I’m always searching for the ideal workflow in terms of my PhD Research. You would think that having been a PhD student for five years I might actually have it sussed by now but sadly not. I have tried to summarise what I actually do but still not convinced any of this is actually effective !
| Product | What I use it for |
| Evernote | Useful clips, uploading as ‘brain dump’ from my mobile that I come across that might be helpful. Keeping a copy of my journal in pdf format ( evernote has really good search facility). I have the paid version |
| Notion | I keep changing how I use this. It has a lot of potential but at the moment I have gone back to using this for my main journal and reflective thoughts. My latest cunning plan is to do a weekly journal note and then at the end of the week export a pdf to my Evernote. I did experiment with doing individual daily notes ( I use the term daily loosely as I have been pretty rubbish at daily reflections – hoping that having all the days on the same weekly note will actually shame me into keeping up with it !) |
| WordPress | Tracking useful PhD help stuff and eventually will be disseminating my thoughts and findings as I go along. I have other WordPress blogs that I use but have recently set up another new one (this one) specifically for the PhD |
| Zotero | This is my favourite reference manager at the moment. I was using menderly but it just got so buggy that it drove me insane and I switched over to zotero. |
| Click Up | I use this to manage my tasks for the PhD ( I use it for other stuff too so it seemed logical to use it for the PhD too) I am currently using the paid for version, mainly because I outgrew the free version |
| Flipgrid | I’ve been experimenting with using Flipgrid for quick immediate reflections which I thought might be useful when it comes to reflecting after interviews etc. |
| I started a PhD account in an attempt to force myself into a bit of accountability but it is more of a productive procastination attempt if I am brutally honest. I also did the same with tiktok but haven’t done much of that for a while. | |
| Sketchnotes | I use sketchnotes to make sense of stuff and draw connections etc and also plan to use this to explicate my findings as part of my heuristic inquiry approach. |
| Google Drive | I use this to store all sorts of bits and bobs, mainly as a sort of back up but I have been a bit slack in terms of organising etc. I have also experimented with google sites but that hasn’t really taken off yet. |
| One Drive | I use my personal one drive account to store my word documents etc |
| Google Sheets | I use google sheets for literature review tables and things like gantt charts. I was a strict excel user but actually find the ease of using google sheets much better. |
| Word | I use word for writing as it links easily with zotero for citations etc. I have experimented with using things like Scrivener but I just found that I keep gravitating back to word – comfort in what you are used to I guess. |
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