One of the things we are all hit with when we start (and throughout) grad school is the constant onslaught of information. You get tons of emails daily. There’s so much literature to read to catch up to your field, and you never totally catch up because there’s more and more and more literature published every day. You have classes and TAing and probably grading. You are looking for a lab you want to work in for the next several years. It’s overwhelming. You will be overwhelmed. It’s ok. We all figure out how to handle this information overload over time. The goal of this post is to give you an overview on some techniques/ideas I use to help you on your way to finding the best methods of organization for you. I hope this post serves as a resource for you. This is not the only way to do it and I’ve linked to additional resources throughout the post if you want to learn more.
In this post, I’ll cover:
- Why I spent the time focusing on this so late in my graduate career
- The Eisenhower Matrix for setting priorities
- The PARA method for organizing information based on how it fits into your life
- The “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method for triaging the onslaught of information
- The tools I use (and some I’ve tried)
Throughout the post, I’ll sprinkle in examples of tools and how I use these methods in my career/life. All tools mentioned (and additional ones I’ve tried/use) can be found at the end of the post.
Why I spent the time focusing on this so late in my graduate career
I recently started learning the effective methods of organization and productivity. Why? It wasn’t as though I had no organization scheme (you can ask my parents, I’ve always been hyper-organized). I’ve spent the last several years observing people in the career I want (professor at an R1 institution) and I came to this general conclusion: they have way more information overload and obligations than a grad student does. Translation: I need to get a handle on how to juggle everything now before I’m completely buried. My real goal is to avoid burnout by reducing the effort and time it takes me to do certain types of low-value tasks.
One of the major factors that leads to this feeling of crushing information overload is that other people are not you. The organizational structure of grant agencies, universities, journals, your advisor, etc. comes down to what is effective for them and has nothing to do with whether or not it is beneficial to you. And you can’t necessarily tell the grant agency, “Hey, your interface for searching for relevant grants is not intuitive” so you need to figure out workarounds that function well for you.
Your goal: make your system (nearly) immune to external forces. So, how do you make your system immune to the many sources of information piling on top of you? One of the first steps is to become more self-aware, especially concerning your priorities.
The Eisenhower Matrix for setting priorities
Before you start using any tool, you need to understand yourself and what your needs are. Your needs are probably different than mine, but I find that the Eisenhower Matrix is globally effective for improving your self-awareness.
Becoming self-aware is not an overnight change. I reevaluate my values and mission in life frequently. I’m pretty solid in what I want now career- and life-wise, so using the Eisenhower Matrix to determine what tasks are important/urgent to me is much easier now than when I first started. The goal is to categorize incoming items on a scale of urgency and importance. In terms of importance, these are the things that improve your overall quality of life. Urgency is pretty self-explanatory, but depends on the deadline of the item.
From every description I’ve read, the overall goal is to reside mostly in quadrant II, the Important/Not Urgent regime. In QII, you are making strides to improve your quality of life at your own pace like learning new skills and techniques. QI is where I find most of my work tasks reside. If I have a presentation on my research next week, it benefits my career (important) and has a deadline (urgent). QIII is best explained as tasks that are delegated to you that have limited influence on improving your life. For example, updating the lab website. This benefits your lab and advisor (maybe you, but doesn’t have a direct effect) and has a sense of urgency behind it. QIV is best explained as doom-scrolling. QIV is keeping you from achieving your best self.
Ask yourself, “how much time do I spend in each quadrant and is it detracting from my productivity?” If I’ve caused an existential crisis, I apologize, but asking these types of tough questions will help you in your career in the long-run.
The PARA method for organizing information based on how it fits into your life
I find the PARA method extremely effective for organizing information. I use it in nearly every aspect of my life. It makes it faster for me to find the information I’m looking for without requiring extensive planning of where things go. If you are interested in learning more, Tiago Forte’s blog is the place to go.
