reflection questions to help you see what things you might want to record in yours!
resources mentioned
dr. raul pacheco-vega's everything notebook
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I have never experienced jealousy like I did when somebody described their research notebook to me. And so i have done the hard work of translating it into a tool that any phd student can use. On this week's episode of
📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for a brand new summer planning template, all available for you for free. Now. Let's get into it.
The first time I heard of a research journal, I was talking to a client who worked in a wet lab and was required to keep a research journal that stayed in the lab at all times. They kept track of the experiments that they ran, the reagents that they used, all kinds of good stuff. They kept notes about preliminary findings.
It seems like a dream to me, especially as a humanities PhD. First of all, the idea of a lab was immensely appealing a place to go and do your research instead of just on the couch. But mostly I really loved this idea of being required to keep track of what I did during the day, the steps I took, the literature I reviewed the sources I consulted. How helpful would that be?
And as someone who can regularly lose whole days or weeks to research tangents or record of what I did sounded so good and so useful. Now several years later as a coach, I recommend research journals to a lot of my clients. And now by extension to you, dear listeners on this podcast. There are as many ways to keep a research notebook as there are research projects. So infinity number of ways,
but most methods boil down to two key functions. One that it's in a singular location. Digital or analog where you get in the habit of checking in and checking out at the start and end of each work session. And feature number two, it's a way to capture the day-to-day of your research process.
Experiments, run materials, use boxes, process literature, read, et cetera, so that you can go back and refer to it when, and if you need it. And that's it. A notebook where you keep everything all in one place and that everything, or the steps of your research.
Perhaps the most famous of these research notebooks methodologies is Dr. Pacheco Vegas, everything notebook. I'm going to include a bunch of links in the show notes where you can learn more about his method. But basically he buys a specific notebook. He color codes, everything, there are pens, there's a system and it's a notebook that holds everything. It doesn't matter what research project he's working on, what stage of the project he's in, everything goes into this notebook and when he fills it up, he archives it.
And so he knows that everything literally that has influenced or touched his research process is in one of those notebooks somewhere. How helpful. I will say that you should explore his method for yourself. He does a much better job of explaining it than I do, but for me, the idea of the everything notebook became a little bit overwhelming.
I often had multiple projects on the go and I just can't be trusted to keep the same notebook and the same pens. And remember. From day to day, the specific, detailed color coding system that he uses. But if you're looking for something a little bit more flexible, I've got ideas and tips for you.
First of all in the digital realm, there are also lots of helpful examples of how and why you might keep a research notebook or a research journal. Some are run in LaTeX, some are based in notion and I will include those links in the show notes. As usual. I think that the specific tool that you use is so much less important than the intent or the function that you're using that tool for. Lots of tools can store information in a way that's linked in searchable. So it's really important is getting clear on what you want to keep track of.
So to that end in today's short and sweet research journal exploration. I have a few reflection questions that might help you. Guide the creation of what a research journal or notebook could look like for you. So. Sit down. Maybe pause this podcast and sit with these questions. Question number one.
What are the types of information that you most wish that you could recall after a long day or week of work? What are the things that slip your mind? What are the things that would be most useful? What are the things that you most wish. Would be automatically, or at least had a system to be captured.
Question number two. What are the types of information that are hard for you to reconstruct? Is it where your time goes? Is it hard for you to know what you worked on from day to day? Is it all just one big blur of a draft? Is it hard to know what specific things that you worked on, you started the day in one document you ended in one document and you're not really sure what happened in between.
Is it hard for you to remember? Or what is it hard for you to remember or reconstruct what motivated you to pull a certain source in the beginning or to make a certain experimental choice or the settings on the lab equipment that you were using? What's the kind of information that is hard for you to reconstruct after the fact, even if it seems really clear in the moment.
Research question number three. Would it be helpful for you to narrate? In a place where you can access them afterwards. Rather than just in your mind, the process that you follow during the course of your research. So many times I'm working with clients and they, I say, okay, you're sitting down with a new chapter, explain to me your process. And they can't really, they have.
It's vague sense that they start with an outline. They do some amount of research, but mostly it's a process that's driven by anxiety. That they do a whole lot of research that feels relatively unbounded. And then all of a sudden the deadline comes up and boom. They're anxious, they start to write. So would it be helpful for you to narrate the choices that you're making on a more day-to-day basis so that you can decide if you want to keep doing them or not?
Is it that you always need to pull every source in the library of Congress catalog? Heading of your specific research question. Every time you sit down, do you always need to read every article or did it work pretty well when you started writing a little bit earlier?
That's the kind of data that you can analyze. If it's written down in a research notebook.
And last but not least. How accurate are your perceptions of how you spend your research and writing time? Would a more concrete record help you counteract any inaccuracies? For my own sake. I am a deeply inaccurate judge of where all of my time goes.
Which is why I rely on a variety of different tools, whether those are time-tracking tools or a research notebook to help me remember what I did in any given day. Because if you ask me either, I'm going to misremember the amount of time that I spent on each thing. Or I'm going to forget things altogether.
So if you find that it would be helpful for you to have a more accurate record. Maybe for more accurate planning, then you might want to explore or research notebook.
And if these are the kinds of concrete tips that sound cool to you, then I really encourage you to check out the community. It is $5 a month. It's full of articles, resources, a coaching call library. There's actually a private podcast feed there, but mostly it's a place for graduate students to show up and say, Hey.
What is this thing called a citation manager, or how are you managing to balance syllabus creation with everything else that you're trying to do this summer? We've got challenges. There are prizes. There's all kinds of support in there and I encourage you to check it out. Otherwise, I will see you right back here next week.
Thank you so much for listening.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!