This is actually my second Making Things Easier For Yourself post (I'm just a teensy bit Type A...). In my first, called Research Edition, I talked about labeling all the things in the wet lab, reusable checklists and protocols, keeping an effective lab notebook, and annotating your codes. This post is gonna be all about embracing the 21st century.
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One of the most important things you'll do as a research scientist is read. You'll have to:
- read pre-existing literature in your field and those related to know the history of your science,
- manage staying on top of new literature that's being published literally every day,
- and (bonus points) follow a few blog posts and other forms of social media where scientists can give a new dimension to what's available in their own or other's publications.
There are many techniques for doing all of these things, but the first steps typically include downloading a reference managing software (I use Mendeley because it's free and works well enough) and setting up Google Scholar alerts tied to people and/or key words in your field. For more general science-related news, I really enjoy ScienceDaily, Iflscience, and the Twitter accounts of scientific journals and science-writers. Click here to see the list of who I follow, check out their feeds, throw some hearts at them as well as your questions, and never forget to read the source material too (Ed Yong said it best):
Sing like no one is listening.
— Ed Yong (@edyong209) October 5, 2016
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Read the fucking article.
Alas, the internet is both a blessing and a curse: there is so much information available to us now that we struggle to cope with it all in a reasonable way. Limiting the accounts I follow helps a bit, but for important things that I really need to stick with me I take the time to write my own notes. I type much faster than I write and the green-freak in me likes that no paper goes wasted when I take all my notes on my laptop, so during undergrad I developed the habit of having one word processor doc per project and keeping all of my related notes there. Each of these docs starts with a ~ so that I can always find them quickly, and they're all formatted the same way: Basic Info, Current Researchers, To-do List, Notes, and References.
Dropbox gives me to access these notes and folders anywhere while never introducing the potential to lose the hard copies - real talk, I have nightmares about that. But even with a smartphone I was unable to edit these word docs and have them sync on the fly.
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I've since switched over to OneNote and so far I am loving it - the organizational scheme, the ability to write all over the page, and even make checklists and draw things, all big thumbs ups in my book. There is a sharing feature available in OneNote, but I prefer Google Drive for shared items. We use shared Slides for our lab meetings over Zoom, Sheets for ordering lab equipment and organizing other vital things like our March Mammal Madness brackets, and Docs for our project updates and simultaneous text-editing.
For times when my laptop is not available to me, I send myself messages on our lab's Slack or use my Rocketbook. I'd been thinking about getting a reusable notebook for a while, and I was sold on Rocketbook the minute I discovered they had a Smart Search feature that will learn your handwriting so you can Ctrl+F your notes. Here's what a scan in fairly crappy light looks like, just in case you're curious:
So there you have it, another list of ways to make your life easier. While this post was written with research scientists in mind, I think a lot of the techniques I use can apply to many work and even personal settings. Be thankful for your technology and all the wonderful things it can do, and, if you can, consider donating it after you've upgraded. The three Rs nearly always apply to situations in our everyday life, and tech is not excluded. Cheers everyone :)