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Academic & Project Workflows & Productivity

Updated 1/18/20

Academic and project workflows and productivity
Original photo by Thomas

Developing systems and workflows for academia is both personal and critical to being productive. That being said, I’ve learned much from other folks who share how they go about their work. So, I’m sharing some of my own workflows and approaches to being productive and creative in academia in case some aspect has the potential to help anyone else. Here, I focus on tools, processes, approaches, and resources rather than strategies for making or organizing time. Some of the links may be affiliate links to help support the site but anything I include here is something I’ve found helpful or use in my work. I use the mac ecosystem, so several of the resources I mention might not be available outside of a mac context.

This “Part 1” of academic and project workflows and productivity focuses on individual work. Part 2 will focus more on project management that involves working with teams.

Contents

Save Me Time!

Finding and Opening Things with Alfred

I rarely ever need to click an icon or look for something on my computer since I use the free application, Alfred to open files, applications, or even run searches online. I trigger Alfred with Command + SpaceBar and I can start typing something like “Open Downloads” or “Ableton” or “Scholar” + something I want to search on Google Scholar and Alfred opens what I’m looking for. I purchased the “PowerPack” to create time-saving shortcuts that greatly improve my workflow. For instance, by typing “Command + Spacebar and then “lib” Alfred knows that I want to search for something in my university’s online library and after I type what I’m searching for, Alfred opens the library site and triggers the search. It saves me the time of opening up a browser, going to the library site, and then searching on the site.

TextExpander to Save Time!

One of my favorite time-saving tools is TextExpander.

Text expander allows you to create “snippets” of text, links or media, that you can insert anywhere by typing an abbreviation that you assign to that snippet. Snippets can range from a word or link to an entire email message with optional parts or fill-in-the-blanks sections. It is brilliant for any text that you type repeatedly. I use it for all types of situations such as when I type “dtm” to insert the day’s date; or “-avoice” to insert feedback on writing in active voice with the option to include several related resources; or when I type “-muestatus” to insert an entire email that I can customize with a couple of clicks to inform a student of their status in a course I teach and any issues they might want to address.

Example of TextExpander Snippet

TextExpander saves me so much time and frees up headspace to focus on less tedious things. There’s great satisfaction in typing a dash and 3 characters and watching the text for an entire email open before your eyes with blank spaces and multiple-choice menus for customization. Seriously!

Find Common Meeting Times

I don’t understand why anyone would send multiple emails back and forth to find a common meeting time among a group of people when they can create a Doodle Poll and then identify the date and time that works best for most people. Doodle, people!

Example of Doodle Poll

For, one on one meetings I’m experimenting with Calendly but am still trying to figure out the best solution to using something like Calendly for the multiple calendar accounts I use.

Note Taking

Whether making notes about aspects of learning and teaching during a class, capturing thoughts that pop into my head, keeping track of what occurs during meetings, interacting with texts, or many other situations, having a digital place to keep everything is important to my workflow. The tool I use relates to the type of notes I’m taking. It is critical for me that any note-taking tools I use are seamless in syncing across computers and devices. The four main tools I use for notetaking are:

I use each tool for the following situations:

Drafts: I’m newer to using Drafts and am still learning its capabilities. Drafts is slowly becoming my starting point for most texts when I have something I want to get out of my head and into text form on both iOS and Mac OS platforms.

Drafts app

I have Drafts available on my iOS devices with easy access so whenever something comes to mind I can get it into Drafts and then worry about where it goes later. I often use dictation to take the note and use tags to help organize the notes. Drafts helps me get the idea out of my head immediately and into digital form without having to figure out what app I should open or where it should go. I can send it to another app at a later point.

For instance, if I’m listening to a podcast and have a related idea, I might open drafts, tap the dictation option, get my thought out, tag it, and then get back to the podcast. Later in the day while reading something, I might make a note in drafts and tag it for a project I’m working on. At any point, I can search through my notes in drafts and move a note to a different app such as Tinderbox, DevonThink, or Scrivener to mobilize it. Drafts also has a powerful set of actions for sending your text “drafts” to other applications.

Bear: Prior to using Drafts (and after using Evernote and Apple Notes), Bear served as my catchall for note-taking. I now use Bear for meetings or situations for which I need to take notes. I enjoy using the folder-like system of nested tags. One of my favorite aspects of using Bear is having notes that I continually open to keep running notes updated with the date of the event.

