I’m getting to the stage of my PhD where I have substantial content that needs to be written down. Writing has always been hard for me, but based on personal observation and much advice, I’m striving to publish as much as possible while in grad school.
With that in mind, I’ve had to start re-engaging with the literature in a serious way to write introductions. This has led me to realize a) I’m not very good about keeping up with the literature and b) have a very poor organizational structure to keep track of what I’ve read and what I thought about it.
In between running chunks of code, I took a procrastinatory dive into the internet to see what other people recommended.
Useful notes about reading:
- Discussions by English majors about how to keep track of notes/ideas for long books is surprisingly relevant
- Nice reminder: “quality of reading trumps quantity of books read.” From this thread.
Useful notes about using reading for writing
- Start writing and draft and re-draft with each new piece of information and reading. Not only do you start to have content on paper but it makes you ask the question “how does this literally change what I have to say” (from the same thread about long book reading)