I have to say that I’ve been using Obsidian and it helped me A LOT to move faster with my documents, articles, ideas, and tracking the results of my experiments, and even tracking my notes for my papers during my PhD. And yes you have to take time to organize your ideas and think HOW are you going to use the tool. I feel that it is an investment, once your system is up and running it will help you a lot. But if you are in a hurry and if you don’t have at least an idea of how the tools you want to try work, you will spend more time trying to setup everything rather than being productive.
I think these are some great points and reminders. I would add the caveat that some tools are very useful in the context of research teams. In this context they take their proper position as “project management tools”. Having a standardized format to make plans and track work with interdependencies is a lifesaver in my experience
I stick to just using Todoist as a to-do list, just to make sure I'm "moving" on the small time scale. But I've found - just like you say - that I'm more successful if I phrase my to-do as "Work on x" rather than "Finish x" because sometimes the research gets messy and I don't finish, and it's not because I didn't work on it.
This is awesome !! I was very upset becuz I am failing at keeping track of my hit and trail and then failure and switching to another problem. It was upsetting to track and see no progress for months at the same time taking. Exhausting ! Ur suggestion to note progress in terms of results graph is totally YES!!
Thanks for your content ! Among all contents on productivity I watched and practiced, I find yours resonate very well with me. I’ll keep coming. Love your contents.
I was looking for this answer before, because I noticed that when using productivity tools, my waste of time and anxiety increased instead of the other way around. Thank you, brother.
For me the term 'productivity' tool needs a bit of context. You say you didn't use a single productivity tool but you use a reference manager, and I assume a calendar, some sort of to do list which I would say are all productivity tools. in my mind Notion and Obsidian are completely different tools but I could guess why you have put them together. Notion is more than a kanban board which I think went underexpressed in the video, and Obsidian allows for the "scattered" nature you mention which seems to support a PhD not hinder. Thanks for sharing your opinion but I will stick with using my digital toolkit.
@@DrAndyStapleton There are always changes so I wouldn't be surprised if another tool appears that replaces old ones but some things are there to stay. MS word being one of those things 😅
It’s a really cool perspective. Although I now use Notion more for the fact that I can throw random thoughts and ideas. So I can come and visit what I haven’t tested, especially when there are a few on going projects. I kinda already accepted that I can’t force the progress, but using Notion as an organised notes since I have a messy mind
Cannot agree more! I wish I had your insight before I just lost 3 months of time and paid my psychological well-being to trello notion journalling vision boarding whiteboards corkboards todolists and co 🤯 I could barely keep up with documenting planning reflecting ans progress checking my productivity there was no space left for actually doing my writing, and every week I'd feel more disappointed. I think as a "typical" PhD Candidate, we're already overdiligent and have high expectations of ourselves, so at least a working base level of time management and motivation. Listen to Andy - he speaks the truth!! Don't subject yourself to the pain and stress I did to these productivity banes!
Any tool you use, maybe a hindrance if you don’t know how to use it. I’m an obsidian person and I literally live inside obsidian containers. However, I’m always been about visually seeing how my ideas connect to each other. Thanks. Shared your video with my Phd Students.
I think the complexity of the experiment does make a difference on whether we need a project management system or not. I agree the biggest trap is to try building "4-year PhD plan". To overcome the challenge that science project is non-linear. I keep a Kanban column for the "Blocked" project (Besides the popular columns for "To Do", "Doing", "Done"). After 1-2 week, I can review these bottlenecks with my PI and discard ideas that may not be working. In life sciences, experiments take a long time to prepare due to these unique aspects. - A biostatistically sound experiment will need a randomization/blinding process, and often need more than one person to run. - Chemical/antibodies purchases (often takes 14 days!) - Live animal collection/maintenance - Research Assistance/Techinician recruiting/scheduling/training In some ecological studies, we may have to work with a short reproductive season to manipulate the animal/plant. The timeline window of an experiment can be 2-4 weeks, and the experiment can only be repeated next year! So, tools like Trello/Kanban system are really essential to manage the experimental planning/execution. On the other hand, I understand for subjects like math/physics/engineering/ chemistry, setting up an experiment is a matter of a few hours/days, e.g. measuring the material properties in the lab. In that case, I think overplanning with management tools can hurt the science exploration process. One thing I can strongly agree with you is "Do not use Notion!". Although it's certainly the "internet's favorite", I find it's too distracting to set up effectively for complex research projects. People are spending too much time on how to making it prettier. In addition, I don't like how it doesn't offer offline storage (will be a challenge to access notes on Notion in a field site/countries with slow internet). I think OneNote is a much better tool. So far, I suggest the key project management software for a PhD project: OneNote, Toggl (keeping time, as Andy suggested), Trello (or just a wall with post-it stickers), and Zotero (my preferred reference management tool).
True indeed! I checked out a couple last week and I just couldn't see how they would actually fit into my program. There are far too many life and research variables
Perfect video. I also tried some of this "productivity tools". And it doesn't work. The only thing that work for me is to use a task manager, but is only to don't forget somethings. Because when I do research I take a lot of notes in my book and also put a lot of todo (totry for research jaja) and sometimes if I don't put in the tasks manager I used to forget something
Hello, Academia Insider Community Membership doesn't support Paypal, why? I'm in china and no another way to pay I think, especially I'm Syrian and American sanctions affecting everything related to payments regards
Typey tappey, write the paper- this made me laugh as I’ve just finished the second draft of a paper 😂 Thanks for all the helpful videos, it’s like you are my virtual cheerleader.
Just think a spreadsheet aka list of things to look up and think / remember. I looked at the tools. Just thought the tool was overly complex. I'm not sure obsidian is a productivity tool. Just seemed a complex tool to link concepts. I think. Too complex for my productivity.