Bear app

For instance, when working on a long-term project with a collaborator I typically have one dedicated note such as “Meetings with X” in Bear, that I keep for all meetings. This makes it easy to open the note before the meeting and scan through the last set of notes. Then at the start of the meeting, I open the note, type “dtm” (which inserts the day’s date via TextExpander) at the top of the note and use markdown to make the date a heading. I then keep running notes throughout the meeting. I can enter action items into OmniFocus at a later point. By having the most recent date at the top of my Bear note, I have a quick reminder of the last meeting, which is great for context. Drafts is my catchall for all notes that I need to move somewhere else at some point and I use Bear for ongoing projects or information that I want to pull up easily.

OmniFocus: When a note is more of an action item, I put it into the OmniFocus inbox and include the due date if there is a definitive due date or the defer date if I need not think about it right away but want to address it after a particular date.

Example of Omnifocus

If I have time, I’ll tag it and assign it a project, but often the tasks/notes I add to Omnifocus stay in the inbox until I have time to review the inbox and organize everything with tags and projects.

OmniFocus is my key to staying on top of things and [affiliate link] getting things done. I wrote about how I decide what to do during times that are not pre-set with meetings or courses. If you end up getting Omnifocus and want some excellent guidance on how to use it, I highly suggest David Spark’s Macs parky field Guide for Omnifocus.

Day One app

DayOne: DayOne is a fantastic journaling app that makes it easy to keep ongoing reflections organized in one place.

I don’t use DayOne regularly but find it useful when I’m working on long-term projects and want to be deliberate about writing reflections that pertain to the project and the progress I’m making or challenges that arise. I used DayOne almost daily when I was on sabbatical, for instance.

Storing Digital Texts

I remember a time during my grad work when I organized all of my files in folders dedicated to specific classes or particular projects. Now, I store all of my PDFs in a Devon Think Pro database.

Example of Devon Think Pro
Example of DevonThink Pro database with groups, files, and a text.

Devon Think Pro is invaluable for organizing and finding PDFs and other files related to whatever you are working on. I use a combination of tags and folders in Devon Think Pro to keep things organized and easily retrievable along with Devon’s excellent features for searching and finding files. Devon Think makes it easy to have a PDF in multiple folders and syncs any changes such as highlights or notes across each of the copies that are “replicated” among the folders. I also regularly use Devon Think’s ability to either grab entire webpages into its database or its integration with browsers to clip websites into PDF files stored in its database.

Approaches to Annotating and Interacting With Texts

Reading and annotating

I mark up and make notes directly in PDF files, ebooks, or in physical texts (when I own them). I prefer to read texts digitally so I can easily mobilize my annotations and notes at a later point (more on this later). The PDF files are usually in DevonThink but I read them with PDF Expert. The ability of [affiliate link] PDF Expert to export notes and annotations is an important part of my workflow. I can then take the text file of exported annotations and notes and chop it up into individual note samples. For a while I’ve thought about this as a sort of chopping and sampling musical metaphor, but, more recently learned about the concept of Zettelkasten, which works nicely with this approach.

I often put text related to making connections, riffing off ideas, or generating my own related thoughts into square brackets. When reading physical books that I do not own I often cut up post-it notes into small strips to mark parts I want to process. I usually have a note open in DevonThink or Bear to use for all notes from a particular text.

Exporting annotations and notes

It is later during meaning-making that I separate notes. While the notes and annotations might have originated in relation to a particular text, I want to make it easier to make connections, synthesize, generate, and organize related ideas. At that point, I think of processing notes and deciding what notes to use in a particular context as a process akin to sampling culture, where I break notes taken from a book or article into individual note “samples” to recontextualize, re-organize, and mobilize in new ways (See the meaning-making and organizing section below).

It is important to me to easily move the annotations and notes I make from the original source (PDF, ebook, physical text etc.) to the applications I use for synthesizing, processing, meaning-making, and organizing, which for me are XMind and TinderBox.

Setting up notes for processing

The way I work with my notes, annotations, and highlights relates to the different applications I use and my process of meaning-making.