Briefly, Forte divides his life into 4 repositories that range from more actionable to less actionable:
- Projects are actionable items that have tasks to complete
- Manuscripts
- Experiments
- Cleaning the house
- Areas are locations in your life that often have projects associated with them, but aren’t necessarily actionable
- Work
- Relationships
- Household
- Cat
- Resources are things you need to reference, but aren’t typically acting on
- Peer-reviewed Literature
- Books
- Notes
- Archive contains all the things you aren’t focusing on right now that you don’t necessarily want to delete
- Old Projects
- Old Areas
- Old Resources
Using this organization system, you can reduce the amount of time you spend looking for information and reduce the likelihood of losing important information. There are other ways to organize, but I’ve already found that I spend the majority of my time in my Projects folder and quite a bit less in Areas. I also live in my Resources folder simply because I spend so much time reading literature. I know if I’m looking for that manuscript I was working on, it’s going to be in the Projects folder. If I’m looking for a paper from a certain group, I already know exactly where I need to go to scan my current set of Resources.
Example: Organizing peer-reviewed literature into a streamlined database
Tools I use: Zotero,* Web browser Zotero Add-on (for quick download of literature), Google Drive (for storing PDFs), DrawboardPDF (for annotating PDFs)
*Zotero is my reference manager of choice and will absolutely be discussed at length in a later post
In terms of literature, I started out my Ph.D. printing out every paper I wanted to read. Problematically, that’s not the most searchable system. I bought a Surface so I could annotate PDFs digitally because one of my coworkers did that and, let me tell you, life changing. I could now search for articles digitally. But I would still have issues finding the articles and I couldn’t figure out a great way of organizing them. If you haven’t yet, you’ll learn soon that the ACS journals don’t have descriptive titles of their PDFs, so I also had to go through and rename them. At the time, I liked naming them “First Author_Journal_Year_short description of paper.pdf.” Later, I realized that the group the paper came out of was pretty important (and also super useful to find parallel work).
Zotero has streamlined how I approach lit reviews and reduced the amount of time it takes for me to find relevant information. The resources are searchable. You can include Notes on a file. You can directly access the PDF from the software. The list goes on…
Using some of the automatic features of Zotero, my downloaded literature (Resource) is organized into folders by corresponding author with the filenames automatically renamed in the way I like (“LastAuthor+FirstAuthor_Journal_Year_Title.pdf”) with nearly zero input from me:
My Zotero software is organized into Projects (the collection feature) and Areas (the tags feature):
The best part? I can easily open any resource either by double clicking on it in Zotero or navigate straight to it in my Google Drive PARA database because it’s organized effectively for me.
Example: Creating a Reviewer Rolodex database
Tools I use: Notion*
*Notion is a powerful tool I use to organize how I view the various aspects of my life. One of the benefits is everything can be made into a database with properties
If you’ve ever had to find the contact information for potential reviewers, you can absolutely understand how frustrating it can be. For those of you who haven’t yet, you’ll see soon enough. When you suggest reviewers, you typically suggest reviewers that (1) you cite in your paper and (2) that have published in the journal you’re submitting to. The first is easy, the second can be a bit more difficult if you’re submitting to a pretty exclusive journal or work on a broad interdisciplinary project. In addition, you typically have to include the contact information like phone number, email, institution, and physical address with the editor. Depending on the institution (and the lab website of the potential reviewer), it can take forever to find this contact information. Even the email.
To reduce the amount of time this task will take in the future, I created a database in Notion to compile reviewer contact information and quickly check if someone has published in the journal. This did require a ton of effort, but I was already doing it for a paper I recently submitted, so I figured I might as well create a database. This is a glimpse into what my Notion database looks like. The Full Contact Information column even tells me if I need more information with a simple formula (see Neso Sojic from University of Bordeaux).
The “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method for triaging the onslaught of information
David Allen’s Getting Things Done has been a game changer. Most of the concepts and methods of approaching productivity are all children of the GTD method. So what is the idea behind GTD?
The goal is to process everything once because “your head is for having ideas, not storing them.” You can’t be as creative or effective if you only rely on your mind to remind you to do things or store all of your wonderful ideas.
