Workflows: Research Practices & Digital Infrastructure

In May 2020, I published "Workflows" on my blog. In July of that year, I published a sequel—meant to be one in a series of posts about research productivity—entitled "'Welcome' to Graduate School." Unfortunately, the Workflows series died with that second post. The outline I had envisioned in the first post was far too optimistic, while some of the topics I'd wanted to write about fell far beyond my expertise. With this new post, I hope to revive the series by sharing with you my experiences in the archives. While you can keep up with my activities in Paris through my Newsletter, this post will include some deeper thinking on my current analog and physical practices for retaining information without losing my mind. While reading the inaugural post isn't essential, it does provide a list of literature to which I'm indebted in shaping my thinking about research, time management, and productivity. The second post provides a snapshot of my methods for capturing data and saving it. I will revisit some of these points here, showing how my process of information capture has changed (out of necessity and by choice).