Since I use PDF Expert, I can export all the portions of a digital text that I highlight along with any notes I make into a single text document. I sometimes put this text document into a folder in DevonThink Pro (with citation information at the top of the page).

With physical paper books or other paper texts, I type out all the portions of the text that I mark up into a dedicated rich text file. I use the single text file so that everything is in the same place. I recently started experimenting with the app Prizmo Go to scan text from a paper document, run OCR, and then paste into Drafts, so I can then send it to DevonThink Pro or Tinderbox. The company Creaceed offers an academic discount for Prizmo Go.

My digital notes are more often comments or thoughts related to texts rather than excerpts of the texts themselves.

Once I have my single text file of highlighted quotes and other annotations, I separate each “note,” whether a quote or note I made in relation to the text, with a delimiter. I do this with a TextExpander snippet I created so that when I type “p[” a snippet opens up allowing me to enter a page number and citation and then inserts ######] after the note. I enter the delimiter as I’m typing out quotes from physical books so I have the page numbers and don’t spend additional time looking up citation info at a later point.

Why add these delimiters? It is so I can “explode” the notes in Tinderbox and work with them in varied ways (more info below).

You might be interested in the Zettelkasten approach to note-taking:

Meaning Making and Organizing

Tinderbox

For the longest time, I’ve practiced mind mapping as one of the primary ways I make sense of and organize ideas, literature, notes, data, and whatever else when working on writing projects. More recently I started using Tinderbox, which is powerful and customizable.

Example from Tinderbox by Bernhard Bockelbrink
Example from Tinderbox – “learning Tinderbox” by Bernhard Bockelbrink

Tinderbox allows you to design your own system for making meaning and organizing ideas, notes, or whatever you want to engage with. It has a steep learning curve and takes some time to make sense of and develop a system or workflow, however, the community of folks who use Tinderbox is fantastic and helpful. The developer of Tinderbox, Mark Bernstein, is responsive and constantly updates the application in relation to the needs and requests of the community. It is expensive but, if you can afford it, highly valuable and I believe worth the cost. Check for discounts on Tinderbox and other “artisanal” software during SummerFest and WinterFest.

Exploding notes?

I’ll delve into Tinderbox in a later post, but one approach I’ll address here is how I use the “explode notes” function in Tinderbox to transform my single text files of notes into individual notes within Tinderbox (this makes more sense when you work with Tinderbox). I can then manipulate these individual notes however I wish. This is the process I formally engaged with primarily in Xmind. However, the sophistication and flexibility of Tinderbox lets me do so much more to make meaning and organize my notes into ideas, themes, structures, and forms of meaning-making that eventually lead into written text in Scrivener.

Tinderbox Resources

Tinderbox-related posts and tutorials by Steve Zeoli at Welcome to Sherwood (most recent posts are at the bottom of the page). Zeoli also has a great set of videos on using Tinderbox.

Tinderbox-related video tutorials that outline processes for turning notes into a Tinderbox map and developing literature reviews by Beck Tench.

Tinderbox-related posts and tutorials by Howard Oakley at Eclectic Light Company.

Tinderbox-related posts, videos, and examples oriented around academic work such as writing and course planning by Brian Crane at Ordinary Human Language.

This enjoyable set of videos by Dominique Renauld addresses aspects of Tinderbox and engaging with texts through note-taking and related processes:

Personal assistant

Quand il y a texte

Temporary notes with Tinderbox

Alex Strick van Linschoten’s overview of Tinderbox as a research and writing tool and post “Note-Taking Jujitsu, Or How I Make Sense Of What I Read.”

Mind Mapping

When the wonderful Janet R. Barrett first introduced me to MindMapping, I started mind-mapping everything. I was never a fan of linear outlines and notes and loved how I could move text around as I started to cluster information or ideas in varied ways. When MindManager moved to a subscription model, I switched over to using the free XMind, (and now use the paid version for the upgraded features).

Example from Xmind
Example of Xmind with mindmap on contemporary music practices

I’ve also used several cloud-based mind mapping tools, primarily in teaching contexts for collaborative features and for reducing friction when working with multiple people. I’m using MindMeister for collaborative mind-mapping. Though I mentioned I’ve started using Tinderbox for large projects, I still mind map regularly with XMind as a way of making meaning of a lot of information.

