Hi I'm Ben, I did a PhD and survived to tell the tale. ---A bit about me now---- 🚀 I'm the CEO and founder of a company called Spin Up Science (www.spin-up.science). We help scientists turn their discoveries into start up companies to get breakthroughs into the hands of the public. 🧪 I'm the cofounder and director of the Science Angel Syndicate (www.scienceangelsyndicate.com). We invest in great science and great scientists looking to change the world. 📓 I'm the CEO of cofounder of Protolyst. The note-taking and linked knowledge app I mention in this video. Link to Protolyst here: www.protolyst.org (we just entered BETA! 👋 yes there will be bugs)
This is unbelievable! I've been trying to make something work between a Notion database and a monsterous Excel spreadsheet, but now.. now I can go back to enjoying doing the research! Many thanks to you!
This is really cool! It's a lot like Capacities in the way that it kind of blends obsidian and notion. I like that you can connect individual ideas with a larger theme/rest of knowledge base. But, I do like that this can create notes directly from the PDF, I wish capacities would do that!
Loving the tool so far! Could you point out how to do one thing though? I can't for the life of me figure out (or find instruction on) how to get have several columns on vertical view with the "Group by" option you have in 21:35 when you're showing the "To Do List" view.
I’ve been contemplating using NVivo to organize my literature review, but OMG you do so much better job explaining how your app can be useful to poor Phd students!
Thank you very much for this detailed explanation, I would like to know your opinion about how to manage a book as a reference. I am doing a PhD in theoretical physics and I sometimes need knowledge that can only be found in very long books and all parts of the book are useful for the topic.
Very helpful to see a specific, real-world example. The PDF integration capabilities of your app make it an attractive choice for people who read a lot of papers!
I like how it's cloud based and how it can be traced to the original pdf source (unlike obsidian). And the interface can display permenant notes more clearly !
This way of rewriting the highlighted/captured segments of the paper using your own words (in permanent note video segment) will work when we are reading "normal length" papers. I am reading a report cited by a thesis. That report is 250 pages long & full of ideas. In this case (reading a very lengthy document), what is the most efficient & effective way to capture key ideas from it. Probably not by writing fleeting notes + permanent notes methodology. Correct? Because this approach may not be efficient at all for long documents. Any thoughts?
Thank you for this. I am in my second semester of my PhD, and I really love the concept of a second brain system but I can’t seem to find a system I can manage quickly and allows me to incorporate all of my life. Currently, I have an unruly Zotero, A hodgepodge of OneDrive, OneNote and Google calendar and frankly it is all a hot mess. I am trying to manage all of the following for reference: A therapist position with 10 clients, notes, scheduling, and treatment research A second therapist position with 21 clients same criteria Running a Platoon in the Army outside of those positions PhD- reading, writing, projects, and scheduling. Would this system work for all of that. I am thinking I need: 1. Main schedule to block out obligations by color code. 2. Task lists with due dates that also link to the main schedule organized by color. 3. Reference Manager with links, tags, full pdf and integration into word. 4. A way to manage notes for all of the above in an easily accessible and organized system with integrated cross references to like material. 5. Dissertation project Management System. 6. More hours in the day 😂. Anyway, any advise of usability for your system or recommendations for other options would be a big help! Thanks and great video!
Great point about consistency and creating a work-flow that is effective but not high-maintence. Thanks for the time you invested in sharing this. Just subscribed to your channel for more great advice!
I’ve just stumbled across your videos whilst trying to find a better way to take notes for academic writing. I use Obsidian, Notion and Zotero, all of which I like, but Protolyst seems to be so much more focused and intuitive from the initial idea to the finished article, capturing all the references along the way. I’ve just registered online and will give it a go over the coming weeks. Thank you! btw is it only cloud-based or is there a desktop / mobile app? If not now, perhaps for the future?