This is how it works. You have an inbox (like your email inbox) where you collect “stuff.” For email, this “stuff” can be events, tasks, spam, ThermoFisher telling you that you should buy another centrifuge, etc. Set aside a time to go through the inbox by taking one thing at a time and giving it a purpose.
- Is it actionable and does it take less than 2 minutes? If yes, do it right away. (It takes more time to set it aside and add it to your task list and come back to it than it does just to get it out of the way)
- Is it actionable and…
- someone else can do it? Delegate!
- needs to be done next or is an event? Schedule it!
- is a multi-step project? Plan it out later! (planning takes more than 2 minutes and right now you are in the ZONE)
- If it’s not actionable, is it…
- trash? Get rid of it! (and if it’s spam you don’t enjoy getting, unsubscribe)
- something you want to reference/read later? File it into your handy dandy accessible database of resources.
- something that isn’t super useful now but could be in the future? File it into an ideas type location
Now that it has been filed into it’s respective location, there’s no need for it to return to the inbox. The key takeaway here is that you need to know your priorities to be able to properly assign each thing in your inbox.
This is a pretty weird habit to get into, but it has grown on me over time. I’m still not perfect at it, but I process my inbox in the most effective way for me. GTD focuses a lot on personal growth, so it takes a bit more effort to implement.
Example: GTD for email
Tools I use: GMail,* Todoist (for tasks), Google Calendar (for scheduling), Evernote (for saving resources to read later)
*GMail has Todoist, Google Calendar and Evernote Add-ons right inside the inbox so you don’t need to worry about context switching and having several apps open at a time
I think every grad student I talk to complains about that ever present 100s of unread emails in their inbox. It’s daunting. And so many of us try to figure out a way to deal with it. For example, I tried to mark my fellowship’s emails as high priority, but they would get lost because (1) they changed their email address multiple times over the course of 6 months, (2) the title of the fellowship was not in every email, and (3) they changed the system that they used to acquire information from us multiple times. My stipend was contingent on meeting their deadlines and these deadlines often changed so rapidly that we would end up with <2 days to respond. You miss the email? You didn’t get paid on time. So, how could I guarantee I wouldn’t miss an email? It took a behavior change for how I dealt with emails.
I use GTD to make quick decisions for each email and assign them using the add-ons shown. Email used to take me forever and I would have 100s of emails to go through. Now, it’s pretty manageable and I don’t feel like I’m missing emails anymore. It’s a huge reduction in stress.
The tools I use (and some I’ve tried)
I am an Android/Windows person, but most of the tools I use are available across platforms, so you should be able to use these (or similar) tools. If you have better/more tools for you, keep them. I make no money from you clicking these links, so there’s nothing in it for me except creating a small database of what I use. In addition, I included some tools that have cool use-cases even though they didn’t work for me.
| Type | Tool | Price | My Thoughts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Storage | Google Drive | Free (Paid for more storage) | I save things to the cloud so I always have access to my information. Any computer, bam, all of my saved resources are ready to go. Yes, I may lose data if the cloud disappears, but having my computer break on me one too many times has made me favor cloud based services. I do back up my Google Drive periodically to an external drive. But I heavily rely on the cloud (and you’ll see why). |
| Email Inbox | GMail | Free | I use GMail because I like the option to archive. They finally added a schedule later function that I have been waiting for forever. There are also some add-ons for task management and note taking that make my life much simpler. You can also send emails from different aliases, so you can work from one inbox instead of juggling several. Not every company allows this, so some of my methods won’t work for everyone. |
| Calendar | Google Calendar | Free | Always been a fan and will probably never stop using Google Calendar. It’s been especially useful in the time of COVID because I can put the Zoom link in the description and it’s only a click away vs trying to find the email with the link for the recurring meetings I have. It also integrates really well with other service I use and has great GMail add-on functionality for when I’m assigning meetings and events to dates. |