Writing

Writing Applications

Google docs/drive is my default writing space for projects and collaborative work. For a long time, I worked on large writing projects in google docs using headings as organizers. I always have a “leftovers” document where I dump chunks of writing that I cut while editing.

I now use Scrivener for larger projects. I really like the organizational structure and ability to move fluidly among different sections in Scrivener (note that this is an affiliate link and I would earn a small percentage of any software purchased via the link). I also like that I can easily combine multiple subsections into one large section. For large projects, this is far more manageable than having one massive word document or using headers and outlines in a google doc. When writing, I often move between Scrivener, Xmind (for mind mapping), DevonThink Pro (where I store PDF files, and notes), and any number of other resources (See the section on Meaning Making and Organizing ).

Example of Scrivener
Example from Scrivener project on social media in music education

Scrivener, is now critical for me to keep large writing projects manageable and help me stay productive by not getting lost in a document. While I rarely work in Word or Pages anymore, I still put the final version of a writing project into Word and use Endnote to format the citations and references section. This is more for ease of sending publications to journals or publishers than because I enjoy working with Word.

Back Up Plan and Systems

At some point, most people lose work because of some technological issue. Do you have a back up plan? I have multiple systems for making sure that I don’t lose work. I use a cloud-based backup plan via [affiliate link] BackBlaze.

Using BackBlaze gives me the comfort that regardless of what might happen to my laptop or hard drives, I always have everything backed up and easily retrievable from the cloud.

Backblaze app

I like BackBlaze for its ease of use, for the unlimited storage, and the ability to back up external hard drives (as long as I attach them to my laptop) along with my laptop. BackBlaze runs in the background whenever my laptop is accessing internet access in my home. For the security and ease of mind, an annual subscription is worth it to me!

I also:

  • Save work/projects in the cloud with Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud
  • Backup my laptop with TimeMachine to an external hard drive
  • Clone my laptop regularly with SuperDuper! to two mirrored (RAID 1) computer internal hard drives that are connected to the laptop via an [affiliate link] Inateck SATA Hard Drive Dock. In the past, this was my main back up solution, but now that I use BackBlaze it’s more so that I can delete files to save room on my laptop and have them easily available via the mirrored drives. SuperDuper is a free and easy to use cloning application. The affordable paid version of SuperDuper! lets you create automatic scheduled backups, which I do each evening as long as I connect the laptop to the mirrored drives.

I also keep separate external hard drives dedicated to varied types of files for redundancy and to save space on my laptop drive (and because I’m not comfortable relying on the cloud).

This might all seem over the top in terms of a backup solution. Do what you are comfortable with, but have a system and plan!

Helpful Texts for Productivity and Workflows

I’ve found each of these books helpful in developing a system for myself. I don’t follow them strictly but apply the frameworks and ideas pretty regularly. This section contains affiliate links.

Getting Things Done – David Allen – This is a great book for developing a system for organizing all the stuff and things to do in your work and life. Even if you don’t follow it strictly, the Getting Things Done (GTD) system provides a really helpful framework for figuring out what to do with everything ranging from the endless emails you receive to the ideas floating around in your head or the growing number of tasks you need to complete.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport – This is a fantastic book that invites us to be intentional about identifying and engaging in deep work. Whereas Getting Things Done provides a system for being productive, Deep Work offers guiding principles to help you identify what is most important to you and to focus on working towards your goals. The principles of deep work help me make decisions about what I might do in situations when I have full control over my time. It might do the same for you.

The Organized Mind – Daniel J. Levitin – Even if The Organized Mind wasn’t so helpful, it would still be an enjoyable read. I’ve found it helpful in making sense of information and deciding how to organize everything from objects or information to set up a workspace. The Organized Mind provides some strategies, but its strength is in explaining why and how we make sense of the world and perspectives on how our mind (might) work in relation to information and organizing our worlds and lives.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business – Charles Duhigg – This book is straightforward in addressing how we can develop and keep habits. Most of the book comprises stories and anecdotes that are interesting and contextualize the main ideas. Regardless, the key themes in The Power of Habit can be helpful in moving from a point of thinking about being productive and developing workflows to being productive and putting workflows to practice.

Other People Sharing Workflows

Resources for Developing Workflows and Productivity Hacks

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