Workflows
I’m at my desk in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Though the weather suggests summer has begun, I’ve resisted that seasonal shift. I’m still deep in the rhythms of research and study—finishing seminar papers, attending language courses, and preparing for the third year of my Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan. Two years in, I’m facing down an ever-growing mountain of texts—books, articles, conference papers, dissertations, and lectures—all of which demand attention ahead of comprehensive exams at the end of the 2021 academic year.
To my left: a precarious stack of annotated book notes nudging against a 2014 MacBook, its age showing. Legal pads with frayed corners and pages curling from overuse sit nearby. On my right: Benjamin Claude Brower’s A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, a volume that will anchor a review article I’m writing on 19th- and 20th-century French colonial violence. My desk is cluttered but purposeful. The glass ring on a page, the flickering jasmine-scented candle—they’re all part of the ambient evidence of a life organized around intellectual labor.
This semester has led me to reflect not just on the content of my research, but on the methods that sustain it. As a historian—one trained to interrogate fixed identities and question received truths—I’m struck by how resistant we often are to examining our own scholarly practices. We treat our workflows as private rituals, yet when prompted, we’re quick to share. Ask any graduate student about their archival routines or writing habits and you’ll likely receive an eager, even intimate, reply.
So why is our broader discourse on research practice so anemic?
Most mainstream advice on surviving graduate school traffics in banalities: don’t over-highlight, keep track of citations, and yes—reading is writing. At the same time, digital tools promise the holy grail of productivity—if only you pay the subscription fee. But neither tips nor tools provide the deep, structural clarity that sustained research requires.
This piece is the first in what I hope will be a reflective series on the intellectual habits and research methodologies I’ve developed—and continue to evolve—as a graduate student. At 24, I don’t pretend to have figured it out. But I’ve spent enough time wrestling with my tools to know that good method matters. I want to document the strategies that have helped me not only stay afloat, but occasionally thrive, in the demanding ecosystem of academic life. If these reflections prove useful to others—especially to those less inclined to obsessively document every fleeting thought—then this effort will have been worthwhile.
My interest in developing a more intentional research workflow emerged from conversations with friends and mentors in Los Angeles and deepened over time. Even NPR has reported on the mental toll of information overload—an experience familiar to anyone in graduate school. If you too find yourself gasping for air under the weight of texts, expectations, and deadlines, I hope this series can be a modest lifeline.
My journey began with humble tools: Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers’ A Writer’s Reference (7th ed.), which offered clarity on mechanics. I soon turned to Adam Robinson’s What Smart Students Know, a text I found far more instructive than Cal Newport’s How to Win at College, whose advice seemed overly simplistic. I studied the Chicago Manual of Style, read Booth et al.’s The Craft of Research (4th ed.), Rosenwasser and Stephen’s Writing Analytically (6th ed.), Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools, and the 9th edition of Turabian’s A Manual for Writers. Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis reminded me that writing is both an art and a discipline.
At some point, I spiraled into the world of productivity YouTube—where beautiful people with beautiful lighting explain their ideal routines. Ironically, this often happened while procrastinating. More substantive was Pierce J. Howard’s The Owner’s Manual for the Brain (4th ed.), particularly sections on cognitive processing. His work helped me recognize that, in the humanities and social sciences, mastering how we process and internalize text is essential. Without this, we risk confusing memorized fragments for understanding, or worse—building arguments atop half-formed impressions.
Paul Silvia’s How to Write a Lot and Fiona McPherson’s Effective Notetaking (3rd ed.) helped me revise my reading and note-taking habits. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird reminded me that writing is sacred, even when it feels like drudgery.
But the most transformative influence has been Sönke Ahrens’ How to Take Smart Notes, which introduced me to the Zettelkasten method developed by sociologist Niklas Luhmann. More than a note-taking technique, Zettelkasten is a philosophy of thinking. It’s reshaped how I synthesize arguments, track ideas, and build connections between disparate materials. It has brought structure to chaos—and turned my desk, once a symbol of overwhelm, into a site of inquiry.
As I continue refining my methods, I’ll use this space to think aloud about the practice of research—not just as a set of tools, but as a way of life. If we’re going to ask hard questions of the world, we should start by asking them of ourselves.
Substantial revision: March 25, 2025