| Reference Manager | Zotero | Free (Paid for more storage) | Zotero is a free reference manager. My lab uses Endnote, which is paid and I also find it frustrating. The reason I started using Zotero is that I want to run my own lab in the future and I think open-source is the way to go. There are entire diatribes on which reference manager is best and I have no desire to get into that. But what I do like is that Zotero with the Zotfile plugin renames and reorganizes my literature database just the way I like it. Depending on how the authors are organized for the paper, it isn’t perfect, but I have over 1100 papers organized into a searchable and effective (and nearly effortless) database. I’ll be writing a post about this in the near future noting the alternative databases for academic literature storage. |
| Annotation Software | DrawboardPDF | Free? | I don’t think this is available across platforms. It may only be available on Windows. I use it on my Surface to annotate PDFs, mainly peer-reviewed articles. I like it because all of my notes and highlights are saved onto the papers I download so that I don’t necessarily have to read it again to get the gist of why I read the paper. I often write at the top what I think the paper brings to the table. I’m a margin writer. I like to think in the blank spaces. I even use it when I am editing documents because Tracked Changes doesn’t allow me to achieve my editing process in quite the same way. And this way, I save some trees. This may have cost me $10 way back in the day, or maybe it’s free. I don’t remember. |
| Database System | Notion | Free (Paid for fancy teams benefits) | Oh. My. Gosh. I love Notion. I use this as my landing page for my whole life. It’s really changed how I manage the different areas of my life (work, household, future). It’s a fantastic resource and the developers are always adding new functionality. I’ve found it most effective with linking databases of information to each other. For example, I create current projects I am working on and then link those projects to specific tasks in another database. I then have a fun formula that is a loading bar of progress for that project. It’s a great visual and I use it for so many other aspects of my life as well. My partner and I use it as a grocery list so we have a digital record of what we purchase while going through the store. This is especially useful when we are at two different grocery stores at the same time buying what we need. We used to have to take a picture of the list and then talk to each other on the phone while shopping, way less effective. Honestly, the use-cases of Notion are endless. The only downside I can see right now is that sometimes it’s a little slow, but for what I use it for, so awesome. |
| Task Manager | Todoist | Free (Paid for extra features I like) | As I mentioned, Notion can be a bit slow and so creating quick tasks is cumbersome. To combat this, I use Todoist as my task manager. It syncs with Google Calendar, so I can see where I’ve assigned tasks and also reschedule them directly in Google Calendar. It also has an add-on for GMail and links back to the email, so I can easily find the original email with the information I need to complete the task. It also tells you you’re awesome when you complete tasks and maps your productivity for you. The free version has everything I needed, but the paid version had a little extra kick that made me even more effective, so I pay for this one. |
| Note Taking/Read Later | Evernote | Free (Paid for extra features) | Evernote is where I store my notes. I have different notebooks and stacks of notebooks. This one is really new for me, so my database of notes is not extensive, but I do like that it’s completely searchable. It has an awesome webclipper add-on that works on Chrome and Edge, so I use it when I want to save recipes or crochet patterns or news articles or really anything I want to read later. Evernote also has a great add-on for GMail and I use it to store emails to reference later that don’t have any action items that go along with them. You can also make local only notes that aren’t synced with the cloud. Because I love it so much, I pay for it, but the free version should do everything you’d really need. |
| Automatic Triggers | IFTTT | Free (mostly) | IFTTT is short for If This, Then That. I had been using it for years so that I could post my Instagram posts as native pictures on Twitter. I now also use it to automatically store any liked or retweeted tweets in Evernote. Now it’s easier find that one link someone posted ages ago (I cannot figure out how to do that on Twitter for the life of me). I do go through and delete the notes containing silly posts that I’ve liked, so it does take some effort, but this method has been a huge improvement for me finding tweets when I need them without a huge amount of effort. |
| Tools that were not necesarily for me | |||