Very useful! Thanks Dr. Miles! Three principle of good note taking - take notes in your own words - 'irreducible' notes - connect the idea to other knowledge How to take fleeting notes - the source - the context (digested version)
Thank you so much! I wish I had found this at the beginning of my PhD, but it's still very useful and especially a fellow physicist as there's differences between us and many other fields
Hi, I am going into my second degree and have a few quick questions that my teachers never answered. I will appreciate the clarification if you find the time. I have noticed that your citation was from a secondary source. Which one would you cite? I always get confused by going into the secondary source and trying to find what the original article got from it as sometimes authors use different words and their interpretation of the information differs. Also sometimes authors write a paragraph and put in only one caution at the end, how do I know if the rest from that source or only the last sentence preceding the citation is?
Hi, thank you for sharing! So, I know you mentioned this, but I just wanted to confirm, did you use 'Protolyst' in during your thesis writing? How did you go from your notes to writing?
Hi! Great question. Protolyst wasn't around when I was writing up my thesis. I used a very early version of the app that I had written. I'll do a video soon showing exactly how to go to from atoms and notes to literature reviews and thesis writing!
@@quantumofknowledge1981 sounds good, thanks! I’m a third year PhD student and I’ve created my own note taking system in Notion and my notes are also called atoms and there’s a lot of other similar terminology around my system haha! Looking forward to the next video.
Nice video, i am in the last stretch of my PhD and would have loved to have found this a few years back. Anyway, I noticed that when you show you notes on a table and assign categories and other properties, it resembles tagging said notes. I've never thought of tags as a table of variable columns but it was very nice to link the two concepts. Thanks for the nice video, I've been looking for a starting point to manage the scientific literature I have to deal with and this is a good tutorial for those interested. About you app, is the PDF reader included in the whole thing? I noticed that once you make a fleeting note on the paper it remains highlighted, however in ZK (afaik) you want to "upgrade" the fleeting notes to permanent ones and then delete those fleeting ones. In the video you don't show that, what happens if you delete that fleeting note associated to the paper?
i already use nimbus note. im impressed with your app, i checked it out. I appreciate you can choose any color you wantto color code a text, thats what I never like about most other apps with its limited color pallet. good luck on development on a mobile app
I'm very impressed with the app you've developed. Apparently, my mind doesn't work at all like yours. I have difficulty understanding what are the different types of entities and how they relate in your system. It just looks like a mass of notes and details. More specifically, I couldn't detect any "hierarchical" structure, which I've found as typical in most note-taking systems. - - - I guess what seems to be missing (for me) is come approach to "categorizing" your notes. Also, when you search for something, I would think you would get a long list of "Items" covering a large variety of related matters and it would take you some time to home in on the specific "item" you want. I would think that Evernote or Apple Notes would do a great job for your needs. No response needed - - - just offering a different perspective.
Starting my Masters in Psycholinguistics next year and hopefully PhD not too long after. I have been using Obsidian for quite some time now, but I have really been looking for a program that would let me read PDFs in the same program as I take notes. I love this!
RU-vid recommend me this from nowhere and i cant regret it. Actually i'm a bachelor degree student but the information that you give impress me. Amazing, thank you!
Hey so response from the dev team: Ric - 8 minutes ago Yes this is on the roadmap for this year. As a 'collaborative-first' platform, we have to consider edit conflicts that arise from multiple users editing offline, which is why we have not implemented offline capabilities to date. We'll keep you posted Feel free to join the Slack channel that just launched to chat directly to the devs join.slack.com/t/protolystcommunity/shared_invite/zt-1u9lm8q7q-0Dj261friyoTlsjI8F7mZA
Sort of, yes. The page-based system is similar, but the focus of Protolyst is the knowledge or "atom" layer, that let's you collect insights from across your documents and collate them together.
At first, i just read I'm thinking i will remember soon i understood . Then i started printing pdf And learned note-taking methods Now i use one note and index and revisit my notes
Hey! I've recently switched my approached to organising the papers I read. Thought it might be interesting to share it, let me know if you give it a try!
This video is great! As a new incoming PhD student I have been looking for a great system to use to get a hang of all the reading! Thank you so much for this video, it was very helpful!