| Time Tracker | Toggl Track | Free (Paid for business additions) | I thought Toggl (now called Toggl Track) would be great, but this was another tool that didn’t work well for how my brain works. I don’t like seeing a timer in the bottom of my screen while I work. It gives me a weird form of anxiety. Once I get started on something, I usually don’t stop unless distracted by an external force and it turned out this tool reduced my productivity because of the peripheral distraction at the bottom of my screen. It’s actually a really useful tool to audit your time if you constantly change to a less desirable task or if you want to see how long it takes you to complete a project. Or if you need a bit of motivation for “Ok, do this task for 25 minutes and then you can have a 5 minute break.” *Side note, I’m trying it again for 2021 to see where my time goes but it’s definitely been difficult to remember to start and stop the timer* |
| Read Later | Instapaper | “Free” (Paid if you want it to do what it’s actually good for) | I was really disappointed in this tool. I used Instapaper too long before I realized that you can’t search for a note without paying for the full version. Not even the title. This is a read-later app that a productivity person recommended and I’m 99% sure they pay for the full version because of this little tidbit I learned. It’s also super buggy and doesn’t necessarily save the item you wanted to read. I use Evernote instead now for anything I want to read later. It’s way more effective and all of my resources are stored in the same place. |
| Note Taking | Roam Research | Was Free, now paid | This is a note-taking tool that I couldn’t wrap my head around. At the time, it was completely online based and the purpose was to create connections between ideas from different notes and, from what I understand, spark creativity. My brain did not work well with this system. Maybe in the future I could use this, but I simply couldn’t figure out the most effective way to use the tool. I could see the value (which is why it’s listed here and I tried it for so long), but the amount of effort it would take me to make it work for me wasn’t worth it in my mind. It wasn’t all bad. Without Roam, I wouldn’t have found the huge community of productivity people and the subsequent tools listed. |
| Email Filter | Unroll.Me | Free | A tool that was supposed to help me triage emails and unsubscribe me from unwanted emails. Apparently, there was some privacy issues with how the company stored emails on their own servers. I don’t know all the details, but that is scary too. What really killed me was I missed a really cool webinar that had gotten flagged because I didn’t want to see the newsletters of this particular company. After that, I got rid of Unroll.Me. I had no idea if I was missing out on other important emails because of the way this tool worked. |
Warning: Beware of the Shiny New Toy Syndrome
I love tools, but I am always wary of them. If I start using a new tool, I spend anywhere from a week to a month vetting the tool, specifically the free version. If the free version does everything I intended the tool to do (or even more), I’ll continue to use it. If the paid version gives me extra things that will improve my workflow, I’ll then pay for the full version. Now this is key: If the tool does not improve my workflow or I can’t see any benefit of changing my behavior to make it effective, I ditch it. I’m not going to waste my time (or money) on a Shiny New Toy that doesn’t benefit me.
One of the productivity people I follow is Khe Hy founder of RadReads. He constantly talks about this Shiny New Toy Syndrome and how dangerous it can be. He splits it up like this:
Tools only get you 20% of the way to productivity. The other 80% of the pie? Self-awareness and behavior change. A tool will not make you more productive. It’s entirely dependent on you. For example, there are tons of habit-tracking apps out there. Downloading every habit tracking app isn’t going to make you build a habit. You have to change your behavior to build that habit and the tool can be an asset for helping you do that.
Wrapping Up
I hope this gave you some ideas of how you can improve your workflow and dealing with the onslaught of information in your life. Remember, the methods most effective for me are not necessarily going to be effective for you. It goes without saying, this overview is not exhaustive. There are plenty of resources across the internet to find what works best for you.
Good luck and have fun!
All graphics in this post are my adaptations of ideas from the productivity people I have mentioned throughout the post. I am the creator of the graphics. Feel free to use them and please credit Charlotte Flatebo @AbbeLimitless and link back to this post.
Credits for graphics and ideas: Eisenhower Matrix concept: Dwight D. Eisenhower
PARA concept: Tiago Forte
GTD concept: David Allen
Tools featured in 20% of the pie: Timeular, Unroll.Me, Pomodoro, OneNote, Trello, ToDoist, Evernote, Notion, Toggl, Google Calendar, Instapaper, Pocket, RescueTime, IFTTT
Shiny New Toy concept: Khe Hy